Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

118 Advertising Section For all around, good lively reading! The Popular MAGAZINE The Home Dolores Built Continued from page 49 A fiction magazine that specializes in variety On the news stands the 7th and 20th of each month Best at any price lllllllllllllillllllllllllHIJIillllllli Opening oft" the hall is Miss del Rio's library and writing room. It is particularly interesting, because of the only decoration in the room — the antique tapestries which hang before the windows. One row of shelves is devoted to Dolores' collection of old Mexican china. Off this room is the office of her secretary. The living room is reached by a flight of three low steps down from the hall. It extends a short distance to the right, but its main length is to the left. The ceiling is high, with beams of unpolished oak across it. The walls are of smooth plaster, tinted a deep ivory. In this room, too, dull red predominates. Against the wall is a long, Spanish divan, upholstered in velvet, with small endchairs at each corner. On the wall, directly above, is a richly embroidered ecclesiastical tapestry. In furnishing this room, Dolores was sparing in the use of the ponderous, impractical pieces that are more Spanish than comfortable. Yet there is not one perceptible deviation from the Spanish feeling of the whole. The deep, inviting chairs hide their modernity under brocades of strictly Spanish design. The parchment-shaded lamp is set on a heavily carved coffee table that is purely Spanish. It is a skillful blending of the old and new, and the result is a cleverly executed Spanish room. And it doesn't need, as most of our pseudo-haciendas seem to, an abundance of Spanish shawls to identify it. The room is lighted by a threetiered wrought-iron chandelier, hung by brackets of similar design on the walls, and by two or three lamps. Two really fine, old paintings ornament the walls and, in a corner, there is an interesting screen made of an oil painting. The spacious fireplace is severely plain. In front of it is an iron grille, on the ends of which hang tongs and bellows. Three autographed photographs, the only ones in the house, are in this room. On a table, one of Edwin Carewe, the director, on another table, one of Rita Carewe, his daughter, and on the piano, one^-of Queen Victoria of Spain. All are in heavy, beaten-silver frames. It is a dignified and conservative room, but at the same time, warm rather than formal, and restful to a high degree. To the right of the entrance door is the dining room. This is reached by a flight of three steps up, giving an interesting irregularity of height — the hall being fully two stories, the living room more than ordinarily high, and the dining room low-ceil inged. This gives it a nice suggestion of intimacy and informality. At the top of the flight of steps leading to it, is a double gate, half the height of the arch. This is of iron, gold-leafed and wrought in the form of grapevines. The dining-room furniture is of oak, the top of the table and sideboard unplaned. The chairs are upholstered in tangerine-colored velvet, with massive nailheads along the sides. On the wall at the head of the table is an ecclesiastical robe, its satin background the same shade of tangerine. Above the table hangs a chandelier which Dolores brought from her home in Mexico. It is of hammered silver, in the form of a bowl. Ferns effectively hang over the edge of this. From this room a door leads into the pantries, the kitchen and the laundry. All these are done in a pale, fresh green, even to the built-in refrigerator which covers one wall. Back in the hall again, we ascend the staircase, which is against the wall facing the main entrance. It is railed in wrought iron, and the steps are of red tile. The fronts of the steps are done in decorative tile of blue, on a white background. Corresponding tiles form a panel along the ascending wall. Another door in the little hall opens into Miss del Rio's spacious room. Here the walls and ceiling, the carpet and brocaded-satin draperies are of a pale, delicate green. The effect is breath-taking for, as the curtains color even the light from outside, it gives the impression of stepping into fragile, green sunlight. This room frankly departs from the majestic formality of Spanish furnishings, and is French and feminine, but free of the rococo details often found in French rooms. The bed, on a low dais, Dolores brought from her room in her childhood home. It is Italian, but more essentially French, and is elaborately carved and painted, the colors grown indistinct through the generations of its existence. It is covered with paleyellow silk. The one painting on the walls, the incidental chairs and tables, the crystal chandelier, the Sevres ornaments on one table, the embroidered shawls thrown over the long couch, all bespeak the femininity of the room in their delicacy. The house is innately a home, designed to be lived in, an illustration of what a thoughtful person can make of a combination of the right amount of beauty and comfort.