Design & Decorating

How to harmonize your home

• Have a little bit of planning, creativity, and patience.
• Magazines are a source of inspirational ideas.
• Make notes of styles of furniture, colors and fabrics you like.
• Check out the color charts to bring your rooms together.
• Keep your decorating clean and simple.
• Give the room some longevity by choosing background elements that are long lasting.

The fireplace in English homes

In English homes, the fireplace has always been, until recent times, the natural centre of interest in a room. People may like to sit at a window on a summer day, but for many months of the year ay prefer to sit round the fire and watch the dancing flames.

In the Middle Ages the fireplaces in the halls of large castles were very wide. Only wood was burnt, and large logs were carted in from the forests, and supported, as they burnt, on metal bars.

Such wide fireplaces may still be seen in old inns, and in some of them there are even seats inside the fireplace.

Elizabethan fireplaces often had carved stone or woodwork over the fireplace, reaching to the ceiling. There were sometimes columns on each side of the fireplace. In the 18th century, space was often provided over the fireplace for a painting or mirror.

When coal fires became common, fireplaces became much smaller. Grates were used to hold the coal. Above the fireplace there was usually a shelf, on which there was often a clock, and perhaps framed photographs.

(From "Read and speak about Britain and the British" by V.F. Satinova)