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Principles of Home Decoration
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Decorators and Decorating
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Principles of
Home Decoration
With Practical Examples
By
vAvs Candace Wheeler
New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1903
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Copyright, igo3, by
DouBLEDAY, Page & Compant
Published February igo3
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER 1 3
Decoration as an Art.
Decoration in American Homes.
Woman's Influence in Decoration.
CHAPTER II 17
Character in Homes.
CHAPTER III 22
Builders' Houses.
Expedients.
CHAPTER IV 34
Colour in Houses.
Colour as a Science.
Colour as an Influence.
CHAPTER V 42
The Law of Appropriateness.
Cleanliness and Harmony Tastefully Combined.
Bedroom Furnished in Accordance with Individual
Tastes.
CHAPTER VI 63
Kitchens.
Treatment of Walls from a Hygienic Point of View.
CHAPTER VII 72
Colour with Reference to Light.
Examples of the EflFects of Light on Colour.
Gradation of Colour.
CONTENTS CContinuedJ
PACE
CHAPTER VIII 89
Walls, Ceilings and Eloors.
Treatment and Decoration of Walls.
Use of Tapestry, Leather and Wali-Papers.
Panels of Wood, Painted Walls, Textiles.
CHAPTER IX 115
Location of the House.
Decoration Influenced by Situation.
CHAPTER X 122
Ceilings.
Decorations in Harmony with Walls.
Treatment in Accordance with Size of Room.
CHAPTER XI 128
Floors and Floor Coverings.
Treatment of Floors — Polished Wood, Mosaics.
Judicious Selection of Rugs and Carpets.
CHAPTER XII 142
Draperies.
Importance of Appropriate Colours.
Importance of Appropriate Textures.
CHAPTER XIII 160
Furniture.
Character in Rooms.
Harmony in Furniture.
Comparison Between Antique and Modern Furniture.
Treatment of the Different Rooms.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Dining-room in "Penny-royal" (Mrs, Boudinot Keith's
cottage, Onteora) ..... Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Hall in city house, showing effect of staircase divided and
turned to rear ........ 3°
Stenciled borders for hall and bathroom decorations . . 50
Sitting-room in "Wild Wood," Onteora (belonging to
Miss Luisita Leland) ...... 80
Large sitting-room in "Star Rock" (country house of
W. E. Connor, Esq., Onteora) .... 92
Painted canvas frieze and buckram frieze for dining-room 106
Square hall in city house . . . . . .130
Colonial chairs and sofa (belonging to Mrs. Ruth McEnery
Stuart) 160
Colonial mantel and English hob-grate (sitting-room in
Mrs. Candace Wheeler's house) .... 168
Sofa designed by Mrs. Candace Wheeler, for N. Y. Library
in "Woman's Building," Columbian Exposition . 176
Rustic sofa and tables in "Penny-royal" (Mrs. Boudinot
Keith's cottage, Onteora) 188
Dining-room in "Star Rock" (country house of W. E.
Connor, Esq., Onteora) ...... 198
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS {Continued)
PACINf. rAr.K
Dining-room in New York house showing Icadcd-glass
windows . . . . . . . .212
Dining-room in New York home showing carved wains-
coting and painted frieze . . . , .216
Screen and glass windows in house at Lakewood
(belonging to Clarence Root, Esq.) . . , 222
Principles of Home Decoration
Principles of Home Decoration
CHAPTER I
DECORATION AS AN ART
"Who creates a Home, creates a potent spirit luhich in turn
doth fashion him that fashioned. ^^
pROBABLY no art has so few
-■■ masters as that of decoration. In
England, Morris was for many years the
great leader, but among his followers
in England no one has attained the
dignity of unquestioned authority; and
in America, in spite of far more general
practice of the art, we still are without a
leader whose very name establishes law.
It is true we are free to draw inspi-
ration from the same sources which
supplied Morris and the men associated
with him in his enthusiasms, and in fact
we do lean, as they did, upon English
eighteenth -century domestic art — and
derive from the men who made that
period famous many of our articles of
4 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
faith ; but there are almost no authorita-
tive books upon the subject of appro-
priate modern decoration. Our text
books are still to be written ; and one
must glean knowledge from many
sources, shape it into rules, and test
the rules, before adopting them as safe
guides.
Yet in spite of the absence of authori-
tative teaching, we have learned that an
art dependent upon other arts, as deco-
ration is upon building and architecture,
is bound to follow the principles which
govern them. We must base our work
upon what has already been done, select
our decorative forms from appropriate
periods, conform our use of colour to
the principles of colour, and be able
to choose and apply all manufactures in
accordance with the great law of appro-
priateness. If we do this, we stand upon
something capable of evolution and the
creation of a system.
In so far as the principles of decoration
are derived from other arts, they can be
DECORATION AS AN ART $
acquired by every one, but an exquisite
feeling in their application is the distin-
guishing quality of the true decorator.
There is quite a general impression
that house-decoration is not an art which
requires a long course of study and
training, but some kind of natural knack
of arrangement — a faculty of making
things " look pretty," and that any one
who has this faculty is amply qualified
for ** taking up house - decoration."
Indeed, natural facility succeeds in satis-
fying many personal cravings for beauty,
although it is not competent for general
practice.
Of course there are people, and many
of them, who are gifted with an inherent
sense of balance and arrangement, and
a true eye for colour, and — given the
same materials — such people will make
a room pleasant and cozy, where one
without these gifts would make it posi-
tively ugly. In so far, then, individual
gifts are a great advantage, yet one pos-
sessing them in even an unusual degree
6 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
may make great mistakes in decoration.
What not to do, in this day of almost
universal experiment, is perhaps the most
valuable lesson to the untrained deco-
rator. Many of the rocks upon which
he splits are down in no chart, and lie in
the track of what seems to him perfectly
plain sailing.
There are houses of fine and noble
exterior which are vulgarized by unedu-
cated experiments in colour and orna-
ment, and belittled by being filled with
heterogeneous collections of unimpor-
tant art. Yet these very instances serve
to emphasize the demand for beautiful
surroundings, and in spite of mistakes
and incongruities, must be reckoned as
efforts toward a desirable end.
In spite of a prevalent want of train-
ing, it is astonishing how much we have
of good interior decoration, not only in
houses of great importance, but in those
of people of average fortunes — indeed,
it is in the latter that we get the general
value of the art.
DECORATION IN AMERICAN HOMES 7
This comparative excellence is to be
referred to the very general acquirement
of what we call **art cultivation " among
American women, and this, in conjunc-
tion with a knowledge that her social
world will be apt to judge of her
capacity by her success or want of suc-
cess in making her own surroundings
beautiful, determines the efforts of the
individual woman. She feels that she is
expected to prove her superiority by
living in a home distinguished for beauty
as well as for the usual orderliness and
refinement. Of course this sense of ob-
ligation is a powerful spur to the exercise
of natural gifts, and if in addition to
these she has the habit of reasoning
upon the principles of things, and is
sufficiently cultivated in the literature of
art to avoid unwarrantable experiment,
there is no reason why she should not
be successful in her own surroundings.
The typical American, whether man
or woman, has great natural facility, and
when the fact is once recognized that
8 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
beauty — like education — can dignify any
circumstances, from the narrowest to the
most opulent, it becomes one of the
objects of life to secure it. How this
is done depends upon the talent and
cultivation of the family, and this is
often adequate for excellent results.
It is quite possible that so much
general ability may discourage the study
of decoration as a precise form of art,
since it encourages the idea that The
House Beautiful can be secured by any
one who has money to pay for pro-
cesses, and possesses what is simply
designated as " good taste."
We do not find this impulse toward
the creation of beautiful interiors as
noticeable in other countries as in
America. The instinct of self-expres-
sion is much stronger in us than in
other races, and for that reason we can-
not be contented with the utterances of
any generation, race or country save our
own. We gather to ourselves what we
personally enjoy or wish to enjoy, and
DECORATION IN AMERICAN HOMES 9
will not take our domestic environment
at second hand. It follows that there is
a certain difference and originality in
our methods, which bids fair to acquire
distinct character, and may in the
future distinguish this art-loving period
as a maker of style.
A successful foreign painter who has
visited this country at intervals during
the last ten years said, " There is no such
uniformity of beautiful interiors any-
where else in the world. There are
palaces in France and Italy, and great
country houses in England, to the em-
bellishment of which generations of
owners have devoted the best art of their
own time ; but in America there is some-
thing of it everywhere. Many unpre-
tentious houses have drawing-rooms
possessing colour - decoration which
would distinguish them as examples in
England or France."
To Americans this does not seem a
remarkable fact. We have come into a
period which desires beauty, and each
lo PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
one secures it as best he can. We are a
teachable and a studious people, with a
faculty of turning " general information "
to account ; and general information
upon art matters has had much to do
with our good interiors.
We have, perhaps half unconsciously,
applied fundamental principles to our
decoration, and this may be as much
owing to natural good sense as to culti-
vation. We have a habit of reasoning
about things, and acting upon our con-
clusions, instead of allowing the rest of
the world to do the reasoning while we
adopt the result. It is owing to this
conjunction of love for and cultivation
of art, and the habit of materializing
what we wish, that we have so many
thoroughly successful interiors, which
have been accomplished almost without
aid from professional artists. It is these,
instead of the smaller number of costly
interiors, which give the reputation of
artistic merit to our homes.
Undoubtedly the largest proportion
WOMAN'S INFLUENCE IN DECORATION ii
of successful as well as unsuccessful
domestic art in our country is due to the
efforts of women. In the great race for
wealth which characterizes our time, it is
demanded that women shall make it
effective by so using it as to distinguish
the family ; and nothing distinguishes it
so much as the superiority of the home.
This effort adheres to small as well as
large fortunes, and in fact the necessity
is more pronounced in the case of medi-
ocre than of great ones. In the former
there is something to be made up — some
protest of worth and ability and intelli-
gence that helps many a home to become
beautiful.
As I have said, a woman feels that
the test of her capacity is that her house
shall not only be comfortable and at-
tractive, but that it shall be arranged
according to the laws of harmony and
beauty. It is as much the demand of
the hour as that she shall be able to train
her children according to the latest and
most enlightened theories, or that she
12 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
shall take part in public and philan-
thropic movements, or understand and
have an opinion on political methods.
These are things which are expected
of every woman who* makes a part of
society; and no less is it expected that
her house shall be an appropriate and
beautiful setting for her personality, a
credit to her husband, and an uncon-
scious education for her children.
But it happens that means of educa-
tion in all of these directions, except
that of decoration, are easily available.
A woman can become a member of a
kindergarten association, and get from
books and study the result of scientific
knowledge of child-life and training.
She can find means to study the ethics of
her relations to her kind and become an
effective philanthropist, or join the league
for political education and acquire a
more or less enlightened understanding of
politics; but who is to formulate for her
the science of beauty, to teach her how
to make the interior aspect of her home
WOMAN'S INFLUENCE IN DECORATION 13
perfect in its adaptation to her circum-
stances, and as harmonious in colour and
arrangement as a song without words?
She feels that these conditions create a
mental atmosphere serene and yet in-
spiring, and that such surroundings are
as much her birthright and that of her
children as food and clothing of a grade
belonging to their circumstances, but
how is it to be compassed ?
Most women ask themselves this
question, and fail to understand that it
is as much of a marvel when a woman
without training or experience creates
a good interior as a whole, as if an
amateur in music should compose an
opera. It is not at all impossible for a
woman of good taste — and it must be
remembered that this word means an
educated or cultivated power of selec-
tion— to secure harmonious or happily
contrasted colour in a room, and to select
beautiful things in the way of furniture
and belongings ; but what is to save her
from the thousand and one mistakes
14 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
possible to inexperience in this com-
bination of things which make lasting
enjoyment and appropriate perfection
in a house ? How can she know which
rooms will be benefited by sombre or
sunny tints, and which exposure will
give full sway to her favourite colour
or colours? How can she have learned
the reliability or want of reliability in
certain materials or processes used in
decoration, or the rules of treatment
which will modify a low and dark room
and make it seem light and airy, or
" bring down " too high a ceiling and
widen narrow walls so as to apparently
correct disproportion ? These things are
the results of laws which she has never
studied — laws of compensation and re-
lation, which belong exclusively to the
world of colour, and unfortunately they
are not so well formulated that they can be
committed to memory like rules of gram-
mar; yet all good colour-practice rests
upon them as unquestionably as language
rests upon grammatical construction.
WOMAN'S INFLUENCE IN DECORATION 15
Of course one may use colour as
one can speak a language, purely by
imitation and memory, but it is not
absolutely reliable practice; and just
here comes in the necessity for pro-
fessional advice.
There are many difficulties in the
accomplishment of a perfect house-
interior which few householders have
had the time or experience to cope with,
and yet the fact remains that each mis-
tress of a house believes that unless she
vanquishes all difficulties and comes out
triumphantly with colours flying at the
housetop and enjoyment and admiration
following her efforts, she has failed in
something which she should have been
perfectly able to accomplish. But the
obligation is certainly a forced one. It
is the result of the modern awakening
to the effect of many heretofore un-
recognized influences in our lives and
the lives and characters of our children.
A beautiful home is undoubtedly a great
means of education, and of that best
i6 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
of all education which is unconscious.
To grow up in such a one means a
much more complete and perfect man
or woman than would be possible with-
out that particular influence.
But a perfect home is never created
all at once and by one person, and let
the anxious house-mistress take comfort
in the thought. She should also remem-
ber that it is in the nature of beauty
to grow, and that a well-rounded and
beautiful family life adds its quota day
by day. Every book, every sketch
or .picture — every carefully selected or
characteristic object brought into the
home adds to and makes a part of
a beautiful whole, and no house can
be absolutely perfect without all these
evidences of family life.
It can be made ready for them, com-
pletely and perfectly ready, by professional
skill and knowledge ; but if it remained
just where the interior artist or decorator
left it, it would have no more of the
sentiment of domesticity than a statue.
CHAPTER II
CHARACTER IN HOUSES
" For the created still doth shadonv forth the mind and ivill ivhich
made it."
" Thou art the very mould of thy creator."
TT NEEDS the combined personality
-*■ of the family to make the character
of the house. No one could say of a
house which has family character, ** It
is one of 's houses" (naming one
or another successful decorator), because
the decorator would have done only
what it was his business to do — used
technical and artistic knowledge in
preparing a proper and correct back-
ground for family life. Even in doing
that, he must consult family tastes
and idiosyncracies if he has the rever-
ence for individuality which belongs
to the true artist.
A domestic interior is a thing to
which he should give knowledge and
not personality, and the puzzled home-
17
i8 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
maker, who understands that her world
expects correct use of means of beauty,
as well as character and originality in
her home, need not feel that to secure
the one she must sacrifice the other.
An inexperienced person might think
it an easy thing to make a beautiful
home, because the world is full of
beautiful art and manufactures, and if
there is money to pay for them it
would seem as easy to furnish a house
with everything beautiful as to go out
in the garden and gather beautiful
flowers ; but we must remember that
the world is also full of ugly things —
things false in art, in truth and in
beauty — things made to sell — made with
only this idea behind them, manu-
factured on the principle that an arti-
ficial fly is made to look something
like a true one in order to catch the
inexpert and the unwary. It is a curious
fact that these false things — manufac-
tures without honesty, without knowl-
edge, without art — have a property of
CHARACTER IN HOUSES 19
demoralizing the spirit of the home,
and that to make it truly beautiful
everything in it must be genuine as
well as appropriate, and must also fit
into some previously considered scheme
of use and beauty.
The esthetic or beautiful aspect of
the home, in short, must be created
through the mind of the family or
owner, and is only maintained by its
or his susceptibility to true beauty and
appreciation of it. It must, in fact,
be a visible mould of invisible matter,
like the leaf-mould one finds in mineral
springs, which show the wonderful
veining, branching, construction and
delicacy of outline in a way which one
could hardly be conscious of in the
actual leaf.
If the grade or dignity of the home
requires professional and scholarly art
direction, the problem is how to use
this professional or artistic advice with-
out delivering over the entire creation
into stranger or alien hands ; without
20 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
abdicating the right and privilege of
personal expression. If the decorator
appreciates this right, his function will
be somewhat akin to that of the
portrait painter ; both are bound to
represent the individual or family in
their performances, each artist using
the truest and best methods of art
with the added gift of grace or charm
of colour which he possesses, the one
giving the physical aspect of his client
and the other the mental characteristics,
circumstances, position and life of the
house-owner and his family. This is
the true mission of the decorator,
although it is not always so under-
stood. What is called business talent
may lead him to invent schemes of
costliness which relate far more to
his own profit than to the wishes or
character of the house-owner.
But it is not always that the assist-
ance of the specialist in decoration
and furnishing is necessary. There are
many homes where both are quite
CHARACTER IN HOUSES zi
within the scope of the ordinary man
or woman of taste. In fact, the great
majority of homes come within these
lines, and it is to such home-builders
that rules, not involving styles, are
especially of use.
The principles of truth and har-
mony, which underlie all beauty,
may be secured in the most inex-
pensive cottage as well as in the
broadest and most imposing residence.
Indeed, the cottage has the advantage
of that most potent ally of beauty —
simplicity — a quality which is apt to
be conspicuously absent from the
schemes of decoration for the palace.
CHAPTER III
BUILDERS' HOUSES
"Mine oivn hired house."
\ LARGE proportion of homes are
-^ ^ made in houses which are not
owned, but leased, and this prevents
each man or family from indicating
personal taste in external aspect. A
rich man and house-owner may approxi-
mate to a true expression of himself
even in the outside of his house if
he strongly desires it, but a man of
moderate means must adapt himself
and his family to the house-builder's
idea of houses — that is to say, to the
idea of the man who has made house-
building a trade, and whose experiences
have created a form into which houses
of moderate cost and fairly universal
application may be cast.
Although it is as natural to a man
to build or acquire a home as to a
22
BUILDERS' HOUSES 23
bird to build a nest, he has not the
same unfettered freedom in construc-
tion. He cannot always adapt his
house either to the physical or mental
size of his family, but must accept
what is possible with much the same
feeling with which a family of robins
might accommodate themselves to a
wren's nest, or an oriole to that of
a barn-swallow. But the fact remains,
that all these accidental homes must,
in some way, be brought into har-
mony with the lives to be lived in
them, and the habits and wants of
the family; and not only this, they
must be made attractive according to
the requirements of cultivated society.
The effort toward this is instructive,
and the pleasure in and enjoyment of
the home depends upon the success
of the effort. The inmates, as a rule,
are quite clear as to what they want
to accomplish, but have seldom had
sufficient experience to enable them
to remedy defects of construction.
14 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
There are expedients by which
many of the malformations and ugH-
nesses of the ordinary " builder's
house" may be greatly ameliorated,
various small surgical operations which
will remedy badly planned rooms,
and dispositions of furniture which will
restore proportion. We can even, by
judicious distribution of planes of
colour, apparently lower or raise a
ceiling, and widen or lengthen a room,
and these expedients, which belong
partly to the experience of the deco-
rator, are based upon laws which can
easily be formulated. Every one can
learn something of them by the study
of faulty rooms and the enjoyment of
satisfactory ones. Indeed, I know no
surer or more agreeable way of getting
wisdom in the art of decoration than
by tracing back sensation to its source,
and finding out why certain things
are utterly satisfactory, and certain
others a positive source of discomfort.
In what are called the " best
" EXPEDIENTS 25
houses " we can make our deductions
quite as well as in the most faulty,
and sometimes get a lesson of avoid-
ance and a warning against law-
breaking which will be quite as
useful as if it were learned in less
than the best.
There is one fault very common
in houses which date from a period
of some forty or fifty years back, a
fault of disproportionate height of
ceilings. In a modern house, if one
room is large enough to require a
lofty ceiling, the architect will manage
to make his second floor upon differ-
ent levels, so as not to inflict the
necessary height of large rooms upon
narrow halls and small rooms, which
should have only a height propor-
tioned to their size. A ten-foot room
with a thirteen - foot ceiling makes
the narrowness of the room doubly
apparent; one feels shut up between
two walls which threaten to come
together and squeeze one between
x6 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
them, while, on the other hand, a
ten-foot room with a nine-foot ceiHng
may have a really comfortable and
cozy effect.
In this case, what is needed is to
get rid of the superfluous four feet,
and this can be done by cheating the
eye into an utter forgetfulness of them.
