HOW TO CREATE A ROOM
One so often hears the complaint, "I could not possibly set out alone
to furnish a room! I don't know anything about _periods_. Why, a Louis
XVI chair and an Empire chair are quite the same to me. Then the
question of antiques and reproductions--why any one could mislead me!"
If you have absolutely no interest in the arranging or rearranging of
your rooms, house or houses, of course, leave it to a decorator and
give your attention to whatever does interest you. On the other hand,
as with bridge, if you really want to play the game, you can learn it.
The first rule is to determine the actual use to which you intend
putting the room. Is it to be a bedroom merely, or a combination of
bedroom and boudoir? Is it to be a formal reception-room, or a
living-room? Is it to be a family library, or a man's study? If it is
a small flat, do you aim at absolute comfort, artistically achieved,
or do you aim at formality at the expense of comfort?
If you lean toward both comfort and formality, and own a country house
and a city abode, there will be no difficulty in solving the problem.
Formality may be left to the town house or flat, while during
week-ends, holidays and summers you can revel in supreme comfort.
Every man or woman is capable of creating comfort. It is a question of
those deep chairs with wide seats and backs, soft springs, thick,
downy cushions, of tables and bookcases conveniently placed, lights
where you want them, beds to the individual taste,--double, single, or
twins!
The getting together of a period room, one period or periods in
combination, is difficult, especially if you are entirely ignorant of
the subject. However, here is your cue. Let us suppose you need, or
want, a desk--an antique desk. Go about from one dealer to the other
until you find the very piece you have dreamed of; one that gives
pleasure to you, as well as to the dealer. Then take an experienced
friend to look at it. If you have every reason to suppose that the
desk is genuine, buy it. Next, read up on the furniture of the
particular period to which your desk belongs, in as serious a manner
as you do when you buy a prize dog at the show. Now you have made an
intelligent beginning as a collector. Reading informs you, but you
must buy old furniture to be educated on that subject. Be eternally on
the lookout; the really good pieces, veritable antiques, are rare;
most of them are in museums, in private collections or in the hands of
the most expensive dealers. I refer to those unique pieces, many of
them signed by the maker and in perfect condition because during all
their existence they have been jealously preserved, often by the very
family and in the very house for which they were made. Our chances for
picking up antiques are reduced to pieces which on account of reversed
circumstances have been turned out of house and home, and, as with
human wanderers, much jolting about has told upon them. Most of these
are fortified in various directions, but they are treasures all the
same, and have a beauty value in line colour and workmanship and a
wonderful fitness for the purposes for which they were intended.
"Surely we are many men of many minds!"
PLATE V
The sofa large, strong and luxuriously comfortable; the curtains
simple, durable and masculine in gender. The tapestry and
architectural picture, decorative and appropriately impersonal,
as the wall decorations should be in a room used merely for
transacting business.
[Illustration: _A Corner of the Same Office_]
Some prefer antiques a bit dilapidated; a missing detail serving as a
hallmark to calm doubts; others insist upon completeness to the eye
and solidity for use; while the connoisseur, with unlimited means,
recognises nothing less than signed sofas and chairs, and other
_objets d'art_. To repeat:--be always on the lookout, remembering that
it is the man who knows the points of a good dog, horse or car who can
pick a winner.
Wonderful reproductions are made in New York City and other cities,
and thousands bought every day. They are beautiful and desirable
pieces of furniture, ornaments or silks; but the lover of the _vrai
antique_ learns to detect, almost at a glance, the lack of that
quality which a fine _old_ piece has. It is not alone that the
materials must be old. There is a certain quality gained from the long
association of its parts. One knows when a piece has "found itself,"
as Kipling would put it. Time gives an inimitable finish to any
surface.
If you are young in years, immature in taste, and limited as to bank
account, you will doubtless go in for a frankly modern room, with
cheerful painted furniture, gay or soft-toned chintzes, and
inexpensive smart floor coverings. To begin this way and gradually to
collect what you want, piece by piece, is to get the most amusement
possible out of furnishing. When you have the essential pieces for any
one room, you can undertake an _ensemble_. Some of the rarest
collections have been got together in this way, and, if one's fortune
expands instead of contracting, old pieces may be always replaced by
those still more desirable, more rare, more in keeping with your
original scheme.
