The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 20, 1903, Page 19

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL.—CHRISTMAS NUMBER. Beautiful substantial articles that can be made by any woman of artistic tastes and strength enough to drive a ham- mer—*“Grandmother’s clock” is | among the lovely pieces of new | art furniture that can be made | | by an amateur. I + RE you making the Nouveau Art Christmas furniture? There is & great deal of home- made furniture in the land these days. But, as it does mot look llke home-made furniture nor ltke amateur work, it can be forgiven. More than that it is welcome, for a great deal of it is as pretty as it can be; and & great deal better than could possibly be bought for the same money. Among the surprises of Christmas day will be the quantity of hand-made furniture which is brought forth; and those who are fortunate enough to re- ceive specimens will secure something which is well worthy am honorable place in a modern home. Woman turned carpenter a long time ago. But she was timid. She worked with nothing ‘at all. A soap box, a few barrel staves and some rough boards and broom sticks were her materials; and with these she evolved so-called furniture which did not amount to much from point of beauty or usefulness. But the lady carpenter of to-day works quite differently. It isa story of the lady and the hammer and with the dert instrument she turns out many & handsome bit. She calls it new art turniture. But, called by any name, it is pretty and extremely useful. The lady carpenter, when she gets ready to work, makes out her schedule. She must have so many shelves of such size and thickness. They must be of a certsin wood finished in & certain way. Then she needs the mechanical parts, the sliding shelves, the drawers, the racks and the moldings. ‘When she has made out her list she the trimmings, the little brass 3 the fleur de lis in brass, the great ornamental locks and the im- mense hinges which are now the fan- cy; and she adds a plentiful supply of great ornamental nalls, for it is now the style to have all the materials show when the plece of furniture is complete. Grandmother’s Clock. A beautiful plece of Christmas furni- ture is the grandmother’s clock. Fifty years from now it will be, not grandfather’s clock. but the clock of grandmother. Grandmother’s clock, now being bullt, is built to last; and In the days to come it will be an ornament for the front hall, the back hall, or the parlor. The “grandmother” who is now mak- ing the clock is & young girl. She is not & grandmother yet. But she wants & clock, a clock that will last, & clock for keeps. “I am so tired of frall things,” says she, “let me build me something that will endure.” It is to be & piece of holiday work and the making will take time. It must not be an ordinary clock, but one that will last forever, & dark wood, heavy clock with a pendulum that wags and e face that can be seen all over the house. “It must bave & pretty face,” says she, “for a clock with & homely face is a constant reproach. And it must strike. The striking of the clock is so comforting. No matter whether the strokes are welcome or not., no matter whether they are a joy or & bitter- sweet. That clock of mine must strike the hour.” Most women can put together a clock frame from & diagram. But those who cannot can call help. The carpenter, that friend of woman, is called into the business and, after many consultations, many trips backward and forward, many measurements, many efforts to understand, and many misunderstand- ings, he finally gets the idea. And when & carpenter once gets the idea the battle is half won. The clock is made and & beauty it is. Its back Is flat. Its sides are out off knobs, diagonally to make dear little three cornered shelves for bric-a-brac. And down below 1s a wide shelf for books. At the top shines the face, a great round thing, a face so dear that you want to hug it, and over the face there is room for bric-a-brac. “I shall deco- says the girl, “the hands shall be gold and I shall paint upon it the year in which it was made.” ‘When the carpenter’s work.is done the work of the girl begins. The car- penter left the clock in its natural state; all light colored., plain hard- wood, ready for the talented hand of the decorator. And the grandmother of fifty years hence does hold a talented hand. With plenty of energy and lots of stain she goes to work. She stains and she stains and her hands bear witness that she has done it in no timi1 manner. She puts the stain on thinly and frowns be- cause it sinks in darkly. Then she ap- plies another coat and it sticks better; & third is better still. Thers is & distinct knack in staining and varnishing and the woman who wants to stain and finish her clock well will begin upon the back. Before she has completed it she will have learned & lesson or two which will come in han- dy when she tackles the front. There are certaln works of art which tell thelr age and their maker by the very looks. There