There must be horizontal divisions of
colour which attract the attention and
make one oblivious of what is above
them.
Every one knows the effect of a
paper with perpendicular stripes in
apparently heightening a ceiling which
is too low, but not every one is
equally aware of the contrary effect
of horizontal lines of varied surface.
But in the use of perpendicular lines
it is well to remember that, if the
room is small, it will appear still
smaller if the wall is divided into
narrow spaces by vertical lines. If it
is large and the ceiling simply low
for the size of the room, a good
EXPEDIENTS 27
deal can be done by long, simple lines
of drapery in curtains and portieres,
or in choosing a paper where the
composition of design is perpendicular
rather than diagonal.
To apparently lower a high ceiling
in a small room, the wall should
be treated horizontally in different
materials. Three feet of the base can
be covered with coarse canvas or
buckram and finished with a small
wood moulding. Six feet of plain wall
above this, painted the same shade as
the canvas, makes the space of which
the eye is most aware. This space
should be finished with a picture
moulding, and the four superfluous feet
of wall above it must be treated as
a part of the ceiling. The cream-
white of the actual ceiling should be
brought down on the side walls for
a space of two feet, and this has the
effect of apparently enlarging the room,
since the added mass of light tint
seems to broaden it. There still re-
88 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
main two feet of space between the
picture moulding and ceiling-line which
may be treated as a ceiling-border in
inconspicuous design upon the same
cream ground, the design to be in
darker, but of the same tint as the
ceiling.
The floor in such a room as this
should either be entirely covered with
plain carpeting, or, if it has rugs at
all, there should be several, as one
single rug, not entirely covering the
floor, would have the effect of con-
fining the apparent size of the room
to the actual size of the rug.
If the doors and windows in such
a room are high and narrow, they
can be made to come into the scheme
by placing the curtain and portiere
rods below the actual height and
covering the upper space with thin
material, either full or plain, of the
same colour as the upper wall. A
brocaded muslin, stained or dyed to
match the wall, answers this purpose
EXPEDIENTS 29
admirably, and is really better in its
place than the usual expedient of
stained glass or open-work wood tran-
som. A good expedient is to have the
design already carried around the wall
painted in the same colour upon a
piece of stretched muslin. This is
simple but effective treatment, and is
an instance of the kind of thought
or knowledge that must be used in
remedying faults of construction.
Colour has much to do with the
apparent size of rooms, a room in
light tints always appearing to be
larger than a deeply coloured one.
Perhaps the most difficult problem
in adaptation is the high, narrow city
house, built and decorated by the
block by the builder, who is also a
speculator in real estate, and whose
activity was chiefly exercised before
the ingenious devices of the modern
architect were known. These houses
exist in quantities in our larger and
older cities, and mere slices of space
30 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
as they are, are the theatres where the
home-life of many refined and beauty-
loving intelligences must be played.
In such houses as these, the task
of fitting them to the cultivated eyes
and somewhat critical tests of modern
society generally falls to the women
who represent the family, and calls
for an amount of ability which would
serve to build any number of credita-
ble houses ; yet this is constantly be-
ing done and well done for not one,
but many families. I know one such,
which is quite a model of a charming
city home and yet was evolved from
one of the worst of its kind and period.
In this case the family had fallen heir
to the house and were therefore jus-
tified in the one radical change which
metamorphosed the entrance - hall,
from a long, narrow passage, with an
apparently interminable stairway oc-
cupying half its width, to a small re-
ception-hall seemingly enlarged by a
HALL IN CITY HOUSE SHOWING EFFECT OF STAIRCASE DIVIDED AND TURNED TO REAR
EXPEDIENTS 31
judicious placing of the mirrors which
had formerly been a part of the " fixt-
ures " of the parlour and dining-room.
The reception-room was accom-
plished by cutting off the lower half
of the staircase, which had extended
itself to within three feet of the front
door, and turning it directly around,
so that it ends at the back instead
of the front of the hall. The two
cut ends are connected by a platform,
thrown across from wall to wall, and
furnished with a low railing of carved
panels, and turned spindles, which
gives a charming balcony effect. The
passage to the back hall and stairs
passes under the balcony and upper
end of the staircase, while the space
under the lower stair-end, screened by
a portiere, adds a coat-closet to the
conveniences of the reception-hall.
This change was not a difficult
thing to accomplish, it was simply an
expedient^ but it has the value of care-
32 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
fully planned construction, and re-
minds one of the clever utterance of
the immortal painter who said, <' I
never lose an accident."
Indeed the ingenious home-maker
often finds that the worse a thing is,
the better it can be made by com-
petent and careful study. To com-
plete and adapt incompetent things
to orderliness and beauty, to har-
monise incongruous things into a
perfect whole requires and exercises
ability of a high order, and the con-
sciousness of its possession is no small
satisfaction. That it is constantly
being done shows how much real
cleverness is necessary to ordinary
life — and reminds one of the patri-
otic New York state senator who de-
clared that it required more ability
to cross Broadway safely at high tide,
than to be a great statesman. And
truly, to make a good house out of
a poor one, or a beautiful interior
EXPEDIENTS 33
from an ugly one, requires far more
thought, and far more original talent,
than to decorate an important new
one. The one follows a travelled
path — the other makes it.
Of course competent knowledge
saves one from many difficulties ; and
faults of construction must be met by
knowledge, yet this is often greatly
aided by natural cleverness, and in the
course of long practice in the deco-
rative arts, I have seen such refreshing
and charming results from thoughtful
untrained intelligence, — I might al-
most say inspiration, — that I have
great respect for its manifestations ;
especially when exercised in un-au-
thoritative fashion.
CHAPTER IV
COLOUR IN HOUSES
' ' Heaven gives us of its colour, for our joy,
Hues which have words and speak to ye of heaven ."
A LTHOUGH the very existence of
a house is a matter of construc-
tion, its general interior effect is al-
most entirely the result of colour
treatment and careful and cultivated
selection of accessories.
Colour in the house includes much
that means furniture, in the way of
carpets, draperies, and all the modern
conveniences of civilization, but as it
precedes and dictates the variety of
all these things from the authoritative
standpoint of wall treatment, it is
well to study its laws and try to reap
the full benefit of its influence.
As far as effect is concerned, the
colour of a room creates its atmos-
phere. It may be cheerful or sad,
34
COLOUR IN HOUSES 35
cosy or repellent according to its
quality or force. Without colour it
is only a bare canvas, which might,
but does not picture our lives.
We understand many of the prop-
erties of colour, and have unconscious-
ly learned some of its laws ; — but
what may be called the science of col-
our has never been formulated. So
far as we understand it, its principles
correspond curiously to those of mel-
odious sound. It is as impossible
to produce the best effect from one
tone or colour, as to make a melody
upon one note of the harmonic scale;
it is skilful variation of tone, the gra-
dation or even judicious opposition
of tint which gives exquisite satisfac-
tion to the eye. In music, sequence
produces this effect upon the ear, and
in colour, juxtaposition and gradation
upon the eye. Notes follow notes
in melody as shade follows shade in
colour. We find no need of even dif-
36 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
ferent names for the qualities peculiar
to the two ; scale — notes — tones —
harmonics — the words express effects
common to colour as well as to music,
but colour has this advantage, that its
harmonies can be Jixed, they do not
die with the passing moment ; once
expressed they remain as a constant
and ever-present delight.
Notes of the sound-octave have
been gathered by the musicians from
widely different substances, and care-
fully linked in order and sequence to
make a harmonious scale which may
be learned ; but the painter, con-
scious of colour-harmonies, has as yet
no written law by which he can pro-
duce them.
The " born colourist *' is one who
without special training, or perhaps in
spite of it, can unerringly combine or
oppose tints into compositions which
charm the eye and satisfy the sense.
Even among painters it is by no means
COLOUR IN HOUSES 37
a common gift. It is almost more
rare to find a picture distinguished for
its harmony and beauty of colour, than
to see a room in which nothing jars
and everything works together for
beauty. It seems strange that this
should be a rarer personal gift than the
musical sense, since nature apparently
is far more lavish of her lessons for
the eye than for the ear ; and it is
curious that colour, which at first sight
seems a more apparent and simple
fact than music, has not yet been
written. Undoubtedly there is a col-
our scale, which has its sharps and
flats, its high notes and low notes, its
chords and discords, and it is not im-
possible that in the future science may
make it a means of regulated and
written harmonies : — that some mas-
ter colourist who has mechanical and
inventive genius as well, may so ar-
range them that they can be played
by rule ; that colour may have its
38 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
Mozart or Beethoven — its classic mel-
odies, its familiar tunes. The mu-
sician, as I have said — has gathered
his tones from every audible thing in
nature — and fitted and assorted and
built them into a science ; and why
should not some painter who is also a
scientist take the many variations of
colour which lie open to his sight,
and range and fit and combine, and
write the formula, so that a child may
read it ?
We already know enough to be
very sure that the art is founded upon
laws, although they are not thorough-
ly understood. Principles of masses,
spaces, and gradations underlie all ac-
cidental harmonies of colour; — just as
in music, the simple, strong, under-
chords of the bass must be the ground
for all the changes and trippings of
the upper melodies.
It is easy, if one studies the subject,
to see how the very likeness of these
COLOUR IN HOUSES 39
two esthetic forces illustrate the laws
of each, — in the principles of relation,
gradation, and scale.
Until very recently the relation of
colour to the beauty of a house in-
terior was quite unrecognised. If it
existed in any degree of perfection
it was an accident, a result of the
softening and beautifying effect of
time, or of harmonious human living.
Where it existed, it was felt as a mys-
terious charm belonging to the home ;
something which pervaded it, but had
no separate being ; an attractive ghost
which attached itself to certain houses,
followed certain people, came by
chance, and was a mystery which no
one understood, but every one ac-
knowledged. Now we know that
this something which distinguished
particular rooms, and made beautiful
particular houses, was a definite result
of laws of colour accidentally ap-
plied.
40 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
To avail ourselves of this influence
upon the moods and experiences of
life is to use a power positive in its
effects as any spiritual or intellectual
influence. It gives the kind of joy
we find in nature, in the golden-green
of light under tree-branches, or the
mingled green and gray of tree and
rock shadows, or the pearl and rose
of sunrise and sunset. We call the
deep content which results from such
surroundings the influence of nature,
and forget to name the less spiritual,
the more human condition of well-
being which comes to us in our homes
from being surrounded with some-
thing which in a degree atones for
lack of nature's beauty.
It is a different well-being, and
lacks the full tide of electric enjoy-
ment which comes from living for
the hour under the sky and in the
breadths of space, but it atones by
substituting something of our own
COLOUR IN HOUSES 41
invention, which surprises us by its
compensations, and confounds us by
its power.
CHAPTER V
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS
T HAVE laid much stress upon the
value of colour in interior deco-
ration, but to complete the beauty of
the home something more than happy
choice of tints is required. It needs
careful and educated selection of fur-
niture and fittings, and money enough
to indulge in the purchase of an
intrinsically good thing instead of a
medium one. It means even some-
thing more than the love of beauty
and cultivation of it, and that is a per-
fect adherence to the law of appro-
priateness.
This is, after all, the most important
quality of every kind of decoration,
the one binding and general condition
of its accomplishment. It requires
such a careful fitting together of all
42
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 43
the means of beauty as to leave no
part of the house, whatever may be
its use, w^ithout the same care for
appropriate completeness which goes
to the more apparent features. The
cellar, the kitchen, the closets, the
servants' bedrooms must all share in
the thought which makes the gen-
uinely beautiful home and the gen-
uinely perfect life. It must be pos-
sible to go from the top to the bottom
of the house, finding everywhere
agreeable, suitable, and thoughtful
furnishings. The beautiful house
must consider the family as a whole,
and not make a museum of rare and
costly things in the drawing-room, the
library, the dining-room and family
bedrooms, leaving that important part
of the whole machinery, the service,
untouched by the spirit of beauty.
The same care in choice of colour
will be as well bestowed on the ser-
vants' floor as on those devoted to the
44 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
family, and curtains, carpets and fur-
niture may possess as much beauty and
yet be perfectly appropriate to ser-
vants' use.
On this upper floor, it goes almost
without saying, that the walls must be
painted in oil-colour instead of cov-
ered with paper. That the floors
should be uncarpeted except for bed-
side rugs which are easily removable.
That bedsteads should be of iron, the
mattress with changeable covers, the
furniture of painted and enameled in-
stead of oolished wood, and in short
the conditions of healthful cleanliness
as carefully provided as if the rooms
were in a hospital instead of a pri-
vate house — but the added comfort
of carefully chosen wall colour, and
bright, harmonizing, washable chintz
in curtains and bed-covers.
These things have an influence up-
on the spirit of the home ; they are
a part of its spiritual beauty, giving a
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 45
satisfied and approving consciousness
to the home-makers, and a sense of
happiness in the service of the family.
In the average, or small house,
there is room for much improvement
in the treatment and furnishing of
servants' bedrooms ; and this is not
always from indiilerence, but because
they are out of daily sight, and also
from a belief that it would add seri-
ously to the burden of housekeeping
to see that they are kept up to the
standard of family sleeping-rooms.
In point of fact, howe\rer, good
surroundings are potent civilizers, and
a house-servant whose room is well
and carefully furnished feels an added
value in herself, which makes her treat
herself respectfully in the care of her
room.
If it pleases her, the training she
receives in the care of family rooms
will be reflected in her own, and
painstaking arrangements made for
46 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
her pleasure will perhaps be recog-
nised as an obligation.
Of course the fact must be recog-
nised, that the occupant is not always
a permanent one ; that it may at
times be a fresh importation directly
from a city tenement ; therefore,
everything in the room should be
able to sustain very radical treatment
in the way of scrubbing and cleaning.
Wall papers, unwashable rugs and cur-
tains are out of the question ; yet
even with these limitations it is possi-
ble to make a charming and reason-
ably inexpensive room, which would
be attractive to cultivated as well as
uncultivated taste. It is in truth
mostly a matter of colour ; of col-
oured walls, and harmonising furni-
ture and draperies, which are in them-
selves well adapted to their place.
As I have said elsewhere, the walls
in a servant's bedroom — and prefer-
ably in any sleeping-room — should
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 47
for sanitary reasons be painted in oil
colours, but the possibilities of deco-
rative treatment in this medium are
by no means limited. All of the
lighter shades of green, blue, yellow,
and rose are as permanent, and as
easily cleaned, as the dull grays and
drabs and mud-colours which are of-
ten used upon bedroom walls — es-
pecially those upper ones which are
above the zone of ornament, appar-
ently under the impression that there
is virtue in their very ugliness.
" A good clean gray " some worthy
housewife will instruct the painter to
use, and the result will be a dead
mixture of various lively and pleas-
ant tints, any one of which might be
charming if used separately, or mod-
ified with white. A small room with
walls of a very light spring green, or
a pale turquoise blue, or white with
the dash of vermilion and touch of
yellow ochre which produces salmon-
48 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
pink, is quite as durably and service-
ably coloured as if it were chocolate-
brown, or heavy lead-colour ; indeed
its effect upon the mind is like a spring
day full of sunshine instead of one
dark with clouds or lowering storms.
V The rule given elsewhere for colour
in light or dark exposure will hold
good for service bedrooms as well as
for the important rooms of the house.
That is; if a bedroom for servants' use
is on the north or shadowed side of
the house, let the colour be salmon
or rose pink, cream white, or spring
green ; but if it is on the sunny side,
the tint should be turquoise, or pale
blue, or a grayish-green, like the green
of a field of rye. With such walls, a
white iron bedstead, enameled furni-
ture, curtains of white, or a flowered
chintz which repeats or contrasts with
the colour of the walls, bedside and
bureau rugs of the tufted cotton which
is washable, or of the new rag-rugs of
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 49
which the colours are " water fast,"
the room is absolutely good, and can
be used as an influence upon a lower
or higher intelligence.
As a matter of utility the toilet
service should be always of white ; so
that there will be no chance for the
slovenly mismatching which results
from breakage of any one of the dif-
ferent pieces, when of diiferent col-
ours. A handleless or mis-matched
pitcher will change the entire charac-
ter of a room and should never be
tolerated.
If the size of the room will war-
rant it, a rocking-chair or easy-chair
should always be part of its equip-
ment, and the mattress and bed-springs
should be of a quality to give ease to
tired bones, for these things have to
do with the spirit of the house.
It may be said that the colour-
ing and furnishing of the servants*
bedroom is hardly a part of house
50 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
decoration, but in truth house deco-
ration at its best is a means of happi-
ness, and no householder can achieve
permanent happiness without making
the service of the family sharers in it.
What I have said with regard to
painted walls in plain tints applies to
bedrooms of every grade, but where
something more than merely agree-
able colour effect is desired a sten-
cilled decdration from the simplest
to the most elaborate can be added.
There are many ways of using this
method, some of which partake very
largely of artistic effect ; indeed a
thoroughly good stencil pattern may
reproduce the best instances of design,
and in the hands of a skilful work-
man who knows how to graduate and
vary contrasting or harmonising tints
it becomes a very artistic method and
deserves a place of high honour in the
art of decoration.
Its simplest form is that of a sten-
mn
■^j^w '/ f ',,/A
I, AND 2, STENCILED BORDERS FOR BATH-ROOM DECORATION ; 5, 4 AND 5, STENCILED
BORDERS FOR HALLS (BY DUNHAM WHEELER)
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 51
cilled border in flat tints used either
in place of a cornice or as the bor-
der of a wall-paper is used. This, of
course, is a purely mechanical per-
formance, and one with which every
house-painter is familiar. After this
we come to borders of repeating de-
sign used as friezes. This can be done
with the most delicate and delightful
efi'ect, although the finished wall will
still be capable of withstanding
the most energetic annual scrubbing.
Frieze borders of this kind starting
with strongly contrasting colour at
the top and carried downward through
gradually fading tints until they are
lost in the general colour of the wall
have an openwork grille effect which
is very light and graceful. There are
infinite possibilities in the use of sten-
cil design without counting the intro-
duction of gold and silver, and bronzes
of various iridescent hues which are
more suitable for rooms of general
52 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
use than for bedrooms. Indeed in
sleeping-rooms the use of metallic
colour is objectionable because it will
not stand washing and cleaning with-
out defacement. The ideal bedroom
is one that if the furniture were re-
moved a stream of water from a hose
might be played upon its walls and
ceiling without injury. I always re-
member with pleasure a pink and
silver room belonging to a young girl,
where the salmon-pink walls were
deepened in colour at the top into
almost a tint of vermilion which had
in it a trace of green. It was, in fact,
an addition of spring green dropped
into the vermilion and carelessly
stirred, so that it should be mixed but
not incorporated. Over this shaded
and mixed colour for the space of
three feet was stencilled a fountain-
like pattern in cream-white, the arches
of the pattern filled in with almost a
lace-work of design. The whole up-
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 53
per part had an effect like carved ala-
baster and was indescribably light and
graceful.
The bed and curtain-rods of silver-
lacquer, and the abundant silver of the
dressing-table gave a frosty contrast
which was necessary in a room of so
warm a general tone. This is an ex-
ample of very delicate and truly ar-
tistic treatment of stencil-work, and
one can easily see how it can be used
either in simple or elaborate fashion
with great effect.
Irregularly placed floating forms
of Persian or Arabic design are often
admirably stencilled in colour upon
a painted wall ; but in this case the
colours should be varied and not too
strong. A group of forms floating
away from a window-frame or cor-
nice can be done in two shades of the
wall colour, one of which is positive-
ly darker and one lighter than the
ground. If to these two shades some
54 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
delicately contrasting colour is occa-
sionally added the effect is not only
pleasing, but belongs to a thoroughly
good style.
One seldom tires of a good sten-
cilled wall ; probably because it is in-
trinsic, and not applied in the sense
of paper or textiles. It carries an
air of permanency which discourages
change or experiment, but it requires
considerable experience in decoration
to execute it worthily; and not only
this, there should be a strong feeling
for colour and taste and education in
the selection of design, for though the
form of the stencilled pattern may be
graceful, and gracefully combined, it
must always — to be permanently sat-
isfactory— have a geometrical basis.
It is somewhat difficult to account
for the fact that what we call natural
forms, of plants and flowers, which
are certainly beautiful and graceful in
themselves, and grow into shapes which
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 55
delight us with their freedom and
beauty, do not give the best satisfac-
tion as motives for interior decoration.
