In jewellery, too, the method of isolation has been carried to such a length that it has almost become a new principle. The old jeweller's window was a window of many shelves and many little plush-covered stands. Watches and chains would occupy one section, engagement and wedding rings another, rings for men's wear would be featured in another division, and silver plate in yet another, while to the top of the shop front the remainder of the window would be filled in by an indiscriminate collection of clocks, barometers, and similar instruments. The very modern jeweller is not now doing this. Instead of dressing his window fortnightly or monthly, or under those conditions which resulted in it having always very much the same appearance, he too goes in for a weekly show, dis playing less goods and making some attempt at classification. A typical window under the new conditions was a recent present display. In this case, instead of having little glass shelves brought to the front of the window, the whole of the window was blank so far as fittings were concerned, beyond the fact that a wooden frame draped in green velvet rose step by step until it reached the level of the customer's eye, the whole forming an effect something like a pedestal. In this display, leaving ample space between each item, perhaps forty or fifty different things were shown. Three or four watches, half-a-dozen chains, silver links, two or three sets of buttons, cigarette cases in gold and silver, a few pencil cases, a few choice rings were the class of goods shown, while at the back of die window on pedestals were three or four clocks. The difference between the old crowded window and this window was that the eye, instead of being confused by a collection of things being placed almost haphazard, was able to rest on several items and gather a definite impression. This method is particularly effective in displaying silver plate. Where choice models are handled they can be shown in an extremely inviting manner. The great advantage of this method of window display is that with the right fittings a window can be dressed in one-tenth of the time it takes to take out and fill in a big window, and the effect week by week, if the change is made at that interval, is always new and much more attractive.
Much might be written along these lines on the subject of modern window display, and the result would be simply the application of the same principles to several trades. The keynote of successful window display at
the moment is strict simplicity and isolation, so that a definite impression can be secured. It is a note which is prevailing in nearly all trades and has been applied to the most unlikely trades with.startlingly good effects. In the furniture, millinery, boot, and grocery businesses similar methods are prevailing in the shops which serve as exclusive centres, and the fact that they are being persistently pursued and developed is some practical indication that these new methods pay.
One further practical hint. The peat firms who go in for first-class window-dressing have reduced it to a definite business, which is conducted with a machine-like method. Quick window-dressing is aided in their case by a study of the effect they wish to convey, worked out long before the actual dressing of the window begins. The writer was in a well-known trader's office, where window displays were planned for seven or eight shops —window displays which attract attention, both from the public and the trade stocking that class of goods. Some indication was gained as to how these happy ideas are worked out so perfectly in the window. The interior office of the trader had a fitting on one of its walls almost the same size as his average window, and all the ideas which are circulated from branch to branch are not planned in the windows themselves, but actually in this fitting. In the privacy of his office the trader who is his own window dresser works out his decorative schemes, and when they are completed to his satisfaction a plan is made, and with the aid of numbers and directions the actual setting can be reproduced by any of the hands almost mechanically. Instead of putting the window-dresser to work on the window itself, holding up the work of the shop while he makes numerous experiments which involve rushing outside into the streets to see how the window looks from the point of view of the pedestrian, these windows are completed in private. Written directions are sent out to each shop weekly, and the same effect is produced again and again. It is practically the old idea of the scene painter who works out his ideas on a model stage, and is a practical hint well worth the consideration of any trader who is contemplating first-class effects in the dressing of his windows. GEO. EDGAR.
Late Editor," Modern Business."