are pieces of furni- ture which distinctly say to those who understand furniture, “That plece was made in 1830, and others will show, at a xlance, the seventeenth century handiwork. And so it should be with this clogk. The style In heavy tal’ slocks this year calls for a clock whic" is so substan- tial that it takes the combined strength of all the men of the fimily to move it, with the woman of the: family hard by, bossing the job. 3 The face of the clock: like the face of & woman, should be ‘he main thing. It should be very pleasing in its shape end its features shoull be marked by distinctness and a cerfaln elegance or regularity Nothing rregular in its markings, just plain and pretty, ele- gant and always fit to be seen. There are some big clocks whose faces always need cleaning. They must be polished often and rubbed with this kind of powder and that kind of paste, But these are not the clock faces that wear well. You want a face with a hard wood finish and with brass let- ters, or letters of sllver and hands that correspond. This sort of a clock is not very expensive and can be rigged up by any clockmaker In a few days. You pay the price and he makes the clock go. A tall elegant clock is just the thing for a Christmas present. How much does it cost? Well, there's the question. You see it depends upon the woman, the carpenter and the bar- galning propensities of both. There are carpenters who will let you buy the ma- terial and will work for you, by the day, upon it, getting it done as soon as pos- sible. And there are others, conscience- less fellows, who will demand that you let them buy the stuff, and make it, and charge you anything at all. It is all according to the kind of & :nunl you get—just like any other lot- ery. > You can put together less ambitious clocks, or you can make & clock by attaching chains to a circular framework and setting & clock inside. Beautiful hanging clocks are made to be suspended between the parlor and the dining-room, and there are hanging clocks that are just the thing for the staircase hall, or over the big fireplace. They take clocks and stain them in dark colors and hand paint them. But, it you do this, get the spirit of Michael Angelo to help you, or get a Raphael to hold your hand; for a hand-painting that is not good is very bad Indeed. especially when it be perpetuated in such a substantial way as in the grandmother’s clock of 1950. A pretty gift is the silk petticoat box for the friend who is the owner of half a dozen silk peticoats. But the question of keeping them is the one that bothers a woman. How is she going to preserve her petticoats? A bureau drawer will not hold them. Then, after that, they are crushed down, mussed and made to look worn before they are ever put on. Then, too, & bureau drawer is so inconvenient for the purpose—not long enough and too wide. The way out of it is the scented box. And it can be an ordinary paper box, if you have no other, padded inside and filled with nice scents. The outside can be covered with cretonne and you have a box which comes in very well for holding your skirts. Bt the best box is the Japanese box. This is made out of thin wood, not ‘ heavy, yet stout enough to answer as a geat if you so desire, or it can do duty in the corner of the room, or can stand in a clothes press unobtrusively. This box should be made of wood with a slight odor to it. Odorous woods drive away insects and prevent moths from entering. If the box has no scent then put some scent into it. Scenting wood is not difficult. You take a little Chinese incense, of the sort which comes in long pipe-like pieces, and you light a bunch and place it in the box. The smoke will permeate every crack and your box will be per- manently scented. Don't be afrald of getting it too strong, for natural woods are highly scented if you get the sweet kind. Do not think, when scenting your box, that you must use ‘camphor if you would drive away moths. Moths do not like odors of any kind and will fly away from Chinese incense as quickly as they will from camphor gum; and they will not enter if there is as much as a whiff of rose anywhere about. The Scented Box. ‘Women who like highly scented gar- ments are in the habit of buying half an ounce of ofl of rose geranium. This they use for polishing the inside of the shirt walist box, which also makes an excellent Christmas gift. A little of the ofl is dropped upon flannel and the in- side is thoroughly polished from one end to the other. The remainder of the oil is poured into the cracks. Now comes the laying of a padded plece in the bottom. It should be half an inch thick and should be absolutely fliled with scents of all kinds, with a preference for the neutral herbs, which are never nauseating and which en- dure longer than the artificial scents. Powdered cloves make & nice fixative for other scents. The object in having the pad very thick is to afford a soft bed for the silk walsts and for the lace waists, the walsts of panne and crepe, of chiffon and