Construction in the architectural sense
— the strength and squareness of
walls, ceilings, and floors — seem to re-
ject the yielding character of design
founded upon natural forms, and de-
mand something which answers more
sympathetically to their own qualities.
Perhaps it is for this reason that we
find the grouping and arrangement
of horizontal and perpendicular lines
and blocks in the old Greek borders
so everlastingly satisfactory.
It is the principle or requirement,
of geometric base in interior design
which, coupled with our natural de-
light in yielding or growing forms,
has maintained through all the long
history of decoration what is called
conventionalised flower design. We
find this in every form or method of
decorative art, from embroidery to
56 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
sculpture, from the Lotus of Egypt
to the Rose of England, and although
it results in a sort of crucifixion of the
natural beauty of the flower, in the
hands of great designers it has become
an authoritative style of art.
Of course, there are flower-forms
which are naturally geometric, which
have conventionalised themselves.
Many of the intricate Moorish frets
and Indian carvings are literal transla-
tions of flower-forms geometrically re-
peated, and here they lend themselves
so perfectly to the decoration of even
exterior walls that the fretted arches
of some Eastern buildings seem al-
most to have grown of themselves,
with all their elaboration, into the
world of nature and art.
The separate flowers of the grace-
fully tossing lilac plumes, and the
five- and six-leaved flowers of the pink,
have become in this way a very part
of the everlasting walls, as the acan-
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 57
thus leaf has become the marble blos-
som ot thousands of indestructible
columns.
These are the classics of design
and hold the same relation to orna-
ment printed on paper and silk that
we find in the music of the Psalms,
as compared with the tinkle of the
ballad. ^
There are other methods of deco-
ration in oils which will meet the
wants of the many who like to exer-
cise their own artistic feelings and abil-
ity in their houses or rooms. The
painting of flower-friezes upon can-
vas which can afterward be mounted
upon the wall is a never-ending source
of pleasure ; and many of these friezes
have a charm and intimacy which no
merely professional painter can rival.
These are especially suitable for bed-
rooms, since there they may be as per-
sonal as the inmate pleases without
undue unveiling of thoughts, fancies,
98 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
or personal experiences to the public.
A favourite flower or a favourite motto
or selection may be the motive of a
charming decoration, if the artist has
sufficient art-knowledge to subordi-
nate it to its architectural juxtaposi-
tion. A narrow border of fixed re-
peating forms like a rug-border will
often fulfil the necessity for architect-
ural lines, and confine the flower-
border into limits which justify its
freedom of composition.
If one wishes to mount a favourite
motto or quotation on the walls,
where it may give constant suggestion
or pleasure — or even be a help to
thoughtful and conscientious living —
there can be no better fashion than
the style of the old illuminated mis-
sals. Dining - rooms and chimney-
pieces are often very appropriately
decorated in this way ; the words
running on scrolls which are half un-
rolled and half hidden, and showing
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 59
a conventionalised background of
fruit and flowers.
In all these things the knowingness^
which is the result of study, tells very
strongly — and it is quite worth while
to give a good deal of study to the
subject of this kind of decoration be-
fore expending the requisite amount
of work upon a painted frieze.
Canvas friezes have the excellent
merit of being not only durable and
cleanable, but they belong to the
category of pictures ; to what Ruskin
calls '' portable art," and one need
not grudge the devotion of consider-
able time, study, and effort to their
doing, since they are really detachable
property, and can be removed from
one house or room and carried to
another at the owner'o or artist's will.
There is room for the exercise of
much artistic ability in this direction,
as the fact of being able to paint the
decoration in parts and afterward
6o PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
place it, makes it possible for an
amateur to do much tor the enhance-
ment of her own house.
More than any other room in the
house, the bedroom will show per-
sonal character. Even when it is not
planned for particular occupation, the
characteristics of the inmate will write
themselves unmistakably in the room.
If the college boy is put in the white
and gold bedroom for even a vacation
period, there will shortly come into
its atmosphere an element of sporting
and out-of-door life. Banners and
balls and bats, and emblems of the
" wild thyme " order will colour its
whiteness ; and life of the growing
kind make itself felt in the midst
of sanctity. In the same way, girls
would change the bare asceticism of a
monk's cell into a bower of lilies and
roses ; a fit place for youth and un-
praying innocence.
The bedrooms of a house are a
THE LAW OF APPROPRIATENESS 6i
pretty sure test of the liberality of
mind and understanding of character
of the mother or house-ruler. As each
room is in a certain sense the home
of the individual occupant, almost the
shell of his or her mind, there will be
something narrow and despotic in the
house-rules if this is not allowed. Yet,
even individuality of taste and expres-
sion must scrupulously follow sanitary
laws in the furnishing of the bedroom.
'' StuiFy things " of any sort should be
avoided. The study should be to
make it beautiful without such things,
and a liberal use of washable textiles
in curtains, portieres, bed and table
covers, will give quite as much sense
of luxury as heavily papered walls and
costly upholstery. In fact, one may
run through all the variations from
the daintiest and most befrilled and
elegant of guests' bedrooms, to the
'' boys' room," which includes all or
any of the various implements of sport
6i PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
or the hobbies of the boy collector,
and yet keep inviolate the principles
of harmony, colour, and appropriate-
ness to use, and so accomplish beauty.
The absolute ruling of light, air,'and
cleanliness are quite compatible with
individual expression.
It is this characteristic aspect of the
different rooms which makes up the
beauty of the house as a whole. If
the purpose of each is left to develop
itself through good conditions, the
whole will make that most delightful
of earthly things, a beautiful home.
CHAPTER VI
KITCHENS
'TpHE kitchen is an important part
of the perfect house and should
be a recognised sharer in its quality
of beauty; not alone the beauty which
consists of a successful adaptation of
means to ends, but the kind which is
independently and positively attrac-
tive to the eye.
In costly houses it is not hard to
attain this quality or the rarer one of
a union of beauty, with perfect adap-
tation to use ; but where it must be
reached by comparatively inexpensive
methods, the difficulty is greater.
Tiled walls, impervious to moist-
ure, and repellent of fumes, are ideal
boundaries of a kitchen, and may be
beautiful in colour, as well as virtu-
ous in conduct. They may even be
63
64 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
laid with gradations of alluring min-
eral tints, but, of course, this is out of
the question in cheap buildings ; and
in demonstrating the possibility of
beauty and intrinsic merit in small and
comparatively inexpensive houses, tiles
and marbles must be ruled out of the
scheme of kitchen perfection. Plas-
ter, painted in agreeable tints of oil
colour is commendable, but one can
do better by covering the walls with
the highly enamelled oil-cloth com-
monly used for kitchen tables and
shelves. This material is quite mar-
vellous in its combination of use and
effect. Its possibilities were discovered
by a young housewife whose small
kitchen formed part of a city apart-
ment, and whose practical sense was
joined to a discursive imagination.
After this achievement — which she
herself did not recognise as a stroke of
genius — she added a narrow shelf run-
ning entirely around the room, which
KITCHENS 65
carried a decorative row of blue
willow-pattern plates. A dresser,
hung with a graduated assortment of
blue enamelled sauce-pans, and other
kitchen implements of the same en-
ticing ware, a floor covered with the
heaviest of oil-cloth, laid in small dia-
mond-shapes of blue, between blocks
of white, like a mosaic pavement, were
the features of a kitchen which was,
and is, after several years of strenuous
wear, a joy to behold. It was from the
first, not only a delight to the clever
young housewife and her friends, but
it performed the miracle of changing
the average servant into a careful and
excellent one, zealous for the clean-
liness and perfection of her small
domain, and performing her kitchen
functions with unexampled neatness.
The mistress — who had standards
of perfection in all things, whether
great or small, and was moreover of
Southern blood — confessed that her
66 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
ideal of service in her glittering kitch-
en was not a clever red-haired Hiber-
nian, but a slim mulatto, wearing a
snow-white turban ; and this long-
ing seemed so reasonable, and so im-
pressed my fancy, that whenever I
think of the shining blue-and-silver
kitchen, I seem to see within it the
graceful sway of figure and coffee-
coloured face which belongs to the
half-breed African race, certain rare
specimens of which are the most beau-
tiful of domestic adjuncts.
I have used this expedient of oil-
cloth-covered walls — for which I am
anxious to give the inventor due credit
— in many kitchens, and certain bath-
rooms, and always with success.
It must be applied as if it were
wall-paper, except that, as it is a heavy
material, the paste must be thicker.
It is also well to have in it a small
proportion of carbolic acid, both as a
disinfectant and a deterrent to paste-
KITCHENS 67
loving mice, or any other household
pest. The cloth must be carefully
fitted into corners, and whatever shelv-
ing or wood fittings are used in the
room, must be placed against it, after
it is applied, instead of having the
cloth cut and fitted around them.
When well mounted, it makes a
solid, porcelain-like wall, to which
dust and dirt will not easily adhere,
and which can be as easily and effect-
ually cleaned as if it were really por-
celain or marble.
Such wall treatment will go far
toward making a beautiful kitchen.
Add to this a well-arranged dresser
for blue or white kitchen china, with
a closed cabinet for the heavy iron
utensils which can hardly be included
in any scheme of kitchen beauty ;
curtained cupboards and short win-
dow-hangings of blue, or " Turkey
red" — which are invaluable for colour,
and always washable ; a painted floor
68 PRIMCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
— which is far better than oil-cloth,
and one has the elenrents of a satis-
factory scheme of beauty.
A French kitchen, with its white-
washed walls, its shining range and
rows upon rows of gleaming copper-
ware, is an attractive subject for a
painter; and there is no reason why
an American kitchen, in a house dis-
tinguished for beauty in all its family
and semi-public rooms, should not
also be beautiful in the rooms devot-
ed to service. We can if we will
make much even in a decorative way
of our enamelled and aluminum kitch-
en-ware; we may hang it in graduated
rows over the chimney-space — as the
French cook parades her coppers —
and arrange these necessary things
with an eye to effect, while we secure
perfect convenience of use. They
are all pleasant of aspect if care and
thought are devoted to their arrange-
ment, and it is really of quite as
KITCHENS 69
much value to the family to have a
charming and perfectly appointed
kitchen, as to possess a beautiful and
comfortable parlour or sitting-room,
Every detail should be considered
from the double point of viev^ of use
and effect. If the curtains answer
the tw^o purposes of shading sunlight,
or securing privacy at night, and of
giving pleasing colour and contrast to
the general tone of the interior, they
perform a double function, each of
of w^hich is valuable.
If the chairs are chosen for strength
and use, and are painted or stained to
match the colour of the floor, they add
to the satisfaction of the eye, as well
as minister to the house service. A
pursuance of this thought adds to the
harmony of the house both in aspect
and actual beauty of living. Of
course in selecting such furnishings of
the kitchen as chairs, one must bear
in mind that even their legitimate
70 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
use may include standing, as well as
sitting upon them; that they may be
made temporary resting-places for
scrubbing pails, brushes, and other
cleaning necessities, and therefore they
must be made of painted wood ; but
this should not discourage the pro-
vision of a cane-seated rocking-chair
for each servant, as a comfort for
weary bones when the day's work is
over.
In establishments which include a
servants' dining- or sitting-room, these
moderate luxuries are a thing of
course, but in houses where at most
but two maids are employed they are
not always considered, although they
certainly should be.
If a corner can be appropriated to
evening leisure — where there is room
for a small, brightly covered table,
a lamp, a couple of rocking-chairs,
work-baskets and a book or maga-
zine, it answers in a small way to the
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family evening-room, where all gath-
er for rest and comfort.
There is no reason why the wall
space above it should not have its cabi-
net for photographs and the usually
cherished prayer-book which maids
love both to possess and display. Such
possessions answer exactly to the bric-
a-brac of the drawing-room; minister-
ing to the same human instinct in its
primitive form, and to the inherent
enjoyment of the beautiful which is
the line of demarcation between the
tribes of animals and those of men.
If one can use this distinctly hu-
man trait as a lever to raise crude
humanity into the higher region of
the virtues, it is certainly worth while
to consider pots and pans from the
point of view of their decorative
ability.
CHAPTER VII
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT
TN choosing colour for walls and
ceilings, it is most necessary to
consider the special laws which govern
its application to house interiors.
The tint of any particular room
should be chosen not only with ref-
erence to personal liking, but first of
all, to the quantity and quality of
light which pervades it. A north
room will require warm and bright
treatment, warm reds and golden
browns, or pure gold colours. Gold-
colour used in sash curtains will give
an effect of perfect sunshine in a dark
and shadowy room, but the same
treatment in a room fronting the
south would produce an almost in-
supportable brightness.
I will illustrate the modifications
72
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT -]>>,
made necessary in tint by different
exposure to light, by supposing that
some one member of the family pre-
fers yellow to all other colours, one
who has enough of the chameleon
in her nature to feel an instinct to
bask in sunshine. I will also suppose
that the room most conveniently de-
voted to the occupation of this mem-
ber has a southern exposure. If yel-
low must be used in her room, the
quality of it should be very different
from that which could be properly
and profitably used in a room with a
northern exposure, and it should dif-
fer not only in intensity, but actually
in tint. If it is necessary, on account
of personal preference, to use yellow
in a sunny room, it should be lemon,
instead of ochre or gold-coloured
yellow, because the latter would re-
peat sunlight. There are certain
shades of yellow, where white has
been largely used in the mixture,
74 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
which are capable of greenish reflec-
tions. This is where the white is of
so pure a quality as to suggest blue,
and consequently under the influence
of yellow to suggest green. We often
find yellow dyes in silks the shadows
of which are positive fawn colour or
even green, instead of orange as we
might expect ; still, even with modi-
fications, yellow should properly be
reserved for sunless rooms, where it
acts the part almost of the blessed sun
itself in giving cheerfulness and light.
Going from a sun-lighted atmosphere,
or out of actual sunlight into a yel-
low room, one would miss the sense
of shelter which is so grateful to
eyes and senses a little dazzled by
the brilliance of out-of-door lights ;
whereas a room darkened or shaded
by a piazza, or somewhat chilled by
a northern exposure and want of sun,
would be warmed and comforted by
tints of gold-coloured yellow.
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT 75
Interiors with a southern exposure
should be treated with cool, light
colours, blues in various shades, water-
greens, and silvery tones which will
contrast with the positive yellow of
sunlight.
It is by no means a merely arbi-
trary rule. Colours are actually warm
or cold in temperature, as well as in
effect upon the eye or the imagina-
tion, in fact the words cover a long-
tested fact. I remember being told
by a painter of his placing a red sun-
set landscape upon the flat roof of a
studio building to dry, and on going
to it a few hours afterward he found
the surface of it so warm to the touch
— so sensibly warmer than the gray
and blue and green pictures around
it — that he brought a thermometer to
test it, and found it had acquired and
retained heat. It was actually warm-
er by degrees than the gray and blue
pictures in the same sun exposure.
76 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
We instinctively wear warm colours
in winter and dispense with them in
summer, and this simple fact may ex-
plain the art which allots what we
call warm colour to rooms without
sun. When we say warm colours, we
mean yellows, reds with all their
gradations, gold or sun browns, and
dark browns and black. When we
say cool colours — whites, blues, grays,
and cold greens — for greens may be
warm or cold, according to their
composition or intensity. A water-
green is a cold colour, so is a pure
emerald green, so also a blue-green ;
while an olive, or a gold-green comes
into the category of warm colours.
This is because it is a composite col-
our made of a union of warm and
cold colours; the brown and yellow
in its composition being in excess of
the blue; as pink also, which is a
mixture of red and white; and lav-
ender, which is a mixture of red, white,
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT 77
and blue, stand as intermediate be-
tween two extremes.
Having duly considered the effect
of light upon colour, we may fear-
lessly choose tints for every room ac-
cording to personal preferences or
tastes. If we like one warm colour
better than another, there is no rea-
son why that one should not predom-
inate in every room in the house
which has a shadow exposure. If we
like a cold colour it should be used
in many of the sunny rooms.
I believe we do not give enough
importance to this matter of personal
liking in tints. We select our friends
from sympathy. As a rule, we do
not philosophise much about it, al-
though we may recognise certain
principles in our liking ; it is those to
whom our hearts naturally open that
we invite in and have joy in their
companionship, and we might surely
follow our likings in the matter of
78 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
colour, as well as in friendship, and
thereby add much to our happiness.
Curiously enough we often speak of
the colour of a mind — and I once
knew a child who persisted in calling
people by the names of colours ; not
the colour of their clothes, but some
mind-tint which he felt. << The blue
lady" was his especial favourite, and I
have no doubt the presence or ab-
sence of that particular colour made
a difference in his content all the
days of his life.
The colour one likes is better for
tranquillity and enjoyment — more
conducive to health ; and exercises
an actual living influence upon
moods. For this reason, if no other,
the colour of a room should never be
arbitrarily prescribed or settled for the
one who is to be its occupant. It should
be as much a matter of nature as the
lining of a shell is to the mussel, or as
the colour of the wings of a butterfly.
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT 79
In fact the mind which we cannot see
may have a colour of its own, and it
is natural that it should choose to
dwell within its own influence.
We do not know why we like cer-
tain colours, but we do, and let that
suffice, and let us live with them, as
gratefully as we should for more ex-
plainable ministry.
If colours which we like have a
soothing effect upon us, those which
we do not like are, on the other
hand, an unwelcome influence. If a
woman says in her heart, I hate green,
or red, or I dislike any one colour,
and then is obliged to live in its
neighbourhood, she will find herself
dwelling with an enemy. We all
know that there are colours of which
a little is enjoyable when a mass
would be unendurable. Predominant
scarlet would be like close compan-
ionship with a brass band, but a note
of scarlet is one of the most valuable
8o PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
of sensations. The gray compounded
of black and white would be a wet
blanket to all bubble of wit or spring
of fancy, but the shadows of rose
colour are gray, pink-tinted it is
true ; indeed the shadow of pink
used to be known by the name of
ashes of roses, I remember seeing once
in Paris — that home of bad general
decoration — a room in royal purples;
purple velvet on walls, furniture, and
hangings. One golden Rembrandt
in the middle of a long wall, and a
great expanse of ochre-coloured par-
quetted floor were all that saved it
from the suggestion of a royal tomb.
As it was, I left the apartment with a
feeling of treading softly as when we
pass through a door hung with crape.
Vagaries of this kind are remediable
when they occur in cravats, or bon-
nets, or gloves — but a room in the
wrong colour! Saints and the angels
preserve us!
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COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT 8i
The number, size, and placing of
the windows will greatly affect the
intensity of colour to be used. It
must always be remembered that any
interior is dark as compared with out-
of-doors, and that in the lightest
room there will be dark corners or
spaces where the colour chosen as
chief tint will seem much darker than
it really is. A paper or textile chos-
en in a good light will look several
shades darker when placed in large
unbroken masses or spaces upon the
wall, and a fully furnished room will
generally be much darker when com-
pleted than might be expected in
planning it. For this reason, in
choosing a favourite tint, it is better
on many accounts to choose it in as
light a shade as one finds agreeable.
It can be repeated in stronger tones
in furniture or in small and unim-
portant furnishings of the room, but
the wall tone should never be deeper
82 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
than medium in strength, at the risk
of having all the light absorbed by
the colour, and of losing a sense of
atmosphere in the room. There is
another reason for this, which is that
many colours are agreeable, even to
their lovers, only in light tones. The
moment they get belov^ medium they
become insistent, and make them-
selves of too much importance. In
truth colour has qualities which are
almost personal, and is well worth
studying in all its peculiarities, be-
cause of its power to affect our hap-
piness.
The principles of proper use of
colour in house interiors are not diffi-
cult to master. It is unthinking, un-
reflective action which makes so many
unrestful interiors of homes. The
creator of a home should consider, in
the first place, that it is a matter as
important as climate, and as difficult
to get away from, and that the first
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT 83
shades of colour used in a room upon
walls or ceiling, must govern every-
thing else that enters in the v^^ay of
furnishing; that the colour of walls
prescribes that which must be used in
floors, curtains, and furniture. Not
that these must necessarily be of the
same tint as walls, but that wall-tints
must govern the choice.
All this makes it necessary to take
first steps carefully, to select for each
room the colour which will best suit
the taste, feeling, or bias of the occu-
pant, always considering the exposure
of the room and the use of it.
