Tables for Living Room: Oak, Marble, End Tables The second piece of furniture on our list of essentials for the living room was the large table. The long, narrow table, 3 x 6 feet, has taken the place of the older fashioned, claw-footed center mahogany table of our mother's day. A round center table can be sat around, but one invariably is diametrically opposite some one else. For this reason I believe that the long narrow end table answers a very modern need. We can sit at it, as at a desk, and write and study, and three or four people can sit at one side of it. It takes two lamps beautifully and sheds an adjacent light on two groups. The old-fashioned round table took one light, and that so far away from a book or sewing as to be of but small service. Antique oak tables of the design of old refectory tables found in monasteries have become very popular. Perhaps their popularity has been aided and abetted by the glamour of their name refectory table, when two out of every three Americans who go abroad are shown foot-worn tables in low plastered cloisters and can go home and have the exact replica delivered in two weeks, including wormholes, worn stretcher and all! Little wonder that they are sold by the thousands! Be careful in ordering that you get a replica of a really well proportioned one. In Queen Elizabeth's time some really hideous refectory tables were made, huge affairs with bulbous legs that give the effect of indigestion. In choosing a table for the living room, it is best to keep to the simple, early Italian models, with simply turned legs and stretcher a few inches above the ground. These usually have flat carving of good design. An excellent Italian type table comes 2 feet wide and 6 feet long, and where a room is narrow this is an advantage, as a stool may be pushed underneath when not being used. This has a single solidly constructed turned leg at either end, which broadens out at the base into a flat flange, giving a secure base for the table. These tables are best in walnut or oak, woods that are more consistent with the design than mahogany. In the selection of living room furniture, oak or walnut is preferable to mahogany. It is heavier grained and is made in more formal designs. Most bedroom furniture is mahogany, and it is a relief to have something else in the living room. By oak, I do not mean glassily varnished oak, nor mission furniture of box like construction. Oak furniture should have a dark brown wax finish and follow the lines of some well proven period design. Nor by walnut do I mean walnut of mid-Victorian ponderousness of design, cornice heaped upon cornice and molding piled upon molding. Walnut should be of simple lines, of brown color, almost green, what is known as Italian walnut, although the design may be French or English. Walnut may be inlaid with many other woods, the result being a delightful play of color tones over plain surfaces. Marble top tables are inhospitable looking affairs, perhaps because they have become associated in our minds with slippery horsehair and dust-ridden, toppling whatnots. The best thing to do with a marble table is to throw over the top a concealing piece of warm tone damask of Renaissance design, edged with galloon and cornered with tassels. I doubt if the marble top will ever emerge from this disguise. Of course, the table, legs and all, can be painted a satin finish, say, a sage green, bordered by lines of darker green and soft yellows. It might be used then as a breakfast table, grouped with a quartette of chairs of the same period and the same kindly painting. If painted furniture is used in a living room it should be a very small, informal room, or else in the small pieces in a large living room. A pair of painted console tables look well in a living room, but the color should be closely allied to the furniture upholstery. In any case, painted furniture of primitive design is not appropriate, however much it has been used of late in coffee tables. It was made for, and hence should be used in, informal places, breakfast rooms, country house bedrooms, in camps and, ideally, on the porch. Painted furniture is by no means an innovation, but peasant furniture is a more or less modern adaptation which, unfortunately, has run the gamut of vogue and without common sense restraint. Cheap little tables, little stands, little chairs, a little desk, painted or lacquered, may be so well placed in a room as to lighten it up perceptibly. They give it a piquant air. Next Page: Wicker Living Room Furniture. |
