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Every bedroom contained a gas heater and a canopied brass bedstead, and had a little bathroom attached equipped with the porcelain baths and fittings my uncle manufactured, bright and sanitary and stamped with his name, and the house was furnished throughout with chairs and tables in bright shining wood, soft and prevalently red Turkish carpets, cosy corners, curtained archways, gold-framed landscapes, overmantels, a dining-room sideboard like a palace with a large Tantalus, and electric light fittings of a gay and expensive quality.
We give an illustration of three designs for chimney-pieces and overmantels by James Gibbs, the centre one of which illustrates the curved or "swan-necked" pediment, which became a favourite ornament about this time, until supplanted by the heavier triangular pediment which came in with "the Georges."
Apart from the white curtains, and outer curtains of heavier material, which hung at all the windows, there were no "draperies." Overmantels, "cosy-corners," flung Indian shawls, "pieces" snatched from bazaars, and "carelessly" hung over pedestals and divans found no favor in Rosamund's eyes.
The overmantels were decorated with coats-of-arms and other carving, and the entablature over the fireplace often had Latin mottoes. The earliest firebacks date from the fifteenth century. Coats-of-arms and many curious designs were used upon them. The furniture of the Tudor period was much carved, and was made chiefly of oak.
In fact it got so far that she gave grandma notice, and announced her intention of going to a married sister's home for that process known as "getting her things ready," while Larry, in keeping up his end of the stick, bought a neat cottage and began furnishing it in the style approved by his circle, with bright linoleum on the floors, plush chairs in the "parler," and china ornaments on the overmantels.
They included overmantels, the entire breastwork of the chimney often being covered with stone or marble or black oak, right up to the ceiling or the cornice.
Sideboards and cabinets of carved Indian wood blocked up the roadway, and made black patches against the oak-panelled walls; overmantels of the same dusky hue stretched up to the ceilings, and Oriental rugs of priceless value, but distressing shabbiness, were spread over the floors, while the lower windows were covered with screens of carved wood, such as are to be seen over the windows of Turkish harems.
There followed an ingenuous account of his make-up. . . . Eric smiled elastically, stroking his chin and letting his gaze wander round the white panelled walls, the gilt sofa and chairs and the gold and white overmantel the coming of Dionysus to Europe in a chariot drawn by lions. He realized for the first time how much he hated overmantels.
Indeed, in this magnificent hall, about the most spacious of the old City Corporation Palaces, there is a great deal of new work mixed with old new chimney-pieces and old overmantels some of Grinling Gibbons' carved enrichments, so painted and varnished as to have lost much of their character; these have been applied to the oak panels in the large dining hall.
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