Article: WINDOW DRESSING

Few things have changed as much in the last quarter-century as the window shade.

Those of us not still in school can remember a time when shade meant a piece of fabric that wound up and down from a wooden, and later cardboard, roller. Frequently they snapped up to the top of the window all by themselves with a nasty whirring sound, or suddenly unrolled completely, or even leaped out of their holders and crashed to the floor.

Stores stocked them in white or off-white. If you went to a custom shop your choices expanded to a scalloped and fringed rather than flat bottom, and perhaps a few pastels.

People with sun porches sometimes had roll-up shades called matchstick blinds, made of ...

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