pire electric light fixtures in hand-carved gilded
wood, reproductions of an antique silver applique. Even the steam
radiators are here cleverly concealed by wooden cases made after
Empire designs.

The walls are white and panelled in wood also white.

[Illustration: _Dining-room in Country House, Showing Modern Painted
Furniture. Style Directoire._]

The earliest garments of Egypt were of cotton and hemp, or mallow,
resembling flax. The older Egyptians never knew silks in any form, nor
did the Israelites, nor any of the ancients. The earliest account of
this material is given by Aristotle (fourth century). It was
brought into Western Europe from China, via India, the Red Sea
and Persia, and the first to weave it outside the Orient was a maiden
on the Isle of Cos, off the coast of Asia Minor, producing a thin
gauze-like tissue worn by herself and companions, the material
resembling the Seven Veils of Salome. To-day those tiny bits of gauze
one sees laid in between the leaves of old manuscript to protect the
illuminations, as our publishers use sheets of tissue paper, are said
to be examples of this earliest form of woven silk.

The Romans used silk at first only for their women, as it was
considered not a masculine material, but gradually they adopted it for
the festival robes of men, Titus and Vespasian being among those said
to have worn it.

The first silk looms were set up in the royal palaces of the Roman
kings in the year 533 A.D. The raw material was brought from the East
for a long time but in the sixth century two Greek monks, while in
China, studied the method of rearing silk worms and obtaining the
silk, and on their departure are said to have concealed the eggs of
silk worms in their staves. They are accredited with introducing the
manufacture of silk into Greece and hence into Western Europe. After
that Greece, Persia and Asia Minor made this material, and Byzantium
was famed for its silks, the actual making of which got into the hands
of the Jews and was for a long time controlled by them.

Metals (gold, silver and copper) were flattened out and cut into
narrow strips for winding around cotton twists. These were the gold
and silver threads used in weaving. The Moors and Spaniards instead of
metals used strips of gilded parchment for weaving with the silk.

We know that England was weaving silk in the thirteenth century, and
velvets seem to have been used at a very early date.