After the relation of colour to
light is established — with personal
preferences duly taken into account
— the next law is that of gradation.
The strongest, and generally the pur-
est, tones of colour belong naturally
at the base, and the floor of a room
means the base upon which the
scheme of decoration is to be built.
84 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
The carpet, or floor covering, should
carry the strongest tones. If a single
tint is to be used, the walls must take
the next gradation, and the ceiling
the last. These gradations must be
far enough removed from each other
in depth of tone to be quite apparent,
but not to lose their relation. The
connecting grades may appear in fur-
niture covering and draperies, thus giv-
ing different values in the same tone,
the relation between them being per-
fectly apparent. These three masses
of related colour are the groundwork
upon which one can play infinite va-
riations, and is really the same law
upon which a picture is composed.
There are foreground, middle-dis-
tance, and sky — and in a properly
coloured room, the floors, walls, and
ceiling bear the same relation to each
other as the grades of colour in a
picture, or in a landscape.
Fortunately we keep to this law
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT 85
almost by instinct, and yet I have
seen a white-carpeted floor in a room
with a painted ceiling of considerable
depth of colour. Imagine the effect
where this rule of gradation or as-
cending scale is reversed. A tinted
floor of cream colour, or even white,
and a ceiling as deep in colour as a
landscape. One feels as if they them-
selves were reversed, and standing
upon their heads. Certainly if we
ignore this law we lose our sense of
base or foundation, and although
we may not know exactly why, we
shall miss the restfulness of a prop-
erly constructed scheme of decora-
tion.
The rule of gradation includes
also that of massing of colour. In all
simple treatment of interiors, what-
ever colour is chosen should be al-
lowed space enough to establish its
influence, broadly and freely, and
here again we get a lesson from nat-
86 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
ure in the massing of colour. It
should not be broken into patches
and neutralised by divisions, but used
in large enough spaces to dominate,
or bring into itself or its own influ-
ence all that is placed in the room.
If this ruJe is disregarded every piece
of furniture unrelated to the whole
becomes a spot, it has no real con-
nection with the room, and the room
itself, instead of a harmonious and
delightful influence, akin to that of
a sun-flushed dawn or a sunset sky,
is like a picture where there is no
composition, or a book where inci-
dent is jumbled together without re-
lation to the story. In short, plac-
ing of colour in large uniform masses
used in gradation is the groundwork
of all artistic effect in interiors. As I
have said, it is the same rule that gov-
erns pictures, the general tone may be
green or blue, or a division of each,
but to be a perfect and harmonious
COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO LIGHT 87
view, every detail must relate to one
or both of these tints.
In formulating thus far the rules
for use of colour in rooms, we have
touched upon three principles which
are. equally binding in interiors,
whether of a cottage or a palace ; the
first is that of colour in relation to
light, the second of colour in gra-
dation, and the third of colour in
masses.
A house in which walls and ceil-
ings are simply well coloured or cov-
ered, has advanced very far toward
the home which is the rightful en-
dowment of every human being.
The variations of treatment, which
pertain to more costly houses, the
application of design in borders and
frieze spaces, walls, wainscots, and
ceilings, are details which will proba-
bly call for artistic advice and pro-
fessional knowledge, since in these
things it is easy to err in misapplied
88 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
decoration. The advance from per-
fect simplicity to selected and beauti-
ful ornament marks not only the de-
gree of cost but of knowledge which
it is in the power of the house-owner
to command. The elaboration which
is the privilege of more liberal means
and the use of artistic experience in
decoration on a larger scale.
The smaller house shares in the
advantage of beautiful colour, correct
principles, and appropriate treatment
equally with the more costly. The
variations do not falsify principles.
CHAPTER VIII
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS
npHE true principle of wall treat-
ment is to make the boundary
stand for colour and beauty, and not
alone for division of space.
As a rule, the colour treatment of
a house interior must begin with the
walls, and it is fortunate if these are
blank and plain as in most new houses
with uncoloured ceilings, flat or brok-
en with mouldings to suit the style
of the house.
The range of possible treatment is
very wide, from simple tones of wall
colour against which quiet cottage
or domestic city life goes on, to the
elaboration of walls of houses of a
different grade, where stately pag-
eants are a part of the drama of daily
life. But having shown that certain
89
90 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
rules are applicable to both, and in-
deed necessary to success in both, we
may choose within these rules any
tint or colour which is personally
pleasing.
Rooms with an east or west light
may carry successfully tones of any
shade, without violating fundamental
laws.
The first impression of a room
depends upon the walls. In fact,
rooms are good or bad, agreeable or
ugly in exact accordance with the
wall-quality and treatment. No rich-
ness of floor-covering, draperies, or
furniture can minimise their influence.
Perhaps it is for this reason that
the world is full of papers and other
devices for making walls agreeable ;
and we cannot wonder at this, when
we reflect that something of the kind
is necessary to the aspect of the room,
and that each room effects for the
individual exactly what the outer
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 91
walls of the house effect for the fam-
ily, they give space for personal pri-
vacy and for that reserve of the indi-
vidual w^hich is the earliest effect of
luxury and comfort.
It is certain that if walls are not
made agreeable there is in them
something of restraint to the eye and
the sense which is altogether disagree-
able. Apparent confinement within
given limits, is, on the whole, repug-
nant to either the natural or civilised
man, and for this reason we are con-
stantly tempted to disguise the limit
and to cover the wall in such a way
as shall interest and make us forget
our bounds. In this case, the idea of
decoration is, to make the walls a
barrier of colour only, instead of hard,
unyielding masonry; to take away
the sense of being shut in a box, and
give instead freedom to thought and
pleasure to the sense.
It is the effect of shut-in-ness which
92 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
the square and rigid walls of a room
give that makes drapery so effective
and welcome, and which also gives
value to the practice of covering walls
with silks or other textiles. The
softened surface takes away the sense
of restraint. We hang our walls with
pictures, or cover them with textiles,
or with paper which carries design, or
even colour them with pigments —
something — anything, which will dis-
guise a restraining bound, or make it
masquerade as a luxury.
This effort or instinct has set in
motion the machinery of the world.
It has created tapestries and brocades
for castle and palace, and invented
cheap substitutes for these costly prod-
ucts, so that the smallest and poor-
est house as well as the richest can
cover its walls with something pleas-
ant to the eye and suggestive to the
mind.
It is one of the privileges and
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WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 93
opportunities of art to invent these
disguises ; and to do it so thoroughly
and successfully as to content us with
facts which would otherwise be disa-
greeable. And we do, by these vari-
ous devices, make our walls so hospi-
table to our thoughts that we take
positive and continual pleasure in
them.
We do this chiefly, perhaps, by
ministering to our instinctive love of
colour; which to many temperaments
is like food to the hungry, and satis-
fies as insistent a demand of the mind
as food to the body.
At this late period of the world
we are the inheritors of many meth-
ods of wall disguise, from the primi-
tive weavings or blanket coverings
with which nomadic peoples lined the
walls of their tents, or the arras which
in later days covered the roughness
and rudeness of the stone walls of
kings and barons, to the pictured
94 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
tapestries of later centuries. This lat-
ter achievement of art manufacture
has outlived and far. outweighed the
others in value, because it more per-
fectly performs the object of its crea-
tion.
Tapestries, for the most part, ofFer
us a semblance of nature, and cheat
us with a sense of unlimited horizon.
The older tapestries give us, with
this, suggestions of human life and
action in out-of-door scenes suffi-
ciently unrealistic to offer a vague
dream of existence in fields and for-
ests. This effectually diverts our
minds from the confinements of space,
and allows us the freedom of nature.
Probably the true secret of the
never-failing appreciation of tapestries
— from the very beginning of their
history until this day — is this fact of
their suggestiveness; since we find
that damasks of silk or velvet or other
costly weavings, although far surpass-
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 95
ing tapestries in texture and concen-
tration of colour, yet lacking their
suggestiveness to the mind, can never
rival them in the estimation of the
world. Unhappily, we cannot count
veritable tapestries as a modern re-
course in wall-treatment, since we are
precluded from the use of genuine
ones by their scarcity and cost.
There is undoubtedly a peculiar
richness and charm in a tapestry-hung
wall which no other wall covering
can give; yet they are not entirely
appropriate to our time. They be-
long to the period of windy palaces
and enormous enclosures, and are
fitted for pageants and ceremonies,
and riot to our carefully plastered,
wind-tight and narrow rooms. Their
mission to-day is to reproduce for us
in museums and collections the life
of yesterday, so full of pomp and al-
most barbaric lack of domestic com-
fort. In studios they are certainly
96 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
appropriate and suggestive, but in pri-
vate houses except of the princely
sort, it is far better to make har-
monies with the things of to-day.
Nevertheless if the soul craves tap-
estries let them be chosen for in-
trinsic beauty and perfect preservation,
instead of accepting the rags of the
past and trying to create with them a
magnificence which must be incom-
plete and shabby. Considering, as I
do, that tapestries belong to the life
and conditions of the past, where the
homeless many toiled for the pam-
pered few, and not to the homes of
to-day where the man of moderate
means expects beauty in his home as
confidently as if he were a world
ruler, I find it hardly necessary to in-
clude them in the list of means of
modern decoration, and indeed it is
not necessary, since a well-preserved
tapestry of a good period, and of a
famous manufacturer or origin, is so
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 97
costly a purchase that only our boun-
teous and self-indulgent millionaires
would venture to acquire one solely
for purposes of wall decoration. It
would be purchased as a specimen of
art and not as furnishing.
Yet I know one instance of a library
where a genuine old foliage tapestry
has been cut and fitted to the walls
and between bookcases and doors,
where the wood of the room is in
mahogany, and a great chimney-piece
of Caen stone of Richardson's design-
ing fills nearly one side of the room.
Of course the tapestry is unapproach-
able in effect in this particular place
and with its surroundings. It has the
richness and softness of velvet, and
the red of the mahogany doors and
furniture finds exactly its foil in the
blue greens and soft browns of the
web, while the polished floor and
velvety antique rugs bring all the
richness of the walls down to one's
98 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
feet and to the hearth with its glow of
fire. But this particular room hardly
makes an example for general follow-
ing. It is really a house of state, a
house without children, one in which
public life predominates.
There is a very flagrant far-away
imitation of tapestry which is so far
from being good that it is a wonder
it has had even a moderate success,
imitation which does not even at-
tempt the decorative effect of the
genuine, but substitutes upon an ad-
mirably woven cotton or woollen can-
vas, figure panels, copied from mod-
ern French masters, and suggestive of
nothing but bad art. Yet these panels
are sometimes used (and in fact are
produced for the purpose of being
used) precisely as a genuine tapestry
would be, although the very fact of
pretence in them, brings a feeling
of untruth, quite at variance with the
principles of all good art. The ob-
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 99
jection to pictures transferred to tap-
estries holds good, even when the
tapestries are genuine.
The great cartoons of Raphael,
still to be seen in the Kensington
Museum, which were drawn and col-
oured for Flemish weavers to copy,
show a perfect adaptation to the me-
dium of weaving, while the paintings
in the Vatican by the same great
master are entirely inappropriate to
textile reproduction.
A picture cannot be transposed to
different substance and purpose with-
out losing the qualities which make
it valuable. The double effort to be
both a tapestry and a picture is futile,
and brings into disrepute a simple art
of imitation which might become re-
spectable if its capabilities were right-
ly used.
No one familiar with collections of
tapestries can fail to recognise the
largeness and simplicity of treatment
loo PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
peculiar to tapestry subjects as con-
trasted with the elaboration of pict-
ures.
If we grant that in this modern
world of hurry, imitation of tapestries
is legitimate, the important question
is, what are the best subjects, and
what is the best use for such imita-
tions?
The best use is undoubtedly that
of wall-covering; and that was, in-
deed, the earliest object for which
they were created. They were woven
to cover great empty spaces of un-
sightly masonry; and they are still in-
finitely useful and beautiful in grand
apartments whose barren spaces are
too large for modern pictures, and
which need the disguise of a sugges-
tion of scenery or pictorial subject.
If tapestries must be painted, let
them by all means follow the style of
the ancient verdure or foliage tapes-
tries, and be used for the same pur-
WALLS, CEIUNGS, AND FLOORS loi
pose — to cover an otherwise blank
wall. This is legitimate, and even
beautiful, but it is painting, and should
be frankly acknowledged to be such,
and no attempt made to have them
masquerade as genuine and costly
weavings. It is simply and always
painting, although in the style and
spirit of early tapestrieso Productions
of this sort, where real skill in textile
painting is used, are quite worthy of
admiration and respect.
I remember seeing, in the Swedish
exhibit of women's work in the
Woman's Building at the Columbian
Exposition, a screen which had evi-
dently been copied from an old bit
of verdure tapestry. At the base
were broad-leaved water-plants, each
leaf carefully copied in blocks and
patches of colour, with even the ef-
fect of the little empty space — where
one thread passes to the back in
weaving, to make room for one of
I02 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
another colour brought forward —
imitated by a dot of black to simu-
late the tiny shadow-filled pen-point
of a hole.
Now whether this was art or not I
leave to French critics to decide, but
it was at least admirable imitation ;
and any one able to cover the wall
spaces between bookcases in a library
with such imitation would find them
as richly set as if it were veritable
tapestry.
This is a very different thing from
a painted tapestry, perhaps enlarged
from a photograph or engraving of
a painting the original of which the
tapestry-painter had never even seen
— the destiny of which unfortunate
copy, changed in size, colour, and all
the qualities which gave value to the
original, is probably to be hung as a
picture in the centre of a space of
wall-paper totally antagonistic in
colour.
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 103
When I see these things I long to
curb the ambition of the unfortunate
tapestry-painter until a course of
study has taught him or her the proper
use of a really useful process ; for
whether the object is to produce a
decoration or a simulated tapestry, it
is not attained by these methods.
The ordinary process of painting
in dyes upon a wool or linen fabric
woven in tapestry method, and fix-
ing the colour with heat, enables the
painter — if a true tapestry subject is
chosen and tapestry effects carefully
studied — to produce really effective
and good things, and this opens a
much larger field to the woman dec-
orator than the ordinary unstudied
shams which have thrown what might
become in time a large and useful art-
industry into neglect and disrepute.
I have seen the walls of a library
hung with Siberian linen, stained in
landscape design in the old blues and
I04 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
greens which give tapestry its decora-
tive value, and found it a delightful
wall-covering. Indeed we may lay
it down as a principle in decoration
that while we may use and adapt any
decorative effect we must not attempt
to make it pass for the thing which
suggested the effect.
Coarse and carefully woven linens,
used as I have indicated, are really far
better than old tapestries for mod-
ern houses, because the design can be
adapted to the specific purpose and
the texture itself can be easily cleaned
and is more appropriate to the close
walls and less airy rooms of this cen-
tury.
For costly wall-decoration, leather
is another of the substances which
have had a past of pomp and mag-
nificence, and carries with it, in addi-
tion to beauty, a suggestion of the art
of a race. Spanish leather, with its
stamping and gilding, is quite as costly
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 105
a wall covering as antique or modern
tapestry, and far more indestructible.
Perhaps it is needlessly durable as a
mere vehicle for decoration. At all
events Japanese artists and artisans
seem to be of this opinion, and have
transferred the same kind of decora-
tion to heavy paper, where for some
occult reason — although strongly sim-
ulating leather — it seems not only not
objectionable, but even meritorious.
This is because it simply transfers an
artistic method from a costly sub-
stance, to another which is less so,
and the fact may even have some
weight that paper is a product of
human manufacture, instead of hu-
man appropriation of animal life, for
surely sentiment has its influence in
decoration as in other arts.
Wood panelling is also a form of
interior treatment which has come to
us by inheritance from the past as
well as by right of natural possession.
io6 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
It has a richness and sober dignity of
effect which commends it in large or
small interiors, in halls, libraries, and
dining-rooms, whether they are pub-
lic or private ; devoted to grand
functions, or to the constantly re-
curring uses of domesticity. Wood
is so beautiful a substance in itself,
and lends itself to so many processes
of ornamentation, that hardly too
much can be said of its appropriate-
ness for interior decoration. From
the two extremes of plain pine panel-
lings cut into squares or parallelo-
grams by machinery, and covered
with paint in tints to match door
and window casings, to the most
elaborate carvings which back the
Cathedral stalls or seats of ecclesi-
astical dignity, it is always beautiful
and generally appropriate in use and
effect, and that can hardly be said
of any other substance. There are
wainscotted rooms in old houses in
PAINTED CANVAS FRIEZE
BUCKRAM FRIEZE FOR DINING-ROOM
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 107
Newport, where, under the accumu-
lated paint of one or two centuries,
great panels of old Spanish mahogany-
can still be found, not much the
worse for their long eclipse. Such
rooms, in the original brilliancy of
colour and polish, with their parallel
shadings of mahogany-red reflecting
back the firelight from tiled chimney-
places and scattering the play of
dancing flame, must have had a
beauty of colour hard to match in
this day of sober oak and painted
wainscottings.
One of the lessons gained by ex-
perience in treatment of house in-
teriors, is that plain, flat tints give
apparent size to small rooms, and
that a satisfying effect in large ones
can be gained by variation of tint or
surface ; also, that in a bedroom or
other small room apparent size will
be gained by using a wall covering
which is light rather than dark. Some
io8 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
difference of tone there must be in
large plain surfaces which lie within
the level of the eye ; or the monot-
ony of a room becomes fatiguing.
A plain, painted wall may, it is true,
be broken by pictures, or cabinets, or
bits of china ; anything in short
which will throw parts of it into
shadow, and illumine other parts
with gilded reflections ; but even
then there will be long, plain spaces
above the picture or cabinet line,
where blank monotony of tone will
be fatal to the general effect of the
room.
It is in this upper space, upon a
plain painted wall, that a broad line
of flat decoration should occur, but
on a wall hung with paper or cloth,
it is by no means necessary.
Damasked cloths, where the design
is shown by the direction of woven
threads, are particularly effective and
satisfactory as wall-coverings. The
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS 109
soft surface is luxurious to the im-
agination, and the play of light and
shadow upon the warp and woof in-
terests the eye, although there is no
actual change of colour.
Too much stress can hardly be laid
upon the variation of tone in wall-
surfaces, since the four walls stand for
the atmosphere of a room. Tone
means quality of colour. It may be
light or dark, or of any tint, or varia-
tions of tint, but the quality of it
must be soft and charitable, instead
of harsh and uncompromising.
Almost the best of modern inven-
tions for inexpensive wall-coverings
are found in what are called the in-
grain papers. These have a variable
surface, without reflections, and make
not only a soft and impalpable colour
effect, but, on account of their want
of reflection, are good backgrounds
for pictures.
In these papers the colour is pro-
no PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
duced by a mixture in the mass of
paper pulp of atoms of varying tint,
which are combined in the substance
and make one general tint resulting
from the mixture of several. In can-
vases and textiles, which are a more
expensive method of producing al-
most the same mixed effect, the mi-
nute points of brilliance of threads
in light and darkness of threads in
shadow, combine to produce softness
of tone, impossible to pigment be-
cause it has but one plain surface,
unrelieved by breaking up into light
and shadow.
Variation, produced by minute
differences, which affect each other
and which the eye blends into a
general tone, produce quality. It is
at the same time soft and brilliant,
and is really a popular adaptation of
the philosophy of impressionist paint-
ers, whose small dabs of pure colour
placed in close juxtaposition and
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS in
fused into one tone by the eye, give
the purity and vibration of colour
which distinguishes work of that
school.
Some skilful painters can stipple
one tone upon another so as to pro-
duce the same brilliant softness of
effect, and when this can be done,
oil-colour upon plaster is the best of
all treatment for bedrooms since it
fulfils all the sanitary and other con-
ditions so necessary in sleeping-rooms.
The same effect may be produced if
the walls are of rough instead of
smooth plaster, so that the small in-
equalities of surface give light and
shadow as in textiles ; upon such sur-
faces a pleasant tint in flat colour is
always good. Painted burlaps and
certain Japanese papers prepared with
what may be called a textile or can-
vas surface give the same effect, and
indeed quality of tint and tone is far
more easily obtained in wall-cover-
112 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
ings or applied materials than in paint,
because in most wall-coverings there
are variations of tint produced in the
very substance of the material.