of mull. It is coming winter and in the winter time all walists are nice and waists of all kinds are worn for evening. The other paraphernalia of the box are soft pads of white tissue paper about the size and shape of your arm. Also some bust pads of tissue. These are for slipping into the walsts to keep them from crushing and to keep the silk from cracking. There are ever so many ways of fin- ishing the outside of the box. A nice way calls for thin Japanese matting, which is tacked on the outside and neatly finished with strips of split bamboo. Or the matting can be fin- ished with bands of tape. Ribbon also makes a good binding, or a row of gold tacks. If you desire you can take and work the matting before putting it on the outside of the box and you can do a nice pattern upon it in colored crewels. Done in this manner it makes a very nice Christmas gift. There are those who can paint in Japanese fashion, which is in large, flowery designs, and, if you can do this, the decoration of the box !s simple. Lovely designs can be put on without difficulty and with the expenditure of very little time. The shirt-walist box can be utilised for dress skirts, but In this case the box must be a little longer and must be kept strictly for dress skirts. It should be long and narrow and supplied with peparate pads to lay between the sepa- rate skirts. Shirt-wailst suits can be kept in these boxes and, indeed, almost everything & woman wears from the rising of the sun until the going down of the same— and a little later. The New Art Girl And here is another pretty gift Is there an old screen in the house, en impossible thing, with a dark back- ground, a rickety frame, a creaky hinge and a weak back? Give it to the Nouveau Art girl and she will do wonders with it. She will strengthen the back with heavy brown wrapping paper, the sort that grocers used to use, with little specks in it that looked good enough to eat. Bhe will take this paper and paper the back and then, with facile brush, she will place streaks of gold and red paint all over it. She will put them on in queer ways so that the back of the screen looks as If it were out in a golden snowstorm. And in the middle she will paint a girl's figure, The Nouveau Art girl runs to wem- en and animals and roses, the three lovely things of earth. On the face of the screen she will work still stranger miracles. The hinge she will remove and will replace it with one that looks as though it might have held a barn door. It will be very largs, very brassy and will look the better the older It is. 3 As to the framework, that is easily fixed, with a few 1 *~-« crnaments put on as though they belonged on, not as though they were put there to keep the screcn from actually falling apart. And, then, the Nouveau Art girl will do the proudest work of all. She will get out a long embroldery needle with a long golden threa® With this long needle and the golden thread she will work an animal, a great sprawling thing with wings and legs, for all the world like the winged and legged an~ imals which you see every day. A girl took an old family screen the other day, & screen that had done duty in the house for ever so long, and made it Into a family Christmas present. She took it off with her, up to the at« tic and kept it there two weeks. Many were the excursions she made up there, sometimes carrying & pot of paint, sometimes a little varnish, some- times a brass hinge and a hammer and sometimes a stick of wood for its lower legs, though short, were very dislo~ cated. Sometimes when she went up the at« tic stairs she looked ltke a rainbow, for her shoulders were covered with threads of all kinds, blue and red and yellow, with gold threads h ng from all, lke the gold at the end ol the rainbow. But at last all wasinished. And then came the removal to the parior and the afternoon tea to Introduce the scresn to family soclety. “What may it be?™ asked some one looking at the animal upon the front. “It {s a bird,” said she, “a New Art bird, one of those that look all goldy in the sun.” Well, the screen was & success and the father of the girl has asked that she give it to him for Christmas as a surprise. He likes to be surprised with things that are in the house rather than with things that are yet to be bought! “It is so easily settled,” says he, “with no uncertainty.” The New Art girl, if left alons, will do some nice things in the line of fam- {ly decoration. True, she may make a few mistakes, but what artist does not make mistakes? You remember that Madonna with the puffy eyes, do you not? And everybody knows that the artist broke off those marble arms of the Venus de Milo because he could not make arms good enough for the world to see. “Don’t tell on me,” he whis- pered into the marble ears and Venus, with the warm heart, has never told & word. 80 in making Christmas presents of home-made furniture remember that the defects do not show to friendly eyes and that the small mistakes will be visible to no one but you. AUCUSTA PRESCOTT.