Window display

“ This would be embarrassing to the beginner or the modest man, but its advantage lies in being an added attraction for the store. People are often curious to know how a window display is built up and arranged, and enjoy watching the workman. Often the people attracted are the loafers of a town, and those who, having no business of their own, would not be likely to bring business to the store. But in cities where the streets are crowded, the open window may be considered a distinct attraction to the casual observer and the general public. ”

“ BOX PLEATING.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BACKGROUND. A good background is a necessity. It is the frame of your picture. Many goods, desirable in themselves, need a color effect to throw them out properly. Practical window trimmers devote much study to designing their backgrounds, frequently relying upon them to arrest the eye of the passing throng and so direct attention to the goods themselves.
No matter how artistic a window display may be, it loses more than half its attraction if not suitably backed. ”

“ A Prismatic Display.—Take two large panes of common window glass, and set them in a frame about six inches apart. Have them perfectly clean, and then fill the space between them with cracked ice of clean and clear quality. Place the frame in the window, and behind the exact center of it hang an electric light or place a lamp with a reflector. From the sidewalk the cracked ice will show the most beautiful prismatic effects, in all the colors of the rainbow. In cold weather the ice will last throughout a day easily, and perhaps for a longer time. ”

“ The special efforts of the most successful window trimmers are directed toward the carrying out of the small details, without which there can be no perfect specimen of the window trimmer’s art, and for lack of which so many windows present a crude and unfinished appearance.
15 WHAT TO DISPLAY. The mission of the show window is not to display unsaleable goods, but to sell goods. If you can’t make a pretty picture and sell goods at the same time let the picture go, but make a display that will sell the goods. ”

“ It makes a window attractive enough to stop pedestrians, who, glancing at the display, unconsciously note that the goods on exhibition are thrown prominently into the foreground, while the coloring that made them pause has modestly retired, and serves only as a foil for the articles of merchandise. ”

“ Against the solid backing brackets and shelves may be secured, their arrangement being altered as occasion demands. It also admits of tacking the draperies in a substantial manner, and there is a satisfaction in knowing your window is solid and that any fragile articles displayed are perfectly safe.
HOW TO WASH WINDOWS. A clean window pane is a necessity in a show window. Nothing destroys the attractiveness of a really good display so readily and effectively as a streaked, flyspecked glass in front of it. ”

“ Bows of bright ribbon fastened to the chains midway between the pole and ceiling add to the charm of the display.
Illusion.—A very pretty window trim may be made by stretching illusion, of the quality that hats are lined with, across the center of the window, and upon its surface pinning fancy handkerchiefs, etc., in artistic, flower shaped effects. If the illusion is stretched tightly it will be almost invisible, and the goods will seem to the observer to be suspended in mid-air. ”

“ BOXING A WINDOW. In order to produce a good window there must be a proper foundation to work upon. An open-backed window is an impossibility as considered from a window trimmer’s standpoint, save in very few cases where articles are small and only require a window shelf to display them. ”

“ The extreme sides, or ends, of your window may be next heaviest or fullest. Between the center and the ends the trim should be lightest; but this depends considerably on the shape of your window and the character of the trim. If you have no judgment don’t attempt to trim windows. Aside from an artistic eye and deft workmanship the only other requisite of a successful trimmer is common sense.
Do not place your trim too near the window pane, as it destroys the effect of the best display. Unless goods are very small indeed they will look better the farther they are removed from the pane. ”

“ The stars twinkle as naturally as they do in the heavens; the whole display is grand and awe inspiring.” We can well believe this.
Fig. 1 is the front view of the window, showing the sun, moon, earth and stars, and the orbit of the earth where it revolves around the sun. A strip of lumber was bent into a large circle, almost the full size of the window. Black cambric was stretched from this to the four sides of the window, and openings cut in the corners for the stars and moon, as represented, C C C being the stars, and D the moon. ”

“ Every business man who has studied the matter will recognize the fact that modern and judicious window displays are of greater drawing power than any other advertising medium extant, and are becoming more so every day, with enormous strides. Therefore when you deal with a modern window trimmer give him the courtesy due one who has attained an indispensable position, by long study, thought and diligence. ”

“ Now fill the back of the window up 3 or 4 ft. with straw, letting it slope down toward the glass. Cover the entire floor with straw, and also the platform in the back. Then place hats on stands on the floor and suspend hats from rods above them. Place three or four hats on the stand in front, and make a sign which reads, “Straw hats while you wait.” Start your motor and you have a window that will sell hats.
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EXAMPLE OF DISPLAY WITH HALF REVOLVING BUSTS.—McFaddin. ”

“ Fault, no doubt, has been found with the windows that they do not throw down the light sufficiently from above, but the windows themselves are traceried and filled with beautiful stained glass. Upon entering by the great portal at the west, the eye is caught in the far distance by the glimmering colours of the grand east window, whose dimensions are colossal, as may be gathered from the fact that its traceried compartments comprise no fewer than 350 pictures in glass, copies, in many instances, of known paintings. ”