This matter of variation w^ithout
contrast in w^all-surface, is one of the
most important in house decoration,
and has led to the increased use of
textiles in houses where artistic effects
have been carefully studied and are
considered of importance.
Of course wall-paper must continue
to be the chief means of wall-cover-
ing, on account of its cheapness, and
because it is the readiest means of
sheathing a plaster surface ; and a
continuous demand for papers of
good and nearly uniform colour, and
the sort of inconspicuous design
which fits them for modest interiors
will have the effect of increasing
the manufacture of desirable and ar-
tistic things.
In the meantime one should care-
WALLS, CEILINGS, AND FLOORS iij
fully avoid the violently coloured
papers which are made only to sell ;
materials which catch the eye of the
inexperienced and tempt them into
the buying of things which are pro-
ductive of lasting unrest. It is in the
nature of positive masses and strongly
contrasting colours to produce this
effect.
If one is unfortunate enough to
occupy a room of which the walls are
covered with one of these glaring de-
signs, and circumstances prevent a
radical change, the simplest expedient
is to cover the whole surface with a
kalsomine or chalk-wash, of some
agreeable tint. This will dry in an
hour or two and present a nearly
uniform surface, in which the printed
design of the paper, if it appears at
all, will be a mere suggestion. Papers
where the design is carried in colour
only a few shades darker than the
background, are also safe, and — if
114 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
the design is a good one — often very
desirable for halls and dining-rooms.
In skilfully printed papers of the sort
the design often has the effect of a
mere shadow-play of form.
Of course in the infinite varieties
of use and the numberless variations
of personal taste, there are, and should
be, innumerable differences in appli-
cation of both colour and materials
to interiors. There are differences in
the use of rooms which may make a
sense of perfect seclusion desirable, as,
for instance, in libraries, or rooms
used exclusively for evening gather-
ings of the family. In such semi-
private rooms the treatment should
give a sense of close family life rather
than space, while in drawing-rooms
it should be exactly the reverse, and
this effect is easily secured by com-
petent use of colour.
CHAPTER IX
LOCATION OF THE HOUSE
T3ESIDES the difference in treat-
ment demanded by different use
of rooms — the character of the deco-
ration of the whole house will be in-
fluenced by its situation. A house
in the country or a house in town ;
a house by the sea-shore or a house
situated in woods and fields require
stronger or less strong colour, and
even different tints, according to situ-
ation. The decoration itself may be
much less conventional in one place
than in another, and in country
houses much and lasting charm is
derived from design and colour in
perfect harmony with nature's sur-
roundings. Whatever decorative de-
sign is used in wall-coverings or in
curtains or hangings will be far more
"5
ii6 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
effective if it bears some relation to
the surroundings and position of the
house.
If the nouse is by the sea the walls
should repeat with many variations
the tones of sea and sand and sky;
the gray-greens of sand-grasses ; the
blues which change from blue to green
with every cloud-shadow ; the pearl
tints which become rose in the morn-
ing or evening light, and the browns
and olives of sea mosses and lichens.
This treatment of colour will make
the interior of the house a part of
the great out-of-doors and create a
harmony between the artificial shel-
ter and nature.
There is philosophy in following,
as far as the limitations of simple
colour will allow, the changeableness
and fluidity of natural effects along
the shore, and allowing the mood of
the brief summer life to fall into
entire harmony with the dominant
LOCATION OF THE HOUSE 117
expression of the sea. Blues and
greens and pinks and browns should
all be kept on a level with out-of-
door colour, that is, they should not
be too deep and strong for harmony
with the sea and sky, and if, when
harmonious colour is once secured,
most of the materials used in the
furnishing of the house are chosen
because their design is based upon, or
suggested by, sea-forms, an impression
is produced of having entered into
complete and perfect harmony with
the elements and aspects of nature.
The artificialities of life fall more and
more into the background, and one
is refreshed with a sense of having
established entirely harmonious and
satisfactory relations with the sur-
roundings of nature. I remember a
doorway of a cottage by the sea,
where the moulding which made a
part of the frame was an orderly line
of carved cockle-shells, used as a bor-
ii8 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
der, and this little touch of recog-
nition of its sea-neighbours was not
only decorative in itself, but gave
even the chance visitor a sort of in-
terpretation of the spirit of the in-
terior life.
Suppose, on the other hand, that
the summer house is placed in the
neighbourhood of fields and trees and
mountains ; it will be found that
strong and positive treatment of the
interior is more in harmony with the
outside landscape. Even heavier fur-
niture looks fitting where the house is
surrounded with massive tree-growths;
and deeper and purer colours can be
used in hangings and draperies. This
is due to the more positive colouring
of a landscape than of a sea-view.
The masses of strong and slightly
varying green in foliage, the red,
brown, or vivid greens of fields and
crops, the dark lines of tree-trunks
and branches, as well as the unchang-
LOCATION OF THE HOUSE 119
ing forms of rock and hillside, call
for a corresponding strength of in-
terior effect.
It is a curious fact, also, that where
a house is surrounded by myriads of
small natural forms of leaves and
flowers and grasses, plain spaces of
colour in interiors, or spaces where
form is greatly subordinated to col-
our, are more grateful to the eye
than prominently decorated surface.
A repetition of small natural forms
like the shells and sea-mosses, which
are for the most part hidden under
lengths of liquid blue, is pleasing and
suggestive by the sea ; but in the
country, where form is prominent
and positive and prints itself con-
stantly upon both mental and bodily
vision, unbroken colour surfaces are
found to be far more agreeable.
It will be seen that the principles
of appropriate furnishing and adorn-
ment in house interiors depend upon
I20 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
circumstances and natural surround-
ings as well as upon the character
and pursuits of the family who are to
be lodged, and that the final charm
of the home is attained by a perfect
adaptation of principles to existing
conditions both of nature and hu-
manity.
In cottages of the character we are
considering, furniture should be sim-
pler and lighter than in houses in-
tended for constant family living.
Chairs and sofas should be without
elaborate upholstery and hangings, and
cushions can be appropriately made of
some well-coloured cotton or linen
material which wind, and sun, and
dampness cannot spoil, and of which
the freshness can always be restored by
laundering. These are general rules,
appropriate to all summer cottages,
and to these it may be added, that a
house which is to be closed for six or
eight months in the year should really.
LOCATION OF THE HOUSE 121
to be consistent, be inexpensively fur-
nished. These general rules are in-
tended only to emphasise the fact
that in houses which are to become
in the truest sense homes — that is,
places of habitation which represent
the inhabitants, directions or rules for
beautiful colour and arrangement of
interiors, must always follow the guid-
ing incidents of class and locality.
CHAPTER X
CEILINGS
A S ceilings are in reality a part of
the wall, they must always be
considered in connection with room
interiors, but their influence upon the
beauty of the average house is so
small, that their treatment is a com-
paratively easy problem.
In simple houses with plaster ceil-
ings the tints to be used are easily
decided. The rule of gradation of
colour from floor to ceiling prescribes
for the latter the lightest tone of the
gradation, and as the ceiling stands
for light, and should actually reflect
light into the room, the philosophy
of this arrangement of colours is ob-
vious. It is not, however, an invari-
able rule that the ceiling should carry
the same tint as the wall, even in a
122
CEILINGS 123
much lighter tone, although greater
harmony and restfulness of effect is
produced in this way. A ceiling of
cream white will harmonise well with
almost any tint upon the walls, and
at the same time give an effect of air
and light in the room. It is also a
good ground for ornament in elabo-
rately decorated ones.
If the walls are covered with a
light wall-paper which carries a floral
design, it is a safe rule to make the
ceiling of the same colour but a
lighter shade of the background of
the paper, but it is not by any
means good art to carry a flower de-
sign over the ceiling. One sometimes
sees instances of this in the bedrooms
of fairly good houses, and the effect
is naturally that of bringing the ceil-
ing apparently almost to one's head,
or at all events, of producing a very
unrestful effect.
A wood ceiling in natural colour
124 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
is always a good feature in a room of
defined or serious purpose, like a hall,
dining-room, or library, because in
such rooms the colour of the side
walls is apt to be strong enough to
balance it. Indeed a wooden ceiling
has always the merit of being secure
in its place, and even where the walls
are light can be painted so as to be
in harmony with them. Plaster as a
ceiling for bedrooms is open to the
objection of a possibility of its de-
taching itself from the lath, especially
in old houses, and in these it is well
to have them strengthened with flat
mouldings of wood put on in regular
squares, or even in some geometrical
design, and painted with the ceiling.
This gives security as well as a cer-
tain elaborateness of effect not with-
out its value.
For the ordinary, or comparatively
inexpensive home, we need not con-
sider the ceiling an object for serious
CEILINGS 1 25
Study, because it is so constantly out
of the line of sight, and because its
natural colourless condition is no bar
to the general colour-effect.
In large rooms this condition is
changed, for in a long perspective
the ceiling comes into sight and con-
sciousness. There would be a sense
of barrenness and poverty in a long
stretch of plain surface or unbroken
colour over a vista of decorated wall,
and accordingly the ceilings of large
and important rooms are generally
broken by plaster mouldings or archi-
tectural ornament.
In rooms of this kind, whether in
public or private buildings, decorative
painting has its proper and appro-
priate place. A painted ceiling, no
matter how beautiful, is quite super-
fluous and indeed absolutely lost in a
room where size prevents its being
brought into the field of the eye by
the lowering of long perspective lines,
126 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
but when the size of the room gives
unusual length of ceiling, no effect of
decoration is so valuable and pre-
cious. Colour and gilding upon a
ceiling, when well sustained by fine
composition or treatment, is undoubt-
edly the highest and best achievement
of the decorative painter's art.
Such a ceiling in a large and stately
drawing-room, where the walls are
hung with silk which gives broken
indications of graceful design in play
of light upon the texture, is one of
the most successful of both modern
as well as antique methods of deco-
ration. It has come down in direct
succession of practice to the school of
French decoration of to-day, and has
been adopted into American fashion
in its full and complete practice with-
out sufficient adaptation to American
circumstances. If it were modified
by these, it is capable of absorbing
other and better qualities than those
CEILINGS 127
of mere fashion and brilliance, as we
see in occasional instances in some
beautiful American houses, where the
ceilings have been painted, and the
textiles woven with an almost im-
aginative appropriateness of subject.
Such ceilings as this belong, of course,
to the efforts of the mural or decora-
tive painter, who, in conjunction with
the decorator, or architect, has studied
the subject as connected with its sur-
roundings.
CHAPTER XI
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS
A LTHOUGH in ordinary sequence
the colouring of floors comes
after that of walls, the fact that — in
important houses — costly and elabo-
rate floors of mosaic or of inlaid
wood form part of the architect's plan,
makes it necessary to consider the
effect of inherent or natural colours
of such floors, in connection with
applied colour-schemes in rooms.
Mosaic floors, being as a rule con-
fined to halls in private houses, need
hardly be considered in this relation,
and costly wood floors are almost
necessarily confined to the yellows
of the natural woods. These yellows
range from pale buff* to olive, and are
not as a rule inharmonious with any
other tint, although they often lack
128
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS 129
sufficient strength or intensity to hold
their own with stronger tints of walls
and furniture.
As it is one of the principles of
colour in a house that the floor is the
foundation of the room, this weak-
ness of colour in hard-wood floors
must be acknowledged as a disadvan-
tage. The floors should certainly be
able to support the room in colour
as well as in construction. It must
bs the strongest tint in the room, and
yet it must have the unobtrusiveness
of strength. This makes floor treat-
ment a more difficult problem, or
one requiring more thought than is
generally supposed, and explains why
light rooms are more successful with
hard-wood floors than medium or
very dark ones.
There are many reasons, sanitary
as well as economic, why hard-wood
floors should not be covered in or-
dinary dwelling-houses ; and when
I30 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
the pores of the wood are properly
filled, and the surface kept well pol-
ished, it is not only good as a fact,
but as an effect, as it reflects sur-
rounding tints, and does much to
make up for lack of sympathetic or
related colour. Yet it will be found
that in almost every case of success-
ful colour-treatment in a room, some-
thing must be added in the way of
floor-covering to give it the sense of
completeness and satisfaction which
is the result of a successful scheme
of decoration.
The simplest way of doing this is
to cover enough of the space with
rugs to attract the eye, and restore
the balance lost by want of strength
of colour in the wood. Sometimes
one or two small rugs will do this,
and these may be of almost any tint
which includes the general one of the
room, even if the general tint is not
prominent in the rug. If the use or
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS 131
luxury of the room requires more
covered space, it is better to use one
rug of a larger size than several small
and perhaps conflicting ones. Of
course in this the general tone of the
rug must be chosen for its affinity
to the tone of the room, but that
affinity secured, any variations of
colour occurring in the design are
apt to add to the general effect.
A certain amount of contrast to
prevailing colour is an advantage, and
the general value of rugs in a scheme
of decoration is that they furnish this
contrast in small masses or divisions,
so well worked in with other tints
and tones that it makes its eff'ect
without opposition to the general
plan.
Thus, in a room where the walls
are of a pale shade of copper, the
rugs should bring in a variety of reds
which would be natural parts of the
same scale, like lower notes in the
132 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
octave ; and yet should add patches
of relative blues and harmonising
greens ; possibly also, deep gold, and
black and white ; — the latter in mi-
nute forms and lines which only ac-
cent or enrich the general effect.
It is really an interesting problem,
why the strong colours generally used
in Oriental rugs should harmonise so
much better with weaker tints in
walls and furniture than even the
most judiciously selected carpets can
possibly do. It is true there are bad
Oriental rugs, very bad ones, just as
there may be a villain in any con-
gregation of the righteous, but cer-
tainly the long centuries of Eastern
manufacture, reaching back to the
infancy of the world, have given
Eastern nations secrets not to be
easily mastered by the people of later
days.
But if we cannot tell with cer-
tainty why good rugs fit all places
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS 133
and circumstances, while any other
thing of mortal manufacture must
have its place carefully prepared for
it, we may perhaps assume to know
why the most beautiful of modern
carpets are not as easily managed and
as successful.
In the first place having explained
that some contrast, some fillip of
opposing colour, something which
the artist calls snap^ is absolutely re-
quired in every successful colour
scheme, we shall see that if we are
to get this by simple means of a car-
pet, we must choose one which
carries more than one colour in its
composition, and colour introduced
as design must come under the laws
of mechanical manufacture ; that is,
it must come in as repeating design,
and here comes in the real difficulty.
The same forms and the same col-
ours must come in in the same way
in every yard, or every half or three-
134 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
quarter yard of the carpet. It fol-
lows, then, that it must be evenly
sprinkled or it must regularly mean-
der over every yard or half yard of
the surface ; and this regularity re-
solves itself into spots, and spots are
unendurable in a scheme of colour.
So broad a space as the floor of a
room cannot be covered by sections
of constantly repeated design without
producing a spotty effect, although it
can be somewhat modified by the
efforts of the good designer. Never-
theless, in spite of his best knowledge
and intention, the difficulty remains.
There is no one patch of colour
larger than another, or more irregu-
lar in form. There is nothing which
has not its exact counterpart at an
exact distance — north, south, east
and west, or northeast, southeast,
northwest and southwest — and this
is why a carpet with good design and
excellent colour becomes unbearable
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS 135
in a room of large size. In a small
room where there are not so many-
repeats, the eiFect is not as bad, but
in a large room the monotonous
repetition is almost without remedy.
Of course there are certain laws of
optics and ingenuities of composition
which may palliate this effect, but
the fact remains that the floor should
be covered in a way which will leave
the mind tranquil and the eye satis-
fied, and this is hard to accomplish
with what is commonly known as a
figured carpet.
If carpet is to be used, it seems,
then, that the simplest way is to
select a good monochrome in the
prevailing tint of the room, but sev-
eral shades darker. Not an abso-
lutely plain surface, but one broken
with some unobtrusive design or pat-
tern in still darker darks and lighter
lights than the general tone. In this
case we shall have the room har-
136 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
monious, it is true, but lacking the
element which provokes admiration
— the enlivening effect of contrast.
This may be secured by making the
centre or main part of the carpet
comparatively small, and using a very
wide and important border of con-
trasting colour — a border so wide as
to make itself an important part of
the carpet. In large rooms this plan
does not entirely obviate the dijffi-
culty, as it leaves the central space
still too large and impressive to re-
main unbroken ; but the remedy
may be found in the use of hearth-
rugs or skin-rugs, so placed as to
seem necessities of use.
As I have said before, contrast on
a broad scale can be secured by
choosing carpets of an entirely differ-
ent tone from the wall, and this is
sometimes expedient. For instance,
as contrast to a copper-coloured wall,
a softly toned green carpet is nearly
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS 137
always successful. This one colour,
green, is always safe and satisfactory
in a floor-covering, provided the
walls are not too strong in tone, and
provided that the green in the carpet
is not too green. Certain brownish
greens possess the quality of being in
harmony with every other colour.
They are the most peaceable shades
in the colour-world — the only ones
without positive antipathies. Green
in all the paler tones can claim the
title of peace-maker among colours,
since all the other tints will fight
with something else, but never with
green of a corresponding or even of
a much greater strength. Of course
this valuable quality, combined with
a natural restfulness of effect, makes
it the safest of ordinary floor-cover-
inpfs.
In bedrooms with polished floors
and light walls good colour-effects
can be secured without carpets, but
138 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
if the floors are of pine and need
covering, no better general effect can
be secured than that of plain or
mixed ingrain filling, using with it
Oriental hearth and bedside rugs.
The entire second floor of a house
can in that case be covered with
carpet in the accommodating tint of
green mentioned, leaving the various
colour-connections to be made with
differently tinted rugs. Good pine
floors well fitted and finished can
be stained to harmonise with almost
any tint used in furniture or upon
the wall.
I remember a sea-side chamber in
a house where the mistress had great
natural decorative ability, and so much
cultivation as to prevent its running
away with her, where the floor was
stained a transparent olive, like depths
of sea-water, and here and there a
floating sea-weed, or a form of sea-
life faintly outlined within the col-
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS 139
our. In this room, which seemed
wide open to the sea and air, even
when the windows were closed, the
walls were of a faint greenish blue,
like what is called dead turquoise,
and the relation between floor and
walls was so perfect that it remained
with me to this day as a crowning in-
stance of satisfaction in colour.
It is perhaps more difficult to con-
vey an idea of happy choice or selec-
tion of floor-colour than of walls,
because it is relative to walls. It
must relate to what has already been
done. But in recapitulation it is
safe to say, first, that in choosing
colour for a room, soft and medium
tints are better than positively dark
or bright ones, and that walls should
be unobtrusive in design as well as
colour ; secondly, that floors, if of the
same tint as walls, should be much
darker ; and that they should be made
apparent by means of this strength of
140 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
colour, or by the addition of rugs or
borders, although the relation be-
tween walls and floor must be care-
fully preserved and perfectly unmis-
takable, for it is the perfection of this
relation of one colour to another
which makes home decoration an art.
There is still a word to be said as
to floor-coverings, which relates to
healthful housekeeping instead of
art, and that is, that in all cases
where carpets or mattings are used,
they should be in rug form, not fitted
in to irregular floor-spaces ; so as to
be frequently and easily lifted and
cleaned. The great, and indeed the
only, objection to the use of mattings
in country or summer houses, is the
difficulty of frequent lifting, and re-
moval of accumulated dust, which
has sifted through to the floor — but
if fine hemp-warp mattings are used,
and sewn into squares which cover
the floor sufficiently, it is an ideal
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS 141
summer floor-covering, as it can be
rolled and removed even more easily
than a carpet, and there is a dust-
shedding quality in it w^hich com-
mends itself to the housekeeper.
CHAPTER XII
DRAPERIES
T^RAPERIES are not always con-
sidered as a part of furnishings,
yet in truth — as far as decorative ne-
cessities are concerned — they should
come immediately after wall and floor
coverings. The householder who is
in haste to complete the arrange-
ment of the home naturally thinks first
of chairs, sofas, and tables, because
they come into immediate personal
use, but if draperies are recognised
as a necessary part of the beauty of
the house it is worth while to study
their appropriate character from the
first. They have in truth much more
to do with the effect of the room
than chairs or sofas, since these are
speedily sat upon and pass out of
142
DRAPERIES 143
notice, while draperies or portieres
are in the nature of pictures — hang-
ing in everybody's sight. As far as
the element of beauty is concerned, a
room having good colour, attractive
and interesting pictures, and beautiful
draperies, is already furnished. What-
ever else goes to the making of it
may be also beautiful, but it must be
convenient and useful, while in the
selection of draperies, beauty, both
relative and positive, is quite untram-
melled.
