The Business Of Decoration Previous Page (86)
Altogether, I suppose there are not a dozen establishments in New York that really stand out from their competitors by reason of any special decorative merit. In most cases all is harmonious, usual and inexpensive. Nor is it always essential that they should be otherwise, for it is difficult indeed to convince a merchant that his background actually pays him in the form of a direct cash return, and still more difficult to prove this beyond question. A few dealers believe that it has paid them to spend more than the minimum amount requisite for their barest needs, but very few. The decorator is convinced that it would pay, but cannot demonstrate it. To assist him, I should like to cite a very trifling instance in my own recent experience.
There are two small booksellers in the neighborhood of my office, both of whom have completely undistinguished shops. They have the usual light oak shelves, the ivory walls, the ugly center light, the rugless floor, the curtainless window crammed with stationery, trifles and books. Both of them confessed to me that it required more than a year to get their businesses
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106INTERIOR DECORATING
fairly started and that at first they had practically no trade whatever. Then, strangely enough, there occurred an opportunity for me to assist at the financially unprofitable task of fitting up a new bookshop for a young lady in the same neighborhood. It was a very tiny shop and very little was to be expended upon it. Nevertheless we finished our shelves in walnut, painted the walls above and the ceiling a delicate light green, hung a large fringed gold silk shade with a cluster of lights in the center of the store and a small shade in the window, equipped the latter with a mirror covering one wall and vivid batik curtains and window drop (there was no stationary background), put gold silk gauze on the door and transoms and gold velvet on the pyramided base of the window and placed wrought iron candlesticks and vases and small bronze figurines (all for sale) above the shelves, batiks on the walls, rugs on the floor, and an Italian table, bench and chair upon them and behold, there were forty people in the shop the first day and almost as many every day thereafter, all crying aloud in admiration for this " charming/' " unusual " result!
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