How's this for a special treat? While perusing Ackermann's Repository (Dec 1819) I stumbled across this charming plate for Regency window draperies.
FASHIONABLE FURNITURE.
PLATE 35.—THREE DESIGNS FOR WINDOW-CURTAINS.
AN ingenious artist will communicate to the commonest theme an inexhaustible variety of design: in doing this he must, however, give liberty to his ideas, which, if well instructed in the first instance, will never take their flight beyond the limits prescribed by fitness and true taste. The imagination so controuled is properly distinguished from fancy, which wantonly oversteps all limitations, and trespasses alike on the most sacred and on the profanest grounds of theory and practice; and hence the distinction between the works of an artist and of an amateur, as well in the higher departments of art, as in that of mere upholstery.
The annexed subject presents features of perfect novelty, without a departure from its guiding principles. The centre draperies, in two colours, are composed for a Venetian or Palladian window: they are supported by a bow-like ornament, and by pilasters, to which the curtains are connected; the sub-curtains are also festooned by the bow, and guarded by a lateral transom, that passes from pilaster to pilaster.
The designs on the right and left are light and elegant: they should be composed of silk, and the sub-curtains of transparent materials richly embroidered: so executed, the delicacy of their combinations makes them suitable to a cabinet or boudoir.
For these designs we are indebted to Mr. Stafford of Bath.
*Image and description clipped from Ackermann's Repository, Dec 1819, p. 365. Typed description is taken verbatim from the above magazine clipping.
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