Looking
at a few of these will help to crystallize your own ideas. You will
notice that their furnishings are by no means limited to the year in
which they were built or even the century. A good example of this is
to be found in a late 17th century house museum, known as Marlpit
Hall, located on Kings Highway, Middletown, New Jersey. Here two
nationalities actually mingle, since the exterior with its details of
roof and gable windows and two-part doors show the Dutch influence,
while the woodwork within is English in feeling. It is not a very
large house but every room has a different color scheme. The restorers
discovered the original colors and reproduced them; now the old
blue-green, light pink, apple green, yellow, tones of red, and the
like form a perfect background for the furnishings which date from
late in the 17th century until well into the 18th.

For instance, in the dining room a gate-leg table of the Puritan years
has settled down comfortably with a set of Windsor chairs that are
probably a hundred years younger. Other rooms are furnished with
William and Mary and Queen Anne pieces so arranged as to appear to be
waiting for the owners of Marlpit Hall, in its heyday, to come back.
Upstairs are bedrooms with four-post beds of varying ages mingled with
other furnishings that are in harmony, though not necessarily of the
same period.

This is a very fair example of an Early American home where two or
more generations were born, lived, and died. In those days the average
citizen did not discard his home furnishings just because they went
out of style. He moved them to less important rooms and bought as he
could afford of new pieces made "in the neatest and latest fashion."

The home owner today can well plan to use what he has, making a few
additions as he and his house become better acquainted. If he has a
number of Oriental rugs and some member of his family has a fixed idea
that those of the hooked variety are the only kind suitable for a
country home, let him buy one or two good hooked rugs, in the
interests of peace, and lay them down with his Orientals. Both will be
found in harmony because both have the same basic idea, skillful
weaving of colors into a distinct but variegated pattern. Besides, the
American colonists, industrious as they were, did not depend solely on
the work of their hands for floor coverings and other accessories.
Oriental rugs or Turkey carpets, as they were then called, were used