To buy expensive furnishings in haste and without knowledge, and
within a year or two discover everything to be in bad taste, is a
tragedy to a person with an instinctive aversion to waste. Antique or
modern, every beautiful thing bought is a cherished heirloom in
embryo. Remember, we may inherit a good antique or _objet d'art_, buy
one, or bequeath one. Let us never be guilty of the reverse,--a
bar-sinister piece of furniture! Sympathy with unborn posterity should
make us careful.
It is always excusable to retain an ugly, inartistic thing--if it is
_useful_; but an ornament must be beautiful in line or in colour, or
it belies its name. Practise that genuine, obvious loyalty which hides
away on a safe, but invisible shelf, the bad taste of our ancestors
and friends.
Having settled upon a type of furniture, turn your attention to the
walls. Always let the location of your room decide the colour of its
walls. The room with a sunny exposure may have any colour you like,
warm or cold, but your north room or any room more or less sunless,
requires the warm, sun-producing yellows, pinks, apple-greens, beige
and wood-colours, never the cold colours, such as greys, mauves,
violets and blues, unless in combination with the warm tones. If it is
your intention to hang pictures on the walls, use plain papers.
Remember you must never put a spot on a spot! The colour of your walls
once established, keep in mind two things: that to be agreeable to the
artistic eye your ceilings must be lighter than your sidewalls, and
your floors darker. Broadly speaking, it is Nature's own arrangement,
green trees and hillsides, the sky above, and the dark earth beneath
our feet. A ceiling, if lighter in tone than the walls, gives a sense
of airiness to a room. Floors, whether of exposed wood, completely
carpeted, or covered by rugs, must be enough darker than your
sidewalls to "hold down your room," as the decorators say.
If colour is to play a conspicuous part, brightly figured silks and
cretonnes being used for hangings and upholstery, the floor covering
should be indefinite both as to colour and design. On the other hand,
when rugs or carpets are of a definite design in pronounced colours,
particularly if you are arranging a living-room, make your walls,
draperies and chair-covers plain, and observe great restraint in the
use of colour. Those who work with them know that there is no such
thing as an ugly colour, for all colours are beautiful. Whether a
colour makes a beautiful or an ugly effect depends entirely upon its
juxtaposition to other tones. How well French milliners and
dressmakers understand this! To make the point quite clear, let us
take magenta. Used alone, nothing has more style, more beautiful
distinction, but in wrong combination magenta can be amazingly,
depressingly ugly. Magenta with blue is ravishing, beautiful in
the subtle way old tapestries are: it touches the imagination whenever
that combination is found.
PLATE VI
The table is modern, but made on the lines of a refectory table,
well suited in length, width and solidity for board meetings,
etc.
The chairs are Italian in style.
[Illustration: _Another View of the Same Office_]
We grow up to, into, and out of colour schemes. Each of the Seven Ages
of Man has its appropriate setting in colour as in line. One learns
the dexterous manipulation of colour from furnishing, as an artist
learns from painting.
Refuse to accept a colour scheme, unless it appeals to your individual
taste--no matter who suggests it. To one not very sensitive to colour
here is a valuable suggestion. Find a bit of beautiful old silk
brocade, or a cretonne you especially like, and use its colour
combinations for your room--a usual device of decorators. Let us
suppose your silk or cretonne to have a deep-cream background, and
scattered on it green foliage, faded salmon-pink roses and little,
fine blue flowers. Use its prevailing colour, the deep cream, for
walls and possibly woodwork; make the draperies of taffeta or rep in
soft apple-greens; use the same colour for upholstery, make shades for
lamp and electric lights of salmon-pink, then bring in a touch of blue
in a sofa cushion, a footstool or small chair, or in a beautiful vase
which charms by its shape as well by reproducing the exact tone of
blue you desire. There are some who insist no room is complete without
its note of blue. Many a room has been built up around some highly
prized treasure,--lovely vase or an old Japanese print.