As in all other furnishings, from
the aesthetic point of view colour is
the first thing to be considered. As
a rule it should follow that of the
walls, a continuous effect of colour
with variation of form and surface be-
ing a valuable and beautiful thing to
secure. To give the full value of
variation — where the walls are plain
one should choose a figured stuff for
curtains ; where the wall is papered,
144 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
or covered with figures, a plain ma-
terial should be used.
There is one exception to this
rule and this is in the case of walls
hung with damask. Here it is best
to use the same material for curtains,
as the effect is obtained by the differ-
ence between the damask hung in
folds, with the design indistinguish-
able, or stretched flat upon a wall-
surface, where it is plainly to be seen
and felt. Even where damask is used
upon the walls, if exactly the same
shade of colour can be found in satin
or velvet, the plain material in drap-
ery will enhance the value of design
on the walls.
This choice or selection of colour
applies to curtains and portieres as
simple adjuncts of furnishing, and not
to such pieces of drapery as are in
themselves works of art. When a
textile becomes a work of art it is in
a measure a law unto itself, and has
DRAPERIES 145
as much right to select its own col-
our as if it were a picture instead of
a portiere, in fact if it is sufficiently-
important, the room must follow in-
stead of leading. This may happen
in the case of some priceless old
embroidery, some relic of that peace-
ful past, when hours and days flowed
contentedly into a scheme of art and
beauty, without a thought of com-
petitive manufacture. It might be
difficult to subdue the spirit of a
modern drawing-room into harmony
with such a work of art, but if it
were done, it would be a very shrine
of restfulness to the spirit.
Fortunately many ancient marvels
of needlework were done upon white
satin, and this makes them easily
adaptable to any light scheme of col-
our, where they may appear indeed
as guests of honour — invited from
the past to be courted by the pres-
ent. It is not often that such pieces
146 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
are offered as parts of a scheme of
modern decoration, and the fingers
of to-day are too busy or too idle for
their creation, yet it sometimes hap-
pens that a valuable piece of drapery
of exceptional colour belongs by in-
heritance or purchase to the fortunate
householder, and in this case it should
be used as a picture would be, for an
independent bit of decoration.
To return to simple things, the rule
of contrast as applied to papered walls,
covered with design, ordains that the
curtains should undoubtedly be plain
and of the most pronounced tint
used in the paper. If the walls of a
room are simply tinted or painted,
figured stuff's of the same general
tone, or printed silks, velvets, or cot-
tons in which the predominant tint
corresponds with that of the wall
should be used. These relieve the
simplicity of the walls, and give the
desirable variation.
DRAPERIES 147
Transparent silk curtains are of
great value in colouring the light
which enters the room, and these
should be used in direct reference to
the light. If the room is dark or
cold in its exposure, to hang the
windows with sun-coloured silk or
muslin will cheat the eye and im-
agination into the idea that it is a
sunny room. If, on the contrary,
there is actual sunshine in the room,
a pervading tint of rose-colour or
delicate green may be given by inner
curtains of either of those colours.
These are effects, however, for which
rules can hardly be given, since the
possible variations must be carefully
studied, unless, indeed, they are the
colour-strokes of some one who has
that genius for combination or con-
trast of tints which we call " colour
sense."
After colour in draperies come
texture and quality, and these need
148 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
hardly be discussed in the case of
silken fabrics, because silk fibre has
inherent qualities of tenacity of tint
and flexibility of substance. Pure
silk, that is silk unstiffened with
gums, no matter how thickly and
heavily it is woven, is soft and yield-
ing and will fall into folds without
sharp angles. This quality of soft-
ness is in its very substance. Even
a single unwoven thread of silk will
drop gracefully into loops, where a
cotton or linen or even a woollen
thread will show stiffness.
Woollen fibre seems to acquire
softness as it is gathered into yarns
and woven, and will hang in folds
with almost the same grace as silk; but
unfortunately they are favourite past-
ure grounds as well as burying-places
for moths, and although these co-
inhabitants of our houses come to a
speedy resurrection, they devour their
very graves, and leave our woollen
DRAPERIES 149
draperies irremediably damaged. It
is a pity that woollen fabrics should
in this way be made undesirable for
household use, for they possess in a
great degree the two most valuable
qualities of silk : colour-tenacity and
flexibility. If one adopts woollen cur-
tains and portieres, constant " vigil-
ance is the price of safety," and con-
sidering that vigilance is required
everywhere and at all times in the
household, it is best to reduce the
quantity whenever it is possible.
This throws us back upon cottons
and linens for inexpensive hangings,
and in all the thousand forms in
which these two fibres are manufact-
ured it would seem easy to choose
those which are beautiful, durable,
and appropriate. But here we are
met at the very threshold of choice
with the two undesirable qualities of
fugitive colour, and stiffness of text-
ure. Something in the nature of
ijo PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
cotton makes it inhospitable to dyes.
If it receives them it is with a pro-
test, and an evident intention of
casting them out at the earliest op-
portunity— it makes, it is true, one
or two exceptions. It welcomes in-
digo dye and will never quite relin-
quish its companionship ; once re-
ceived, it will carry its colours
through all its serviceable life, and
when it is finally ready to fall into
dust, it is still loyally coloured by its
influence. If it is cheated, as we
ourselves are apt to be, into accept-
ing spurious indigo, made up of
chemical preparations, it speedily dis-
covers the cheat and refuses its col-
ouring. Perhaps this sympathy is
due to a vegetable kinship and like-
ness of experience, for where cotton
will grow, indigo will also flourish.
In printed cottons or chintzes,
there is a reasonable amount of
fidelity to colour, and if chintz cur-
DRAPERIES 151
tains are well chosen, and lined to
protect them from the sun, their
attractiveness bears a fair proportion
to their durability.
An interlining of some strong and
tried colour will give a very soft and
subtle daylight effect in a room, but
this is, of course, lost in the evening.
The expedient of an under colour in
curtain linings will sometimes give
delightful results in plain or un-
printed goods, and sometimes a lining
with a strong and bold design will
produce a charming shadow effect
upon a tinted surface — of course
each new experiment must be tried
before one can be certain of its effect,
and, in fact, there is rather an ex-
citing uncertainty as to results. Yet
there are infinite possibilities to the
householder who has what is called
the artistic instinct and the leisure
and willingness to experiment, and
experiments need not be limited to
152 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
prints or to cottons, for wonderful
combinations of colour are possible
in silks where light is called in as an
influence in the composition. One
must, however, expect to forego these
effects except in daylight, but as arti-
ficial light has its own subtleties of
effect, the one can be balanced
against the other. In my own
country-house I have used the two
strongest colours — red and blue — in
this doubled way, with delightful
eff'ect. The blue, which is the face
colour, presenting long, pure folds of
blue, with warmed reddish shadows
between, while at sunset, when the
rays of light are level, the variations
are like a sunset sky.
It will be seen by these sugges-
tions that careful selection, and some
knowledge of the qualities of difi^erent
dyes, will go far toward modifying
the want of permanence of colour
and lack of reflection in cottons ; the
DRAPERIES 153
Other quality of stiffness, or want of
flexibility, is occasionally overcome
by methods of weaving. Indeed, if
the manufacturer or weaver had a
clear idea of excellence in this re-
spect, undoubtedly the natural in-
flexibility of fibre could be greatly
overcome.
There is a place waiting in the
world of art and decoration for what
in my own mind I call " the missing
textile." This is by no means a fabric
of cost, for among its other virtues it
must possess that of cheapness. To
meet an almost universal want it
should combine inexpensiveness, dura-
bility, softness, and absolute fidelity
of colour, and these four qualities are
not to be found in any existing tex-
tile. Three of them — cheapness,
strength, and colour — were possessed
by the old-fashioned true indigo-blue
denim — the delightful blue which
faded into something as near the col-
154 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
our of the flower of grass, as dead
vegetable material can approach that
which is full of living juices — the
possession of these three qualities
doubled and trebled the amount of its
manufacture until it lost one of them
by masquerading in aniline indigo.
Many of our ordinary cotton
manufactures are strong and inex-
pensive, and a few of them have the
flexibility which denim lacks. It was
possessed in an almost perfect degree
by the Canton, or fleeced, flannels,
manufactured so largely a few years
ago, and called art-drapery. It
lacked colour, however, for the va-
rious dyes given to it during its brief
period of favouritism were not col-
our ; they were merely tint. That
strong, good word, colour, could not
be applied to the mixed and eva-
nescent dyes with which this soft
and estimable material clothed itself
withal. It was, so to speak, inverte-
DRAPERIES 155
brate — it had no backbone. Besides
this lack of colour stanchness, it
had another fault which helped to
overbalance its many virtues. It was
fatally attractive to fire. Its soft,
fluffy surface seemed to reach out
toward flame, and the contact once
made, there ensued one flash of in-
stantaneous blaze, and the whole
surface, no matter if it were a table-
cover, a hanging, or the wall covering
a room, was totally destroyed. Yet
as one must have had or heard of
such a disastrous experience to fear
and avoid it, this proclivity alone
would not have ended its popularity.
It was probably the evanescent char-
acter of what was called its " art-
colour " which ended the career of
an estimable material, and if the
manufacturers had known how to
eliminate its faults and adapt its vir-
tues, it might still have been a flour-
ishing textile.
156 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
In truth, we do not often stop to
analyse the reasons of prolonged
popular favour ; yet nothing is more
certain than that there is reason, and
good reason, for fidelity in public
taste. Popular liking, if continued,
is always founded upon certain in-
controvertible virtues. If a manu-
facture cannot hold its own for ever
in public favour, it is because it fails
in some important particular to be
what it should be. Products of the
loom must have lasting virtues if they
would secure lasting esteem. Blue
denim had its hold upon public use
principally for the reason that it pos-
sessed a colour superior to all the
chances and accidents of its varied
life. It is true it was a colour which
commended itself to general liking,
yet if as stanch and steadfast a green
or red could be imparted to an equally
cheap and durable fabric, it would
find as lasting a place in public favour.
DRAPERIES 157
It is quite possible that in the near
future domestic weavings may come
to the aid of the critical house-fur-
nisher, so that the qualities of strength
and pliability may be united with
colour which is both water-fast and
sun-fast, and that we shall be able to
order not only the kind of material,
but the exact shade of colour necessary
to the perfection of our houses.
To be washable as well as durable
is also a great point in favour of cot-
ton textiles. The English chintzes
with which the high post bedsteads
of our foremothers were hung had a
yearly baptism of family soap-suds,
and came from it with their designs
of gaily-crested, almost life-size pheas-
ants, sitting upon inadequate branches,
very little subdued by the process.
Those were not days of colour-study;
and harmony, applied to things of
sight instead of conduct, was not
looked for ; but when we copy the
158 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
beautiful old furniture of that day,
we may as well demand with it the
quality of washableness and clean-
ableness which went with all its be-
longings.
It is always a wonder to the mascu-
line, that the feminine mind has such
an ineradicable love of draperies.
The man despises them, but to the
woman they are the perfecting touch
of the home, hiding or disguising all
the sharp angles of windows and
doors, and making of them oppor-
tunities of beauty. It is the same
instinct with which she tries to cover
the hard angles and facts of daily life
and make of them virtuous incite-
ments. As long as the woman rules,
house-curtains will be a joy and de-
light to her. Something in their soft
protection, grace of line, and possible
beauty of colour appeals to her as no
other household belonging has the
power to do.
DRAPERIES 159
The long folds of the straight
hanging curtain are far more beautiful
than the looped and festooned crea-
tions which were held in vogue by
some previous generations, and indeed
are still dear to the hearts of profes-
sional upholsterers. The simpler the
treatment, the better the eiFect, since
natural rather than distorted line is
more restful and enjoyable. Qual-
ity, colour, and simple graceful lines
are quite sufficient elements of value
in these important adjuncts of house
furnishing and decoration.
' CHAPTER XIII
FURNITURE
A LTHOUGH the forms and vari-
eties of furniture are infinite,
they can easily be classified first into
the two great divisions of good and
bad, and after that into kinds and
styles ; but no matter how good the
different specimens may be, or to
what style they may belong, each one
is subject again to the ruling of fit-
ness. Detached things may be both
thoroughly pleasing and thoroughly
good in themselves, but unless they
are appropriate to the place where,
and purpose for which they are used,
they will not be beautiful.
It is well to reiterate that the use
to which a room is put must always
govern its furnishing and in a meas-
ure its colour, and that whatever we
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FURNITURE i6i
put in it must be placed there be-
cause it is appropriate to that use,
and because it is needed for com-
pleteness. It is misapplication which
makes much of what is called " artis-
tic furnishing'' ridiculous. An old-
fashioned brass preserving-kettle and
a linen or wool spinning-wheel are
in place and appropriate pieces of
furnishing for a studio ; the one for
colour, and the other for form, and
because also they may serve as models;
but they are sadly out of place in a
modern city house, or even in the
parlour of a country cottage.
We all recognise the fact that
a room carefully furnished in one
style makes a oneness of impression ;
whereas if things are brought to-
gether heterogeneously, even if each
separate thing is selected for its own
special virtue and beauty, the feeling
of enjoyment will be far less com-
plete.
i62 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
There is a certain kinship in pieces
of furniture made or originated at
the same period and fashioned by a
prevailing sentiment of beauty, which
makes them harmonious when brought
together ; and if our minds are in
sympathy with that period and style
of expression, it becomes a great pleas-
ure to use it as a means of expression
for ourselves. Whatever appeals to
us as the best or most beautiful
thought in manufacture we have a
right to adopt, but we should study
to understand the circumstances of
its production, in order to do justice
to it and ourselves, since style is
evolved from surrounding influenceSa
It would seem also that its periods
and origin should not be too far re-
moved from the interests and ways
of our own time, and incongruous
with it, because it would be impossi-
ble to carry an utterly foreign period
or method of thought into all the
FURNITURE 163
intimacies of domestic life. The fad
of furnishing different rooms in differ-
ent periods of art, and in the fashion
of nations and peoples whose lives
are totally dissimilar, may easily be
carried too far, and the spirit of
home, and even of beauty, be lost.
Of course this applies to small, and
not to grand houses, which are al-
ways exceptions to the purely domes-
tic idea.
There are many reasons why one
should be in sympathy with what is
called the "colonial craze"; not
only because colonial days are a part
of our history, but because colonial
furniture and decorations were de-
rived directly from the best period of
English art. Its original designers
were masters who made standards in
architectural and pictorial as well
as household art. The Adams broth-
ers, to whom many of the best
forms of the period are referable,
i64 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
were great architects as well as great
designers. Even so distinguished a
painter as Hogarth delighted in com-
posing symmetrical forms for furniture,
and preached persistently the beauty
of curved instead of rectangular lines.
It was, in fact, a period in which
superior minds expressed themselves
in material forms, when Flaxman,
Wedgwood, Chippendale and many
others of their day, true artists in
form, wrote their thoughts in wood,
stone, and pottery, and bequeathed
them to future ages. Certainly the
work of such minds in such company
must outlast mere mechanical efforts.
It is interesting to note, that many of
the Chippendale chairs keep in their
under construction the square and
simple forms of a much earlier period,
while the upper part, the back, and
seats are carved into curves and flori-
ated designs. One cannot help won-
dering whether this square solidity
FURNITURE 165
was simply a reminiscence or persist-
ence of earlier forms, or a conscious
return to the most direct principles
of weight-bearing constructions.
All furniture made under primitive
conditions naturally depends upon
perpendicular and horizontal forms,
because uninfluenced construction
considers first of all the principle of
strength ; but under the varied influ-
ences of the Georgian period one
hardly expects fidelity to first princi-
ples. New England carpenters and
cabinet-makers who had wrought
under the m.asters of carpentry and
cabinet-work in England brought
with them not only skill to fashion,
but the very patterns and drawings
from which Chippendale and Shera-
ton furniture had been made in Eng-
land. Our English forefathers were
very fond of the St. Domingo ma-
hogany, brought back in the ship-
bottoms of English traders, but the
i66 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
English workmen who made furni-
ture in the new world, while they
adopted this foreign wood, were not
slow to appreciate the wild cherry,
and the different maples and oak
and nut woods which they found in
America. They were woods easy to
work, and apt to take on polish
and shining surface. The cabinet-
makers liked also the abnormal speci-
mens of maple where the fibre grew
in close waves, called curled maple,
as well as the great roots flecked and
spotted with minute knots, known as
dotted maple.
All these things went into colonial
furniture, so beautifully cut, so care-
fully dowelled and put together, so
well made, that many of the things
have become heirlooms in the families
for which they were constructed. I
remember admiring a fine old cherry
book-case in Mr. Lowell's library at
Cambridge, and being told by the
FURNITURE 167
poet that it had belonged to his
grandfather. When I spoke of the
comparative rarity of such possessions
he answered : '' Oh, anyone can have
his grandfather's furniture if he will
wait a hundred years ! "
Nevertheless, with modern meth-
ods of manufacture it is by no means
certain that a hundred years will
secure possession of the furniture we
buy to-day to our grandchildren. In
those early days it was not uncom-
mon, it was indeed the custom, for
some one of the men who were called
<^ journeymen cabinet-makers " — that
is, men who had served their time
and learned their trade, but had not
yet settled down to a fixed place and
shop of their own — to take up an
abode in the house with the family
which had built it, for a year, or
even two or three years, carrying on
the work in some out-house or de-
pendence, choosing and seasoning the
i68 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
wood, and measuring the furniture
for the spaces where it was to stand.
There was a fine fitness in such fur-
nishing ; it was as if the different
pieces actually grew where they were
placed, and it is small wonder that
so built and fashioned they should
possess almost a human interest.
Direct and special thought and effort
were incorporated with the furniture
from the very first, and it easily ex-
plains the excellences and finenesses
of its fashioning.
There is an interesting house in
Flushing, Long Island, where such
furniture still stands in the rooms
where it was put together in 1664,
and where it is so fitted to spaces it
has filled during the passing centuries,
that it would be impossible to carry it
through the narrow doors and passages,
which, unlike our present halls, were
made for the passing to and fro of
human beings, and not of furniture.
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WHEELER'S HOUSE)
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FURNITURE 169
It is this kind ot interest which
attaches us to colonial furniture and
adds to the value of its beauty and
careful adaptation to human con-
venience. In the roomy "high boys"
which we find in old houses there are
places for everything. They were made
for the orderly packing and keeping
of valuable things, in closetless rooms,
and they were made without project-
ing corners and cornices, because life
was lived in smaller spaces than at
present. They were the best prod-
uct of a thoughtful time — where if
manufacture lacked some of the ma-
chinery and appliances of to-day, it
was at least not rushed by breathless
competition, but could progress slowly
in careful leisure. Of course we can-
not all have colonial furniture, and
indeed it would not be according to
the spirit of our time, for the arts
of our own day are to be encouraged
and fostered — but we can buy the
lyo PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
best of the things which are made in
our time, the best in style, in inten-
tion, in fittingness, and above all in
carefulness and honesty of construc-
tion.
For some reason the quality of
durability seems to be wanting in
modern furniture. Our things are
fashioned of the same woods, but
something in the curing or prepara-
tion of them has weakened the fibre
and made it brittle. Probably the
gradual evaporation of the tree-juices
which old-time cabinet-makers were
willing to wait for, left the shrunken
sinews of the wood in better condition
than is possible with our hurried and
violent kiln-dried methods. What is
gained in time in the one place is lost
in another. Nature refuses to enter
into our race for speedy completion,
and if we hurry her natural processes
we shorten our lease of ownership.
As a very apt illustration of this
FURNITURE 171
fact, I remember coming into posses-
sion some twenty years ago of an oak
chair which had stood, perhaps, for
more than two hundred years in a
Long Island farm-house. When I
found it, it had been long relegated
to kitchen use and was covered with
a crust of variously coloured paints
which had accumulated during the
two centuries of its existence. The
fashion of it was rare, and had prob-
ably been evolved by some early
American cabinet-maker, for while it
had all and even more than the grace
of the high-backed Chippendale pat-
terns, it was better fitted to the
rounded surfaces of the human body.
