The Ideal Billiard Room
(From The Sporting Life, Dec. 22, 1911)
A year ago, in the showrooms of Messrs. Burroughes and Watts in Soho Square, there were rows of magnificent billiard tables and their accessories, beautiful specimens of their kind; but the surroundings had no especial distinction. All that has been altered now. The visitor is shown through a series of model billiard rooms, each only large enough to contain one table, and each fitted with impressive elegance. They are billiard rooms de luxe, the high art of billiard furnishing. Designed as they are in accordance with various" periods," every detail is in perfect harmony with the basic schemes of colour and decoration.
And they are so rich, and withal so cosy, that you long to linger there. To play in a room fitted as any one of them is fitted you feel would be to show 50 per cent.
above your normal form. You are conscious of the perfect billiard environment.
First is the Georgian room, with its restful white walls, its deeply coffered ceiling, its typical Georgian grate and fender, with an old oil-painting above the carved mantelpiece, and with the panelled legs of the table richly carved.
The pendant is of gold and red, and a cosy and inviting alcove contains seats of Georgian design in rich damask.
Rut just as you have made up your mind that you have seen at last the ideal billiard-room and have vowed to build one exactly like it when you take that country house you have had so long in mind, you find yourself ushered into the Jacobean room, which is equally desirable in its entirely different way. The walls are of oak panelling from floor to ceiling, and are replicas of the Jacobean panelling found in the Old Bow and Bromley Palace, the originals of which are in the South Kensington Museum. The table, which is of oak relieved by ebony panels is fitted with a foot rail.
typical of the period; the furniture is modelled upon the original Jacobean furniture at Noel Park; and the pendant is of armoured steel. A charming old-world room it is, but with up-to-date pockets and marking board in cabinet.
Your ideas of what is best—of how you would choose your own billiard room to be fitted—are still further bewildered when you step into the Adam Room, with its scheme of decoration in accordance with the principles of the brothers Adam. The eye is again delighted by splendid examples of the wood carvers' art. The pendant is worked in oxidised silver, and the shades are of Wedgewood blue silk. Copies of Morland's pictures surround the fluted walls, and blue Morocco carpets and upholstery complete a scheme of quiet, restful luxury.
There remains the Modern Room. The walls and ceilings are panelled in mahogany, and with sporting pictures hung the room is especially appropriate for a hunting or shooting box.
It is impossible for anyone to wander through these rooms without' coming under the spell of their charm. They are so cosy, so elegant, so complete. And you realize, perhaps for the first time, upon seeing it amidst such surroundings how beautiful a thing a billiard table can be.