Decorating with porcelain stoves.
When the Colony Club was at last finished we discovered that the furnace heat didn’t go up to the roof garden, and immediately we had to find a way of heating this very attractive and very necessary space. Even from the start we were sadly crowded for room, so popular was the club house, and the roof garden was much needed for the overflow. We conferred with architects, builders and plumbers, and found it would be necessary to spend about seven thousand dollars and to close the club for about two months in order to carry the heating arrangements up to the roof. This was disastrous for a new club, already heavily in arrears and running under heavy expenses.
We worried and worried over the situation, and suddenly one night an idea came to me: We remembered some great porcelain stoves we had seen in Germany. We felt that these stoves were precisely what we needed, and that we should be rescued from an embarrassing situation without much trouble or expense. We were just leaving for Europe, so we hurried on to the manufacturers of these wonderful stoves and found, after much difficulty, a model that seemed practicable, and not too huge in proportion. The model, unfortunately, was white with gilded garlands, far too French and magnificent for our sun room. We persuaded them to make two of the stoves for me in green Majolica, with garlands of soft toned flowers, and finally we achieved just the stoves for the room.
A Cream Color Porcelain Stove.
But my troubles were not over: When the stoves reached New York, we tried to take them up to the roof, and found them too large for the stairs. We couldn’t have them lifted up by pulleys, as the glass walls of the roof garden and the fretwork at the top of the roof made it impossible for the men to get "purchase" for their pulleys. Finally we persuaded a gentleman who lived next door to let us take them over the roof of his house, and the deed was accomplished. The stoves were good enough. They heated the roof garden perfectly, and were of great decorative value.
Encouraged by this success we purchased another porcelain stove, this time a cream colored porcelain one, and used it in a hallway in an uptown house. It was the one thing needed to give the hall great appeal. Since then we have used many of these stoves, and we wonder why American manufacturers don’t make them. They are great for heating difficult rooms, outdoor porches, and draughty halls, and rooms not heated by furnaces. The stoves are becoming harder and harder to find, although we were lucky enough to buy one last year from the Marchioness of Anglesey, who was selling her home at Versailles. This stove was of white Majolica with little Loves in terra cotta adorning it. The new ones are less attractive, but it would be perfectly easy to have any tile manufacturer copy an old one, given the design.