It was a spindle chair with a slightly
hollowed seat, the rim of the back
rounded to a loop which was con-
tinued into arm-rests, which spread
into thickened blades for hand-rests.
Being very much in love with the
grace and ease of it, I took it to a
172 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
manufacturer to be reproduced in
mahogany, who, with a far-sighted
sagacity, flooded the market with that
particular pattern.
We are used — and with good rea-
son— to consider mahogany as a dura-
ble wood, but of the half-dozen of
mahogany copies of the old oak chair,
each one has suffered some break of
legs or arms or spindles, while the orig-
inal remains as firm in its withered
old age as it was the day I rescued it
from the " out-kitchen " of the Long
Island farm-house.
For the next fifty years after the
close of our colonial history, the
colonial cabinet-makers in New Eng-
land and the northern Middle States
continued to flourish, evolving an
occasional good variation from what
may be called colonial forms. Rush-
and flag-bottomed chairs and chairs
with seats of twisted rawhide — the
frames often gilded and painted —
FURNITURE 173
sometimes took the place of wrought
mahogany, except in the best rooms
of great houses. Many of these are
of excellent shape and construction,
and specially interesting as an adap-
tation of natural products of the
country. Undoubtedly, with our in-
genious modern appliances, we could
make as good furniture as was made
in Chippendale and Sheraton's day,
with far less expenditure of effort ;
but the demon of competition in
trade will not allow it. We must
use all material, perfect or imperfect;
we cannot afford to select. We must
cover knots and imperfections with
composition and pass them on. We
must use the cheapest glue, and save
an infinitesimal sum in the length of
our dowels ; we must varnish instead
of polishing, or "the other man " will
get the better of us. If we did not
do these things our furniture would
be better, but " the other man "
174 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
would sell more, because he could
sell more cheaply.
Since the revived interest in the
making of furniture, we find an oc-
casional and marked recurrence to
primitive form — on each occasion the
apparently new style taking on the
name of the man who produced it.
In our own day we have seen the
"Eastlake furniture" appear and dis-
appear, succeeded by the " Morris
furniture," which is undoubtedly bet-
ter adapted to our varied wants. At
present, mortising and dowelling have
come to the front as proper processes,
especially for table-building ; and this
time the style appears under the name
of '' Mission furniture." Much of
this is extremely well suited for cot-
tage furnishing, but the occasional
exaggeration of the style takes one
back not only to early, but the earli-
est, English art, when chairs were im-
movable seats or blocks, and tables
FURNITURE 175
absolute fixtures on account of the
weighty legs upon which they were
built. In short, the careful and
cultivated decorator finds it as im-
perative to guard against exagger-
ated simplicity as unsupported pret-
tiness.
Fortunately there has been a great
deal of attention paid to good cabinet
work within the last few years, and
although the method of its making
lacks the human motive and the
human interest of former days — it is
still a good expression of the art of
to-day, and at its best, worthy to be
carried down with the generations as
one of the steps in the evolutions of
time. What we have to do, is to
learn to discriminate between good
and bad, to appreciate the best in
design and workmanship, even al-
though we cannot afford to buy it.
In this case we should learn to do with
less. As a rule our houses are crowded.
176 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
If we are able to buy a few good
things, we are apt instead to buy
many only moderately good, for lav-
ish possession seems to be a sort of
passion, or birthright, of Americans.
It follows that we fill our houses with
heterogeneous collections of furniture,
new and old, good and bad, appro-
priate or inappropriate, as the case
may be, with a result of living in
seeming luxury, but a luxury without
proper selection or true value. To
have less would in many cases be to
have more— more tranquillity of life,
more ease of mind, more knowledge
and more real enjoyment.
There is another principle which
can be brought into play in this case,
and that is the one of buying — not a
costly kind of thing, but the best of
its kind. If it is a choice in chairs,
for instance, let it be the best cane-
seated, or rush-bottomed chair that
is made, instead of the second or third
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best upholstered or leather-covered
one. If it is a question of tables, buy
the simplest form made of flawless
wood and with best finish, instead of
a bargain in elaborately turned or
scantily carved material. If it is in
bedsteads, a plain brass, or good
enamelled iron or a simple form in
black walnut, instead of a cheap in-
laid wood — and so on through the
whole category. A good chintz or
cotton is better for draperies, than
flimsy silk or brocade ; and when all
is done the very spirit of truth will
sit enthroned in the household, and
we shall find that all things have
been brought into harmony by her
laws.
Although the furnishing of a house
should be one of the most pains-
taking and studied of pursuits, there
is certainly nothing which is at the
same time so fascinating and so flat-
tering in its promise of future enjoy-
178 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
ment. It is like the making of a
picture as far as possibility of beauty
is concerned, but a picture within
and against which one's life, and the
life of the family, is to be lived. It
is a bit of creative art in itself, and
one which concerns us so closely as
to be a very part of us. We enjoy
every separate thing we may find or
select or procure — not only for the
beauty and goodness which is in it,
but for its contribution to the general
whole. And in knowledge of ap-
plied and manufactured art, the fur-
nishing of a house is truly " the be-
ginning of wisdom." One learns to
appreciate what is excellent in the
new, from study and appreciation of
quality in the old.
It is the fascination of this study
which has made a multiplication of
shops and collections of <^ antiques "
in every quarter of the city. Many
a woman begins from the shop-
FURNITURE 179
keeper's point of view of the value
of mere age, and learns by experience
that age, considered by itself, is a dis-
qualification, and that it gives value
only when the art which created the
antique has been lost or greatly de-
teriorated. If one can find as good,
or a better thing in art and quality,
made to-day — by all means buy the
thing of to-day, and let yourself and
your children be credited with the
hundred or two years of wear which
is in it. We can easily see that it is
wiser to buy modern iridescent glass,
fitted to our use, and yet carrying all
the fascinating lustre of ancient glass,
than to sigh for the possession of some
unbuyable thing belonging to dead
and gone Caesars. And the case is
as true of other modern art and
modern inventions, if the art is good,
and the inventions suitable to our
wants and needs.
Yet in spite of the goodness of
i8o PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
much that is new, there is a subtle
pleasure in turning over, and even in
appropriating, the things that are old.
There are certain fenced-in-blocks
on the east side of New York City
where for many years the choice parts
of old houses have been deposited.
As fashion and wealth have changed
their locality — treading slowly up
from the Battery to Central Park —
many beautiful bits of construction
have been left behind in the aban-
doned houses — either disregarded on
account of change in popular taste,
or unappreciated by reason of want
of knowledge. For the few whose
knowledge was competent, there
were things to be found in the sec-
ond-hand yards, precious beyond
comparison with anything of con-
temporaneous manufacture.
There were panelled front doors
with beautifully fluted columns and
FURNITURE i8i
carved capitals, surmounted by half-
ovals of curiously designed sashes ;
there were beautifully wrought iron
railings, and elaborate newel-posts
of mahogany, brass door-knobs and
hinges, and English hob-grates, and
crystal chandeliers of cost and brill-
iance, and panelled wainscots of oak
and mahogany ; chimney-pieces in
marble and wood of an excellence
which we are almost vainly trying
to compass, and all of them to be
bought at the price of lumber.
These are the things to make one
who remembers them critical about
the collections to be found in the
antique shops of to-day, and yet
such shops are enticing and fash-
ionable, and the quest of antiques
will go on until we become convinced
of the art-value and the equal merit
of the new — which period many
things seem to indicate is not far oiF.
i82 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
In those days there was but one
antique shop in all New York which
was devoted to the sale of old things,
to furniture, pictures, statuary, and
what Ruskin calls "portable art'' of
all kinds. It was a place where one
might go, crying " new lamps for old
ones" with a certainty of profit in
the transaction. In later years it has
been known as Sypher s^ and although
one of many, instead of a single one,
is still a place of fascinating possi-
bilities.
To sum up the gospel of furnish-
ing, we need only fall back upon the
principles of absolute fitness, actual
goodness, and real beauty. If the
furniture of a well-coloured room
possesses these three qualities, the
room as a whole can hardly fail to be
lastingly satisfactory. It must be re-
membered, however, that it is a trin-
ity of virtues. No piece of furniture
should be chosen because it is intrin-
FURNITURE 183
sically good or genuinely beautiful,
if it has not also its use — and this
rule applies to all rooms, with the
one exception of the drawing-room.
The necessity of use^ governing the
style of furnishing in a room, is very
well understood. Thus, while both
drawing-room and dining-room must
express hospitality, it is of a different
kind or degree. That of the draw-
ing-room is ceremonious and punc-
tilious, and represents the family in
its relation to society, while the din-
ing-room is far more intimate, and
belongs to the family in its relation
to friends. In fact, as the dining-
room is the heart of the house, its
furnishing would naturally be quite
different in feeling and character from
the drawing-room, although it might
be fully as lavish in cost. It would
be stronger, less conservative, and al-
together more personal in its expres-
sion. Family portraits and family
i84 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
silver give the personal note v^hich
we like to recognise in our friends'
dining-rooms, because the intimacy
of the room makes even family his-
tory in place.
In moderate houses, even the draw-
ing-room is too much a family room
to allow it to be entirely emancipated
from the law of use, but in houses
which are not circumscribed in space,
and where one or more rooms are
set apart to social rather than domes-
tic life, it is natural and proper to
gather in them things which stand,
primarily, for art and beauty — which
satisfy the needs of the mind as dis-
tinct from those of bodily comfort.
Things which belong in the category
of "unrelated beauty" may be ap-
propriately gathered in such a room,
because the use of it is to please the
eye and excite the interest of our
social world; therefore a table which
is a marvel of art, but not of con-
FURNITURE 185
venience, or a casket which is beau-
tiful to look at, but of no practical
use, are in accordance with the idea
of the room. They help compose a
picture, not only for the eyes of
friends and acquaintances, but for
the education of the family.
It follows that an artistic and lux-
urious drawing-room may be a true
family expression ; it may speak of
travel and interest in the artistic de-
velopment of mankind ; but even
where the experiences of the family
have been wide and liberal, if the
house and circumstances are narrow,
a luxurious interior is by no means
a happiness.
It may seem quite superfluous to
give advice against luxury in furnish-
ing except where it is warranted
by exceptional means, because each
family naturally adjusts its furnishing
to its own needs and circumstances;
but the influence of mere beauty is
i86 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
very powerful, and many a costly toy
drifts into homes where it does not
rightly belong, and where, instead of
being an educational or elevating in-
fluence, it is a source of mental de-
terioration, from its conflict with un-
sympathetic circumstances. A long
and useful chapter might be written
upon <' art out of place," but nothing
which could be said upon the subject
would apply to that incorporation of
art and beauty with furniture and in-
terior surroundings, which is the effort
and object of every true artist and art-
lover.
The fact to be emphasised is, that
objets d' art — beautiful in themselves
and costly because of the superior
knowledge, artistic feeling, and pa-
tient labour which have produced
them — demand care and reserve for
their preservation^ which is not avail-
able in a household where the first
motive of everything must be minis-
FURNITURE 187
try to comfort. Art in the shape of
pictures is fortunately exempt from
this rule, and may dignify and beau-
tify every room in the house without
being imperilled by contact in the
exigencies of use.
Following out this idea, a house
where circumstances demand that
there shall be no drawing-room, and
where the family sitting-room must
also answer for the reception of
guests, a perfect beauty and dignity
may be achieved by harmony of
colour, beauty of form, and appro-
priateness to purpose, and this may
be carried to almost any degree of
perfection by the introduction and
accompaniment of pictures. In this
case art is a part of the room, as well
as an adornment of it. It is kneaded
into every article of furniture. It is
the daily bread of art to which we
are all entitled, and which can make
a small country home, or a smaller
1 88 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
city apartment, as enjoyable and ele-
vating as if it were filled with the
luxuries of art.
But one may say, ^' It requires
knowledge to do this ; much knowl-
edge in the selection of the compara-
tively few things which are to make
up such an interior," and that is
true — and the knowledge is to be
proved every time we come to the
test of buying. Yet it is a curious
fact that the really good thing, the
thing which is good in art as well as
construction, will inevitably be chosen
by an intelligent buyer, instead of
the thing which is bad in art and in
construction. Fortunately, one can
see good examples in the shops of
to-day, where twenty years ago at
best only honest and respectable fur-
niture was on exhibition. One must
rely somewhat on the character of
the places from which one buys,
and not expect good styles and relia-
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FURNITURE 189
ble manufacture where commercial
success is the dominant note of the
business. In truth the careful buyer
is not so apt to fail in quality as in
harmony, because grade as well as
style in different articles and manu-
factures is to be considered. What
is perfectly good in one grade of
manufacture will not be in harmony
with a higher or lower grade in
another. Just as we choose our
grade of floor-covering from ingrain
to Aubusson, we must choose the
grade of other furnishings. Even an
inexperienced buyer would be apt to
feel this, and would know that if she
found a simple ingrain-filling appro-
priate to a bed-chamber, maple or
enamelled furniture would belong to
it, instead of more costly inlaid or
carved pieces.
It may be well to reiterate the fact
that the predominant use of each room
in a house gives the clew to the best
190 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
rules of treatment in decoration and
furniture. For instance, the hall,
being an intermediate space between
in and out of doors, should be col-
oured and furnished in direct refer-
ence to this, and to its common use
as a thoroughfare by all members of
the family. It is not a place of pro-
longed occupation, and may therefore
properly be without the luxury and
ease of lounges and lounging-chairs.
But as long as it serves both as en-
trance-room to the house and for
carrying the stairways to the upper
floors, it should be treated in such a
way as to lead up to and prepare the
mind for whatever of inner luxury
there may be in the house. At the
same time it should preserve some-
thing of the simplicity and freedom
from all attempt at effect which be-
long to out-of-door life. The dif-
ference between its decoration and
furniture and that of other divisions
FURNITURE 191
of the house should be principally in
surface, and not in colour. Differ-
ence of surface is secured by the use
of materials which are permanent and
durable in effect, such as wood, plas-
ter, and leather. These may all be
coloured without injury to their im-
pression of permanency, although it
is generally preferable to take advan-
tage of indigenous or " inherent col-
our " like the natural yellows and
russets of wood and leather. When
these are used for both walls and
ceiling, it will be found that, to give
the necessary variation, and prevent
an impression of monotony and dul-
ness, some tint must be added in the
ornament of the surface, which could
be gained by a forcible deepening or
variation of the general tone, like a
deep golden brown, which is the low-
est tone of the scale of yellow, or a
red which would be only a variant
of the prevailing tint. The intro-
192 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
duction of an opposing or contrasting
tint, like pale blue in small masses as
compared with the general tint, even
if it is in so small a space as that of a
water-colour on the wall, adds the
necessary contrast, and enlivens and
invigorates a harmony.
No colour carries with it a more
appropriate influence at the entrance
of a house than red in its different
values. Certain tints of it which are
known both as Pompeiian and Da-
mascus red have sufficient yellow in
their composition to fall in with the
yellows of oiled wood, and give the
charm of a variant but related colour.
In its stronger and deeper tones it is
in direct contrast to the green of
abundant foliage, and therefore a
good colour for the entrance-hall or
vestibule of a country-house ; while
the paler tones, which run into pinks,
hold the same opposing relation to
the gray and blue of the sea-shore.
FURNITURE 193
If walls and ceiling are of wood, a
rug of which the prevailing colour is
red will often give the exact note
which is needed to preserve the room
from monotony and insipidity. A
stair-carpet is a valuable point to
make in a hall, and it is well to re-
serve all opposing colour for this one
place, which, as it rises, meets all
sight on a level, and makes its con-
trast directly and unmistakably. A
stair-carpet has other reasons for use
in a country-house than aesthetic
ones, as the stairs are conductors of
sound to all parts of the house, and
should therefore be muffled, and be-
cause a carpeted stair furnishes much
safer footing for the two family ex-
tremes of childhood and age.
The furniture of the hall should
not be fantastic, as some cabinet-
makers seem to imagine. Impossible
twists in the supports of tables and
chairs are perhaps more objectionable
194 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
in this first vestibule or entrance to
the house than elsewhere, because
the mind is not quite free from out-
of-door influences, or ready to take
pleasure in the vagaries of the human
fancy. Simple chairs, settles, and
tables, more solid perhaps than is
desirable in other parts of the house,
are what the best natural, as well as
the best cultivated, taste demands.
If there is one place more than an-
other where a picture performs its
full work of suggestion and decora-
tion, it is in a hall which is otherwise
bare of ornament. Pictures in din-
ing-rooms make very little impression
as pictures, because the mind is en-
grossed with the first and natural
purpose of the room, and conse-
quently not in a waiting and easily
impressible mood ; but in a hall, if
one stops for even a moment, the
thoughts are at leisure, and waiting
to be interested. Aside from the
FURNITURE 195
colour effect, which may be so man-
aged as to be very valuable, pictures
hung in a hall are full of suggestion
of wider mental and physical life, and,
like books, are indications of the
tastes and experiences of the family.
Of course there are country-houses
where the halls are built with fire-
places, and windows commanding
favourite views, and are really in-
tended for family sitting-rooms and
gathering-places ; in this case it is
generally preceded by a vestibule
which carries the character of an en-
trance-hall, leaving the large room
to be furnished more luxuriously, as
is proper to a sitting-room.
The dining-room shares with the
hall a purpose common to the life of
the family, and, while it admits of
much more variety and elaboration,
that which is true of the hall is
equally true of the dining-room, that
it should be treated with materials
196 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
which are durable and have surface
quality, although its decoration should
be preferably with china rather than
with pictures. It is important that
the colour of a dining-room should
be pervading colour — that is, that
walls and ceiling should be kept to-
gether by the use of one colour only,
in different degrees of strength.
For many reasons, but principally
because it is the best material to use
in a dining-room, the rich yellows of
oiled wood make the most desirable
colour and surface. The rug, the
curtains, the portieres and screen, can
then be of any good tint which the
exposure of the room and the decora-
tion of the china seem to indicate.
If it has a cold, northern exposure,
reds or gold browns are indicated ;
but if it is a sunny and warm-looking
room, green or strong India blue will
be found more satisfactory in simple
houses. The materials used in cur-
FURNITURE 197
tains, portieres, and screens should be
of cotton or linen, or some plain
woollen goods which are as easily
washable. A one-coloured, heavy-
threaded cotton canvas, a linen in
solid colour, or even indigo-blue do-
mestic, all make extremely efFective
and appropriate furnishings. The
variety of blue domestic which is
called denim is the best of all fabrics
for this kind of furnishing, if the col-
our is not too dark.
The prettiest country house din-
ing-room I know is ceiled and wain-
scoted with wood, the walls above
the wainscoting carrying an ingrain
paper of the same tone ; the line of
division between the wainscot and
wall being broken by a row of old
blue India china plates, arranged in
groups of different sizes and running
entirely around the room. There is
one small mirror set in a broad
carved frame of yellow wood hung
198 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
in the centre of a rather large wall-
space, its angles marked by small
Dutch plaques ; but the whole deco-
ration of the room outside of these
pieces consists of draperies of blue
denim in which there is a design, in
narrow white outline, of leaping fish,
and the widening water-circles and
showery drops made by their play.
The white lines in the design answer
to the white spaces in the decorated
china, and the two used together in
profusion have an unexpectedly deco-
rative effect. The table and chairs
are, of course, of the same coloured
wood used in the ceiling and wain-
scot, and the rug is an India cotton
of dark and light blues and white.
The sideboard is an arrangement of
fixed shelves, but covered with a
beautiful collection of blue china,
which serves to furnish the table as
well. If the dining-room had a
northern exposure, and it was desira-
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FURNITURE 199
ble to use red instead of blue for
colouring, as good an effect could be
secured by depending for ornament
upon the red Kaga porcelain so com-
mon at present in Japanese and Chi-
nese shops, and using with it the
Eastern cotton known as be^. This
is dyed with madder, and exactly
repeats the red of the porcelain, while
it is extremely durable both in col-
our and texture. Borders of yellow
stitchery, or straggling fringes of silk
and beads, add very much to the
effect of the drapery and to the char-
acter of the room.
A library in ordinary family life
has two parts to play. It is not
only to hold books, but to make the
family at home in a literary atmos-
phere. Such a room is apt to be a
fascinating one by reason of this
very variety of use and purpose,
and because it is a centre for all
the family treasures. Books, pictures,
200 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
papers, photographs, bits of decora-
tive needlework, all centre here, and
all are on most orderly behaviour,
like children at a company dinner.
