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Hardwood Floors For Interior Design And For Home Decorating
By Matthew Anderson, Fri Dec 9th
Using hardwood floors for interior design and for homedecorating, based on furniture of the eighteenth century may bediscussed from different points of view. However, what mostpeople realize is the distinguish details of tables made fromthat century. Dinner and wine tables were some of those piecesof furniture that could add a different touch of class to yourinterior decorating. Learn from the history of furniture book,by Frederick Litchfield ideas on how 18th century furniture,from the earliest to the present time. To the latter part of the eighteenth century the Englishfurniture of which time has been discussed on the site belongthe quaint little "urn stands" which were made to hold the urnwith boiling water, while the tea pot was placed on the littleslide which is drawn out from underneath the table top. In thosedays tea was an expensive luxury, and the urn stand, of whichthere is an illustration, inlaid in the fashion of the time, isa dainty relic of the past, together with the old mahogany ormarqueterie tea caddy, which was sometimes the object ofconsiderable skill and care. They were fitted with two andsometimes three bottles or tea-pays of silver or Batterseaenamel, to hold the black and green teas, and when really goodexamples of these daintily-fitted tea caddies are offered forsale, they bring large sums. Eighteenth Century Wine Tables The
wine table of this time deserves a word. These are nowsomewhat rare, and are only to be found in a few old houses, andin some of the Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. These werefound with revolving tops, which had circles turned out to aslight depth for each glass to stand in, and they were sometimesshaped like the half of a flat ring. These latter were forplacing in front of the fire, when the outer side of the tableformed a convivial circle, round which the sitters gatheredafter they had left the dinner table.One of these old tables is still to be seen in the Hall ofGray's Inn, and the writer was told that its fellow was brokenand had been "sent away." They are nearly always of good richmahogany, and have legs more or less ornamental according tocircumstances. A distinguishing feature of English furniture of the lastcentury was the partiality for secret drawers and contrivancesfor hiding away papers or valued articles; and in oldsecretaries and writing tables we find a great many ingeniousdesigns which remind us of the days when there were but fewbanks, and people kept money and deeds in their own custody.
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