A thing always to be avoided is monotony in colour. Who can not recall
barren rooms, without a spark of attraction despite priceless
treasures, dispersed in a meaningless way? That sort of setting puts a
blight on any gathering. "Well," you will ask, "given the task of
converting such a sterile stretch of monotony into a blooming joy, how
should one begin?" It is quite simple. Picture to yourself how the
room would look if you scattered flowers about it, roses, tulips,
mignonette, flowers of yellow and blue, in the pell-mell confusion of
a blooming garden. Now imitate the flower colours by _objets d'art_ so
judiciously placed that in a trice you will admire what you once found
cold. As if by magic, a white, cream, beige or grey room may be
transformed into a smiling bower, teeming with personality, a room
where wit and wisdom are spontaneously let loose.
If your taste be for chintzes and figured silks, take it as a safe
rule, that given a material with a light background, it should be the
same in tone as your walls; the idea being that by this method you get
the full decorative value of the pattern on chintz or silk.
Figured materials can increase or diminish the size of a room, open up
vistas, push back your walls, or block the vision. For this reason it
is unsafe to buy material before trying the effect of it in its
destined abode.
Remember that the matter of _background_ is of the greatest importance
when arranging your furniture and ornaments. See that your piano is so
placed that the pianist has an unbroken background, of wall, tapestry,
a large piece of rare old sills, or a mirror. Clyde Fitch, past-master
at interior decoration, placed his piano in front of broad windows,
across which at night were drawn crimson damask curtains. Some of us
will never forget Geraldine Farrar, as she sat against that background
wearing a dull, clinging blue-green gown, going over the score,--from
memory,--of "Salomé."
The aim is to make the performer at the piano the object of interest,
therefore place no diverting objects, such as pictures or ornaments,
on a line with the listener's eye, except as a vague background.
There can be no more becoming setting for a group of people dining by
candle or electric light, than walls panelled with dark wood to the
ceiling, or a high wainscoting.
A beautiful sitting-room, not to be forgotten, had light violet walls,
dull-gold frames on the furniture which was covered in deep-cream
brocades, bits of old purple velvets and violet silks on the tables,
under large bowls of Benares bronze filled with violets. The grand
piano was protected by a piece of old brocade in faded yellows, and
our hostess, a well-known singer, usually wore a simple Florentine
tea-gown of soft violet velvet, which together with the lighter violet
walls, set off her fair skin and black hair to beautiful advantage.
Put a figured, many-coloured sofa cushion behind the head of a pretty
woman, and if the dominating colour is becoming to her, she is still
pretty, but change it to a solid black, purple or dull-gold and see
how instantly the degree of her beauty is enhanced by being
thrown into relief.
PLATE VII
Gives attractive corner by a window, the heavy silk brocade
curtains of which are drawn. A standard electric lamp lights the
desk, both modern-painted pieces, and the beautiful old flower
picture, black background with a profusion of colours in lovely
soft tones, is framed by a dull-gold moulding and gives immense
distinction. The chair is Venetian Louis XV, the same period as
desk in style.
Not to be ignored in this picture is a tin scrap basket
beautifully proportioned and painted a vivid emerald green; a
valuable addition a note of cheerful colour. The desk and wooden
standard of lamp are painted a deep blue-plum colour, touched
with gold, and the silk curtains are soft mulberry, in two tones.
[Illustration: _Corner of Room, Showing Painted Furniture, Antique and
Modern_]
Study values--just why and how much any decorative article decorates,
and remember in furnishing a room, decorating a wall or dining-room
table, it is not the intrinsic value or individual beauty of any one
article which counts. Each picture on the wall, each piece of
furniture, each bit of silver, glass, china, linen or lace, each yard
of chintz or silk, every carpet or rug must be beautiful and effective
_in relation to the others used_, for the _art_ of interior decoration
lies in this subtle, or obvious, relationship of furnishings.