The colour of such a room may, and
should, be much warmer and stronger
than that of a parlour pure and sim-
ple, the very constancy and hardness
of its use indicating tints of strength
and resistance ; but, keeping that in
mind, the rules for general use of
colour and harmony of tints will
apply as well to a room used for a
double purpose as for a single. Of
course the furniture should be more
solid and darker, as would be neces-
sary for constant use, but the deep-
ening of tones in general colour pro-
vides for that, and for the use of rugs
of a different character. In a room
of this kind perhaps the best possible
effect is produced by the use of some
textile as a wall-covering, as in that
case the same material with a con-
FURNITURE 201
trasted colour in the lining can be
used for curtains, and to some extent
in the furniture. This use of one
material has not only an effect of
richness which is due to the library
of the house, but it softens and brings
together all the heterogeneous things
which different members of a large
family are apt to require in a sitting-
room.
To those who prefer to work out
and adapt their own surroundings, it
is well to illustrate the advice given
for colour in different exposures by
selecting particular rooms, with their
various relations to light, use, and
circumstances, and seeing how col-
our-principles can be applied to them.
We may choose a reception-hall,
in either a city or country house,
since the treatment would in both
cases be guided by the same rules.
If in a city house, it may be on the
shady or the sunny side of the street,
202 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
and this at once would difFerentiate,
perhaps the colour, and certainly the
depth of colour to be used. If it
is the hall of a country house the
difference between north or south
light will not be as great, since a
room opening on the north in a
house standing alone, in unobstructed
space, would have an effect of cold-
ness, but not necessarily of shadow or
darkness. The first condition, then,
of coldness of light would have to be
considered in both cases, but less
positively in the country, than in the
city house. If the room is actually
dark, a warm or orange tone of yel-
low will both modify and lighten it.
Gold-coloured or yellow canvas
with oak mouldings lighten and warm
the walls ; and rugs with a prepon-
derance of white and yellow trans-
form a dark hall into a light and
cheerful one. It must be remem-
bered that few dark colours can
FURNITURE 203
assert themselves in the absolute
shadow of a north light. Green and
blue become black. Gold, orange,
and red alone have sufficient power
to hold their own, and make us con-
scious of them in darkness.
In a hall which has plenty of
light, but no sun, red is an effisctive
and natural colour, copper-coloured
leather paper, cushions and rugs or
carpets of varying shades of red,
and transparent curtains of the same
tint give an effect of warmth and
vitality. Red is truly a delightful
colour to deal with in shadowed
interiors, its sensitiveness to light,
changing from colour-tinted dark-
ness to palpitating ruby, and even to
flame colour, on the slightest invita-
tion of day- or lamp-light, makes it
like a living presence. It is especi-
ally valuable at the entrance of the
home, where it seems to meet one
with almost a human welcome.
204 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
If we can succeed in making what
would be a cold and unattractive en-
trance hospitable and cordial by lib-
eral use of warm and strong colour,
by reversing the effort we can just
as easily modify the effect of glaring,
or overpowering, sunlight.
Suppose the entrance-hall of the
house to be upon the sunny side of
the street, where in addition to the
natural effect of full rays of the sun
there are also the reflections from
innumerable other house-fronts and
house-windows.
In this case we must simulate
shadow and mystery, and this can be
done by the colour-tones of blues
and greens. I use these in the
plural because the shadows of both
are innumerable, and because all,
except perhaps turquoise and apple-
green, are natural shadow-tints. Green
and blue can be used together or
separately, according to the skill and
FURNITURE 205
what is called the " colour-sense "
with which they are applied.
To use them together requires not
only observation of colour-occurrences
in nature but sensitiveness to the more
subtle out-of-door effects, resulting
from intermingling of shadows and
reflection of lights. Well done, it is
one of the most beautiful and satisfac-
tory of achievements, but it may easily
be bad by reason of sharp contrasts, or
unmodified juxtaposition.
But a room where blue in all its
shades from dark to light alone pre-
dominates, or a room where only
green is used, bright and gray tones
in contrast and variation is within
the reach of most colour-loving mor-
tals, and as both of these tints are
companionable with oak and gold,
and to be found in nearly all deco-
ration materials, it is easy to arrange
a refined and beautiful effect in either
colour.
2o6 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
It will require little reflection to
show that a hall skilfully treated with
green or blue tints would modify the
colour of sunlight, without giving a
sense of discord. It would be like
passing only from sunlight to grate-
ful shadow, and this because in all
art the actual representation shadow-
colour would be blue or green. The
shadow of a tree falling upon snow
on a sunny winter day is blue. The
shadow of a sunheated rock in sum-
mer is green, and the success of either
of these schemes of decoration would
be because of adherence to an actual
principle of colour, or a knowledge
of the peculiar qualities of certain
colours and their proper use. It
would be an intelligent application
of the medicinal or healing qualities
of colour to the constitution of the
house, as skilful physicians use medi-
cines to overcome constitutional de-
fects or difficulties in man.
FURNITURE 207
This may be called corrective treat-
ment of a room, and may, of course,
include all the decorative devices of
ornament, design and furniture, and
although it is not, strictly speaking,
decoration, it should certainly and
always precede decoration.
It is sad to see an elaborate scheme
of ornament based upon bad colour-
treatment, and unfortunately this not
infrequently happens.
It is difficult to give a formula for
the decoration of any room in rela-
tion to its colour-treatment, except
by a careful description of certain
successful examples, each one of which
illustrates principles that may be of
use to the amateur or student of the
art.
One which occurs to me in this
immediate connection is a dining-
room in an apartment house, where
this room alone is absolutely without
what may be called exterior light.
2o8 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
Its two windows open upon a well,
the brick wall of which is scarcely
ten feet away. Fortunately, it makes
a part of the home of a much trav-
elled and exceedingly cultivated pair
of beings, the business of one being
to create beauty in the way of pict-
ures and the other of statues, so per-
haps it is less than a wonder that this
square, unattractive well-room should
have blossomed under their hands
into a dining-room perfect in colour,
style, and fittings. I shall give only
the result, the process being capable
of infinite small variations.
At present it is a room sixteen feet
square, one side of which is occupied
by two nearly square windows. The
wood-work, including a five-foot
wainscot of small square panels, is
painted a glittering varnished white
which is warm in tone, but not
creamy. The upper halves of the
square windows are of semi-opaque
FURNITURE 209
yellow glass, veined and variable, but
clear enough everywhere to admit a
stained yellow light. Below these,
thin yellow silk curtains cross each
other, so that the whole window-space
radiates yellow light. If we reflect
that the colour of sunlight is yellow,
we shall be able to see both the
philosophy and the result of this
treatment.
The wall above the wainscot is
covered with a plain unbleached
muslin, stencilled at the top in a re-
peating design of faint yellow tile-
like squares which fade gradually into
white at a foot below the ceiling.
At intervals along the wall are water-
colours of flat Holland meadows, or
blue canals, balanced on either side
by a blue delft plate, and in a corner
near the window is a veritable blue
porcelain stove, which once faintly
warmed some far-off^ German in-
terior. The floor is polished oak, as
210 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
are the table and chairs. I pur-
posely leave out all the accessories
and devices of brass and silver, the
quaint brass-framed mirrors, the ivy-
encircled windows, the one or two
great ferns, the choice blue table-
furniture : — because these are per-
sonal and should neither be imitated
or reduced to rules.
The lesson is in the use of yellow
and white, accented with touches of
blue, which converts a dark and per-
fectly cheerless room into a glitter of
light and warmth.
The third example I shall give is
of a dining-room which may be called
palatial in size and effect, occupying
the whole square wing of a well-
known New York house. There are
many things in this house in the way
of furniture, pictures, historic bits of
art in different lines, which would
distinguish it among fine houses, but
one particular room is, perhaps, as
FURNITURE 2 1 1
perfectly successful in richness of de-
tail, picturesqueness of effect, and at
the same time perfect appropriateness
to time, place, and circumstances as
is possible for any achievement of its
kind. The dining-room, and its art,
taken in detail, belongs to the Vene-
tian school, but if its colour-effect
were concentrated upon canvas, it
would be known as a Rembrandt.
There is the same rich shadow, cover-
ing a thousand gradations, — the same
concentration of light, and the same
liberal diffusion of warm and rich
tones of colour. It is a grand room
in space, as New York interiors go,
being perhaps forty to fifty feet in
breadth and length, with a height
exactly proportioned to the space.
It has had the advantage of separate
creation — being ^^ thought out" years
after the early period of the house,
and is, consequently, a concrete re-
sult of study, travel, and oppor-
212 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
tunities, such as few families are
privileged to experience. Aside from
the perfect proportions of the room,
it is not difficult to analyse the art
which makes it so distinguished an
example of decoration of space, and
decide wherein lies its especial charm.
It is undoubtedly that of colour, al-
though this is based upon a detail so
perfect, that one hesitates to give it
predominant credit. The whole, or
nearly the whole west end of the
room is thrown into one vast, slightly
projecting window of clear leaded
glass, the lines of which stand against
the light like a weaving of spiders'
webs. There is a border of various
tints at its edge, which softens it into
the brown shadow of the room, and
the centre of each large sash is marked
by a shield-like ornament glowing
with colour like a jewel. The long
ceiling and high wainscoting melt
away from this leaded window in
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FURNITURE ' 213
a perspective of wonderfully carved
planes of antique oak, catching the
light on lines and points of projection
and quenching it in hollows of relief.
These perpendicular wall panels
were scaled from a room in a Vene-
tian palace, carved when the art and
the fortunes of that sea-city were at
their best, and the alternately repeat-
ing squares of the ceiling were fash-
ioned to carry out and supplement
the ancient carvings. If this were
a small room, there would be a
sense of unrest in so lavish a use of
broken surface, but in one large
enough to have it felt as a whole,
and not in detail, it simply gives a
quality of preciousness. The soft
browns of the wood spread a mystery
of surface, from the edge of the pol-
ished floor until it meets a frieze of
painted canvas filled with large reclin-
ing figures clad in draperies of red,
and blue, and yellow — separating the
214 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
walls from the ceiling by an illumi-
nation of colour. This colour-deco-
ration belongs to the past, and it is a
question if any modern painting could
have adapted itself so perfectly to the
spirit of the room, although in itself
it might be far more beautiful. It
is a bit of antique imagination, its
cherub-borne plates of fruit, and
golden flagons, and brown-green of
foliage and turquoise of sky, and
crimson and gold of garments, all
softened to meet the shadows of the
room. The door-spaces in the wain-
scot are hung with draperies of crim-
son velvet, the surface frayed and
flattened by time into variations of
red, impossible to newer weavings,
while the great floor-space is spread
with an enormous rug of the same
colour — the gift of a Sultan. A
carved table stands in the centre,
surrounded with high-backed carved
chairs, the seats covered with the
FURNITURE 21;
same antique velvet v^hich shows in
the portieres. A fall of thin crimson
silk tints the sides of the window-
frame, and on the two ends of the
broad step or platform which leads to
the window stand two tall pedestals
and globe-shaped jars of red and
blue-green pottery. The deep, ruby-
like red of the one and the mixed
indefinite tint of the other seem to
have curdled into the exact shade for
each particular spot, their fitness is so
perfect.
The very sufficient knowledge
which has gone to the making of this
superb room has kept the draperies
unbroken by design or device, giving
colour only and leaving to the carved
walls the privilege of ornament.
It will be seen that there are but
two noticeable colour-tones in the
room — brown with infinite variations,
and red in rugs and draperies.
There is no real affinity between
2i6 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
these two tints, but they are here so
well balanced in mass, that the two
form a complete harmony, like the
brown waves of a landscape at even-,
ing tipped with the fire of a sunset
sky.
Much IS to be learned from a
room like this, in the lesson of unity
and concentration of effect. The
strongest, and in fact the only, mass
of vital colour is in the carpet, which
is allowed to play upwards, as it were,
into draperies, and furniture, and
frieze, none of which show the same
depth and intensity. To the concen-
tration of light in the one great win-
dow we must give the credit of the
Rembrandt-like effect of the whole
interior. If the walls were less rich,
this single flood of light would be a
defect, because it would be difficult
to treat a plain surface with colour
alone, which should be equally good
in strong light and deep shadow.
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FURNITURE 217
Then, again, the amount of living
and brilliant colour is exactly pro-
portioned to that of sombre brown,
the red holding its value by strength,
as against the greatly preponderating
mass of dark. On the whole this
may be called a " picture-room," and
yet it is distinctly liveable, lending
itself not only to hospitality and
ceremonious function but also to
real domesticity. It is true that
there is a certain obligation in its
style of beauty which calls for fine
manners and fine behaviour, possibly
even, behaviour in kind ; for it is in
the nature of all fine and exceptional
things to demand a corresponding
fineness from those who enjoy them.
I will give still another dining-
room as an example of colour, which,
unlike the others, is not modern, but
a sort of falling in of old gentility
and costliness into lines of modern
art — one might almost say it hap^
21 8 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
pened to be beautiful, and yet the
happening is only an adjustment of
fine old conditions to modern ideas.
Yet I have known many as fine a
room torn out and refitted, losing
thereby all the inherent dignity of
age and superior associations.
A beautiful city home of seventy
years ago is not very like a beautiful
city home of to-day ; perhaps less so
in this than in any other country.
The character of its fineness is curi-
ously changed ; the modern house is
fitted to its inmates, while the old-
fashioned house, modelled upon the
early eighteenth century art of Eng-
land, obliged the inmates to fit them-
selves as best they might to a given
standard.
The dining-room I speak of be-
longs to the period when Washington
Square, New York, was still sur-
rounded by noble homes, and almost
the limit of luxurious city life was
FURNITURE 219
Union Square. The house fronts to
the north, consequently the dining-
room, which is at the back, is flooded
with sunshine. The ceiling is higher
than it would be in a modern house,
and the windows extend to the floor,
and rise nearly to the ceiling, far in-
deed above the flat arches of the
doorways with their rococo flourishes.
This extension of window-frame, and
the heavy and elaborate plaster cor-
nice so deep as to be almost a frieze,
and the equally elaborate centre-
piece, are the features which must
have made it a room difficult to
ameliorate.
I could fancy it must have been
an ugly room in the old days when
its walls were probably white, and
the great mahogany doors were spots
of colour in prevailing spaces of
blankness. Now, however, any one
at all learned in art, or sensitive to
beauty, would pronounce it a beau-
220 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
tifiil room. The way in which the
ceiling with its heavy centre-piece and
plaster cornice is treated is especial-
ly interesting. The whole of this
is covered with an ochre-coloured
bronze, while the walls and door-
casings are painted a dark indigo,
which includes a faint trace of green.
Over this wall-colour, and joining
the cornice, is carried a stencil de-
sign in two coloured bronzes which
seem to repeat the light and shadow
of the cornice mouldings, and this
apparently extends the cornice into a
frieze which ends faintly at a picture-
moulding some three feet below.
This treatment not only lowers the
ceiling, which is in construction too
high for the area of the room, but
blends it with the wall in a way
which imparts a certain richness of
effect to all the lower space.
The upper part of the windows,
to the level of the picture-moulding.
FURNITURE 221
is covered with green silk, overlaid
with an applique of the same in a
design somewhat like the frieze, so
that it seems to carry the frieze across
the space of light in a green tracery
of shadow. The same green extends
from curtain-rods at the height of
the picture-moulding into long under-
curtains of silk, while the over-cur-
tains are of indigo coloured silk-can-
vas which matches the walls.
The portieres separating the din-
ing-room from the drawing-room are
of a wonderfully rich green brocade
— the colour of which answers to
the green of the silk under-curtains
across the room, while the design
ranges itself indisputably with the
period of the plaster work. The
blue and green of the curtains and
portiere each seem to claim their own
in the mixed and softened background
of the wall. .
The colour of the room would
222 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
hardly be complete without the three
beautiful portraits which hang upon
the walls, and suggest their part of
the life and conversation of to-day
so that it stands on a proper plane
with the dignity of three generations.
The beautiful mahogany doors and
elaboration of cornice and central
ornament belong to them, but the
harmony and beauty of colour are
of our own time and tell of the gen-
eral knowledge and feeling for art
which belongs to it.
I have given the colour-treatment
only of this room, leaving out the
effect of carved teak-wood furniture
and subtleties of china and glass —
not alone as an instance of colour in
a sunny exposure, but as an example
of fitting new styles to old, of keep-
ing what is valuable and beautiful in
itself and making it a part of the
comparatively new art of decoration.
There is a dining-room in one of
GLASS BY DUNHAM WHEELER
SCREEN BY DORA WHEELER KEITH
SCREEN AND GLASS WINDOW IN HOUSE AT LAKEWOOD
(Belonging to Clarence Roof, Esq.)
FURNITURE 223
the many delightful houses in Lake-
wood, N. J., which owes its unique
charm to a combination of position,
light, colour, and perhaps more than
all, to the clever decoration of its
upper walls, which is a fine and broad
composition of swans and many-col-
oured clusters of grapes and vine-
foliage placed above the softly
tinted copper-coloured wall. The
same design is carried in silvery and
gold-coloured leaded-glass across the
top of the wide west window, as
shown in illustration opposite page
222, and reappears with a shield-
shaped arrangement of wings in a
beautiful four-leaved screen.
The notable and enjoyable colour
of the room is seen from the very
entrance of the house, the broad
main hall making a carpeted highway
to the wide opening of the room,
where a sheaf of tinted sunset light
seems to spread itself like a many-
224 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
doubled fan against the shadows of
the hall.
All the ranges and intervals, the
lights, reflections, and darks possible
to that most beautiful of metals —
copper — seem to be gathered into
the frieze and screen, and melt softly
into the greens of the foliage, or tint
the plumage of the swans. It is an
instance of the kind of decoration
which is both classic and domestic,
and being warmed and vivified by-
beautiful colour, appeals both to the
senses and the imagination.
It would be easy to multiply In-
stances of beautiful rooms, and each
one might be helpful for mere imita-
tion, but those I have given have
each one illustrated — more or less
distinctly — the principle of colour as
affecting or being affected by light.
I have not thought it necessary to
give examples of rooms with eastern
or western exposures, because in such
FURNITURE 225
rooms one is free to consult one's
own personal preferences as to col-
our, being limited only by the gen-
eral rules which govern all colour
decoration.
I have not spoken of pictures or
paintings as accessories of interior
decoration, because while their influ-
ence upon the character and degree
of beauty in the house is greater than
all other things put together, their
selection and use are so purely per-
sonal as not to call for remark or
advice. Any one who loves pictures
well enough to buy them, can hardly
help placing them where they not
only are at their best, but where
they will also have the greatest in-
fluence.
A house where pictures predom-
inate will need little else that comes
under the head of decoration. It is
a pity that few houses have this ad-
vantage, but fortunately it is quite
226 PRINCIPLES OF HOME DECORATION
possible to give a picture quality to
every interior. This can often be
done by following the lead of some
accidental effect which is in itself
picturesque. The placing a jar of
pottery or metal near or against a
piece of drapery which repeats its
colour and heightens the lustre of its
substance is a small detail, but one
which gives pleasure out of all pro-
portion to its importance. The half
accidental draping of a curtain, the
bringing together of shapes and col-
ours in insignificant things, may give
a character which is lastingly pleasing
both to inmates and casual visitors.
Of course this is largely a matter
of personal gift. One person may
make a picturesque use of colour and
material, which in the hands of an-
other will be perhaps without fault,
but equally without, charm. In-
stances of this kind come constantly
within our notice, although we are
FURNITURE 227
not always able to give the exact
reasons for success or failure. We
only know that we feel the charm of
one instance and are indifferent to,
or totally unimpressed by, the other.
It is by no means an unimportant
thing to create a beautiful and pict-
uresque interior. There is no influ-
ence so potent upon life as harmoni-
ous surroundings, and to create and
possess a home which is harmonious
in a simple and inexpensive way is the
privilege of all but the wretchedly
poor. In proportion also as these
surroundings become more perfect
in their art and meaning, there is a
corresponding elevation in the dweller
among them — since the best decora-
tion must include many spiritual les-
sons. It may indeed be used to
further vulgar ambitions, or pamper
bodily weaknesses, but truth and
beauty are its essentials, and these
will have their utterance.
\lf