[Illustration:  DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL]

There was recently an exhibition in New York of the craftsmanship of the students of a certain school of design.  There were some really beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their avocation.  One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and there were many notable fixtures.  There must be easily tens of thousands of young people who are students in the various schools of design, manual training high schools and normal art schools.

Why doesn’t some far-seeing manufacturer of lighting-fixtures give these young people a chance to adapt the fine old French and Italian designs to our modern needs?  Why not have your daughter or son copy such an object that has use and beauty, instead of encouraging the daubing of china or the piercing of brass that leads to nothing?  And if you haven’t a daughter or son, encourage the young artisan, your neighbor, who is trying to “find himself.”  Let him copy a few good old fixtures for you.  They will cost no more than the gaudy vulgar fixtures that are sold in so many shops.

The photograph shown on page 108 illustrates the possibility of using a number of lighting-fixtures in one room.  The room shown is my own drawing-room.  You will observe that in this picture there are many different lights.  The two old French fixtures of wrought gilt, which flank the mantel mirror, hold wax candles.  The two easy chairs have little tables beside them holding three-pronged silver candlesticks.  There is also a small table holding an electric reading-lamp, made of a Chinese jar, with a shade of shirred silk.  The chandelier is a charming old French affair of gracefully strung crystal globules.  For a formal occasion the chandelier is lighted, but when we are few, we love the fire glow and candlelight.  If we require a stronger light for reading there is the lamp.

The photograph here given may suggest a superfluous number of lights, but the room itself does not.  The wall fixtures are of gilt, you see, the candlesticks of silver, the chandelier of crystal and the lamp of Chinese porcelain and soft colored silk; so one is not conscious of the many lights.  If all the lights were screened in the same way the effect would be different.  I use this picture for this very reason—­to show how many lights may be assembled and used in one place.  In considering the placing of these lights, the firelight was not forgotten, nor the effect of the room by day when the sunlight floods in and these many fixtures become objects of decorative interest.

A lamp, or a wall fixture, or a chandelier, or a candlestick, must be beautiful in itself—­beautiful by sunlight,—­if it is really successful.  The soft glow of night light may make commonplace things beautiful, but the final test of a fixture is its effect in relation to the other furnishings of the room in sunlight.