The House in Good Taste

To me the most amazing evidence of the advance of good taste is the revival of chintzes, printed linens, cottons and so forth, of the Eighteenth Century. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to find a well-designed cretonne; the beautiful chintzes as we know them were unknown. Now there are literally thousands of these excellent fabrics of old and new designs in the shops. The gay designs of the printed cottons that came to us from East India, a hundred years ago, and the fantastic chintzes known as Chinese Chippendale, that were in vogue when the Dutch East India Company supplied the world with its china and fabrics; the dainty French toiles de Jouy that are reminiscent of Marie Antoinette and her bewitching apartments, and the printed linens of old England and later ones of the England of William Morris, all these are at our service. There are charming cottons to be had at as little as twenty cents a yard, printed from old patterns. There are linens hand-printed from old blocks that rival cut velvet in their lustrous color effect and cost almost as much. There are amazing fabrics that seem to have come from the land of the Arabian nights--they really come from Austria and are dubbed "Futurist" and "Cubist" and such. Some of them are inspiring, some of them are horrifying, but all of them are interesting. Old-time chintzes were usually very narrow, and light in ground, but the modern chintz is forty or fifty inches wide, with a ground of neutral tone that gives it distinction, and defies dust.