We acknowledge as legitimate all schemes of interior decoration and
insist that what makes any scheme good or bad, successful, or
unsuccessful presuming a knowledge of the fundamentals of the art, is
the fact that it is planned in reference to the type of man or woman
who is to live in it.
A new note has been struck of late in the arranging of bizarre,
delightful rooms which on entering we pronounce "very amusing."
Original they certainly are, in colour combinations, tropical in the
impression they make,--or should we say Oriental?
They have come to us via Russia, Bakst, Munich and Martine of Paris.
Like Rheinhardt's staging of "Sumurun," because these blazing interiors
strike us at an unaccustomed angle, some are merely astonished, others
charmed as well. There are temperaments ideally set in these interiors,
and there are houses where they are in place. We cannot regard them as
epoch-making, but granted that there is no attempt to conform to two of
the rules for furnishing,--_appropriateness_ and _practicality_,
the results are refreshingly new and entertaining. This is one of the
instances where exaggeration has served as a healthy antidote to the
tendency toward extreme dinginess rampant about ten years ago, resulting
from an obsession to antique everything. The reaction from this, a flaming
rainbow of colours, struck a blow to the artistic sense, drew
attention back to the value of colour and started the creative impulse
along the line of a happy medium.
Whether it be a furnished porch, personal suite (as bedroom, boudoir
and bath), a family living-room, dining-room, formal reception-room,
or period ballroom, never allow members of your household or servants
to destroy the effect you have achieved with careful thought and
outlay of money, by ruthlessly moving chairs and tables from one room
to another. Keep your wicker furniture on the porch, for which it was
intended. If it strays into the adjacent living-room, done in quite
another scheme, it will absolutely thwart your efforts at harmony,
while your porch-room done in wicker and gay chintzes, striped awnings
and geranium rail-boxes, cries out against the intrusion of a chair
dragged out from the house. Remember that should you intend using your
period ballroom from time to time as an audience room for concerts and
lectures, you must provide a complete equipment of small, very light
(so as to be quickly moved) chairs, in your "period," as a necessary
part of your decoration.
The current idea that a distinguished room remains distinguished
because costly tapestries and old masters hang on its walls, even when
the floor is strewn with vulgar, hired chairs, is an absurd mistake.
Each room from kitchen to ballroom is a stage "set,"--a harmonious
background for certain scenes in life's drama. It is the man or woman
who grasps this principle of a distinguished home who can create an
interior which endures, one which will hold its own despite the ebb
and flow of fashion. Imposing dimensions and great outlay of money do
not necessarily imply distinction, a quality depending upon unerring
good taste in the minutest details, one which may be achieved equally
in a stately mansion, in a city flat, or in a cottage by the sea.
The question of background is absorbingly interesting. A vase, with or
without flowers, to add to the composition of your room, that is, to
make "a good picture," must be placed so that its background sets it
off. Let the Venetian glass vase holding one rose stand in such a
position that your green curtain is its background, and not a
photograph or other picture. One flower, carefully placed in a room,
will have more real decorative value than dozens of costly roses
strewn about in the wrong vases, against mottled, line-destroying
backgrounds.
Flowers are always more beautiful in a plain vase, whether of glass,
pottery, porcelain or silver. If a vase chances to have a decoration
in colour, then make a point of having the flowers it holds accord in
colour, if not in shade, with the colour or colours in the vase.
There is a general rule that no ornament should ever be placed in
front of a picture. The exception to this rule occurs when the picture
is one of the large, architectural variety, whose purpose is primarily
mural decoration,--an intentional background, as tapestries often are,
serving its purpose as nature does when a vase or statue is placed in
a park or garden. One sees in portraits by some of the old masters
this idea of landscape used as background. Bear in mind, however, that
if there is a central design--a definite composition in the picture,
or tapestry, no ornament should ever be so placed as to interfere with
it. If you happen to own a tapestry which is not large enough for your
space by one, two or three feet, frame it with a plain border of
velvet or velveteen, to match the dominating colour, and a shade
darker than it appears in the tapestry. This expedient heightens the
decorative effect of the tapestry.