“ He must know them and humour them. Bars have to be accepted as needful supports, leads to be acknowledged as convenient joints; glass must be allowed its translucency, and painting kept to what it can best do. A window should own itself a window.
And what is the aim and use of a stained glass window? To “exclude the light,” said the poet, sarcastically. Yes, to subdue its garishness, soften its glare, tinge it with colour, animate it with form perhaps.
The man who means to do good work in windows will devote as serious study to old glass as a painter to the old masters. ”

“ If he refuses, move elsewhere. You cannot afford to be in the mercantile business without good windows to back up your enterprise.
CHAPTER II.
THE SHOW WINDOW. In attempting to explain the fundamental principles of successful store decoration, the window is the first thing to be considered, and there are all kinds of windows, little and big, upright and oblong, cramped and spacious. Some are hard to get at; some have big, awkward posts in them; but no matter what they are or how undesirable they seem, remember that anything with a pane of glass before it may be made a show window. ”

“ In the house there is less need than in the church for severity, and more for liveliness, less occasion for breadth, and more for delicacy. The scale of the dwelling-room itself justifies, perhaps demands, a smaller treatment. Here, if anywhere, is opportunity for that preciousness of execution which, in work of more monumental character, it seems a pity to expend upon so frail a substance as glass—frailer than ever when it was the thin white glass employed for window panes. ”

“ Arrangement of Ordinary Windows.—For a good working light you should have only one window in your room; for the light coming in from two openings will make a crossing of rays which will not only interfere with the simplicity of the effect of light and shade on your model, but will make a glare on your canvas. You can either close the light out of the right-hand window, or, better, arrange a curtain so the light from one window will not fall on the same place as that from the other. ”

“ It is not worth while dividing a window into lights and then effacing the divisions in the glass. Given a window of four or five lights, the decorator has no choice but to design a four or five-light window. He must render his subject so that the constructional divisions of the window keep their proper architectural place; if his subject will not allow that, he must abandon his subject, or give very good reason why not. The reason of mere pictorial ambition will not hold good. The test of a good picture-window is, how the mullions affect the design. ”

“ The fact remains, nevertheless, that the writer believes show windows were made for the purpose of showing goods, that the people may see what you have and patronize you accordingly. It is with the intention of giving you a show window distinctively attractive in itself, that can be gotten up at a trifling expense and possess sufficient animation to attract the attention of the public, that the accompanying design is presented. ”

“ A very common practice is, to break a pane of glass near the window-fastening, which can be soon displaced by introducing the hand at the aperture thus made. Shop windows are frequently entered by the same means ”

“ The subjects on each side of the window are very large in scale, very pictorially and very freely treated, very finely designed at times, and very splendid in effect; but they are most unequal, and they are all more or less of a tangle. Their confusion is the greater inasmuch as there is no attempt to balance one picture with another. A landscape background on one side of the window answers to an architectural background on the other. On one side the interest of the subject is towards the top of the lights, on the other to the bottom, and so on. ”

“ The time saved in trimming a window is a very important factor. A few frames made of light strips, covered with cheap muslin, forms an excellent groundwork. They can be decorated with cheesecloth in sunbursts, pleating—or, in fact, there is no limit to the variety of ways to treat them. The frames can be made in convenient sizes to fit your windows, so that they can be easily handled and put together quickly in the window. Both sides of the frames should be decorated, so that after you have used one you can turn your frame, showing a different style and color entirely. ”

“ No degree of familiarity with old glass quite prepares one for the kind of thing which has made the humdrum market town of Gouda famous. Imagine a big, bare, empty church with some thirty or more huge windows, mostly of six lights, seldom less than five-and-twenty feet in height, all filled with great glass pictures, some of them filling the whole window, and designed to suggest that you see the scene through the window arch. ”

“ Where one has a window opening on to an air shaft or a court that gives no view but infringes one's privacy a delightful screen which will not deprive one of too much light and air, but effectually screen the window is made from a box the length of the window-sill, fitted with double casters to allow it to be moved from place to place. ”

“ Such windows are obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small houses.
I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten feet—one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of mountain and valley. It goes without saying that such a window requires no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night. ”

“ If the sun shines on your window, and the opposite side of the street is dark, there will be no reflections of foreign objects in your picture.
By keeping these important items of information in mind any country photographer can get a good picture of a show window. If the photographer doesn’t know them, it would be well to call his attention to these facts. He may not have had experience in “shooting” show windows.
A method often adopted with good success is as follows: Make a cloth screen of black cambric, sufficiently large to shut off all reflections when raised before the window. ”

“ At first the designer did not, as a rule, aspire to carry his subjects right across a big window. Accepting the transom as [Pg 198] a natural division, he would perhaps divide a four-light window vertically into two, so as to get four subjects, each under a canopy extending across two lights; or, in a five-light window, he would probably separate these by other narrow subjects in the central lights. ”

“ We find it in here and there a window only, white light shining unmitigated from windows all round. Perhaps in the window itself there is a breakage, and a stream of light pours through it, spoiling, if not its beauty, all enjoyment of it. It is not generally understood how completely the effect of glass depends upon the absence of light other than that which comes through it. Every ray of light which penetrates into a building excepting through the stained glass does injury to the coloured window; more often than not, therefore, we see it under most adverse circumstances. ”