The Modern Home
" White and Off-White "
IT is a little strange that the idea of an all-white room has not found popularity before the present clay. ' One _would have thought that its obvious possibilities as a setting for objects of a worthy and suitable loveliness might have commended it rather more frequently to those who are not obliged to ask long service of their decorations. Actually, this unserviee- ability is no longer so real as it appears : it may be that the new fashion has waited to make its appearance for the per. fecting of modern cleaning methods and the permanence of modern. paints, enamels and dyes. Certainly the all-white and oft-white,.room is the vogue at present, helped perhaps by the exquisite all-white bedroom which those who ha'.'e seen the play, Dinner at Eight, will be unlikely to forget. And now Messrs. Heal and Son have set out to show, in an exhibition open until the end of the month, what can be done in the new style. It is true that they interpret, the phrase " off-white" in a generous spirit—their colour scheme ranges in the one direction through oyster shell and grey to silver (whence the change to chromium plate comes naturally enough), and by way of a nutlt-variety of creams and broken -whites, to beige and almost to tan. Furniture of sycamore is shown, and furnitUre sprayed with cellulose so lightly as to be textured rather than patterned. There is also a' edroom suite veneered with Vellunri. This lastWould have been better in-my opinion if the painted decoraticin had been- omitted. Among the textiles my eye was caught-by a. cotton velour (priced, I think, at 3-s. 9d. a yard), which, took the light most beautifully, and by a pair ,of attractive honeycomb quilts in deeP beige. A Point of the exhibition is that most of the exhibits shown are part of the ordinary stock-in-trade of the firm. The results obtained with them,form a valuable les.4on in the art of selec- tion- and arrangement.' G. 141. B.