A folding clothes-horse with two leaves, such as is used in laundries,
makes the foundation for this screen. The wood is painted solid
black, and covered inside and out with very yellow unbleached cotton,
stretched tightly over the frame, and held down by black upholstery
braid fastened on with gilt nails. A design in flowers, leaves, birds,
double circles, crescents, and parallel bars, to imitate the Japanese
style of decoration, is painted in oil colors on the cotton, and a
motto on the wood along the top. If the motto is arranged to read
backward, the foreign effect of the whole will be enhanced. We have
seen a striking screen of this sort made by a little girl who, as she
could not paint in oil colors, decorated the surface with figures of
various kinds cut from Japanese picture-papers, such as are now sold
for from ten to twenty cents in the Japanese goods shops. Her figures
were so well pasted and arranged, that the screen was one of the
prettiest things in the bedroom.
Screens covered with pictures cut from magazines and illustrated
newspapers are very much liked by boys and girls, and by some of their
elders.