What a joyous thing is color! How influenced we all are by it, even if
we are unconscious of how our sense of restfulness has been brought
about. Certain colors are antagonistic to each of us, and I think we
should try to learn just what colors are most sympathetic to our own
individual emotions, and then make the best of them.
If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live
in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a
timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in
surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in
which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to
us. No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of
iron nerves. People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds
and greens--primitive colors, all. Nowadays, we must consider the effect
of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.
Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.
Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
say that one woman is "so full of color," when she is alert and happy
and vividly alive. We say another woman is "colorless," because she is
bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
and--gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
of color, although often we have not that appreciation.
There is all the difference in the world between the person who
appreciates color and the person who "likes colors." The child, playing
with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads--all these
primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
subtle and intellectual quality.
Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
housefurnishing, says: "Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many
lines and shades."
We are aware that some people are "color-blind," but we do not take the
trouble to ascertain whether the majority of people see colors crudely.
I suppose there are as many color-blind people as there are people who
have a deep feeling for color, and the great masses of people in
between, while they know colors one from another, have no appreciation
of hue. Just as surely, there are some people who cannot tell one tune
from another and some people who have a deep and passionate feeling for
music, while the rest--the great majority of people--can follow a tune
and sing a hymn, but they can go no deeper into music than that.
Surely, each of you must know your own color-sense. You know whether you
get results, don't you? I have never believed that there is a woman so
blind that she cannot tell good from bad effects, even though she may
not be able to tell _why_ one room is good and another bad. It is as
simple as the problem of the well-gowned woman and the dowdy one. The
dowdy woman doesn't realize the degree of her own dowdiness, but she
_knows_ that her neighbor is well-gowned, and she envies her with a
vague and pathetic envy.
If, then, you are not sure that you appreciate color, if you feel that
you, like your children, like the green rug with the red roses because
it is "so cheerful," you may be sure that you should let color-problems
alone, and furnish your house in neutral tones, depending on
book-bindings and flowers and open fires and the necessary small
furnishings for your color. Then, with an excellent background of soft
quiet tones, you can venture a little way at a time, trying a bit of
color here for a few days, and asking yourself if you honestly like it,
and then trying another color--a jar or a bowl or a length of
fabric--somewhere else, and trying that out. You will soon find that
your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of
happiness within yourself that you had not suspected. I believe that
good taste can be developed in any woman, just as surely as good manners
are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners.
We may take our first lessons in color from Nature, on whose storehouse
we can draw limitlessly. Nature, when she plans a wondrous splash of
color, prepares a proper background for it. She gives us color plans for
all the needs we can conceive. White and gray clouds on a blue sky--what
more could she use in such a composition? A bit of gray green moss upon
a black rock, a field of yellow dandelions, a pink and white spike of
hollyhocks, an orange-colored butterfly poised on a stalk of
larkspur--what color-plans are these!
[Illustration: A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM]
I think that the first consideration after you have settled your
building-site should be to place your house so that its windows may
frame Nature's own pictures. With windows facing north and south, where
all the fluctuating and wayward charm of the season unrolls before your
eyes, your windows become the finest pictures that you can have. When
this has been arranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
interior of the house, the colors that shall be in harmony with the
window-framed vistas, the colors that shall be backgrounds for the
intimate personal furnishings of your daily life. You must think of your
walls as backgrounds for the colors you wish to bring into your rooms.
And by colors I do not mean merely the primary colors, red and blue and
yellow, or the secondary colors, green and orange and violet, I mean the
white spaces, the black shadows, the gray halftones, the suave creams,
that give you the _feeling_ of color.
How often we get a more definite idea of brilliant color from a
white-walled room, with dark and severe furniture and no ornaments, no
actual color save the blue sky framed by the windows and the flood of
sunshine that glorifies everything, than from a room that has a dozen
fine colors, carefully brought together, in its furnishings!
We must decide our wall colors by the aspect of our rooms. Rooms facing
south may be very light gray, cream, or even white, but northern rooms
should be rich in color, and should suggest warmth and just a little
mystery. Some of you have seen the Sala di Cambio at Perugia. Do you
remember how dark it seems when one enters, and how gradually the
wonderful coloring glows out from the gloom and one is comforted and
soothed into a sort of dreamland of pure joy, in the intimate
satisfaction of it all? It is unsurpassable for sheer decorative charm,
I think.
For south rooms blues and grays and cool greens and all the dainty gay
colors are charming. Do you remember the song Edna May used to sing in
"The Belle of New York"? I am not sure of quoting correctly, but the
refrain was: "Follow the Light!" I have so often had it in mind when
I've been planning my color schemes--"Follow the Light!" But light
colors for sunshine, remember, and dark ones for shadow.
For north rooms I am strongly inclined to the use of paneling in our
native American woods, that are so rich in effect, but alas, so little
used. I hope our architects will soon realize what delightful and
inexpensive rooms can be made of pine and cherry, chestnut and cypress,
and the beautiful California redwood. I know of a library paneled with
cypress. The beamed ceiling, the paneled walls, the built-in shelves,
the ample chairs and long tables are all of the soft brown cypress.
Here, if anywhere, you would think a monotony of brown wood would be
obvious, but think of the thousands of books with brilliant bindings!
Think of the green branches of trees seen through the casement windows!
Think of the huge, red-brick fireplace, with its logs blazing in orange
and yellow and vermillion flame! Think of the distinction of a copper
bowl of yellow flowers on the long brown table! Can't you see that this
cypress room is simply glowing with color?
I wish that I might be able to show all you young married girls who are
working out your home-schemes just how to work out the color of a room.
Suppose you are given some rare and lovely jar, or a wee rug, or a rare
old print, or even a quaint old chair from long ago, and build a room
around it. I have some such point of interest in every room I build, and
I think that is why some people like my rooms--they feel, without quite
knowing why, that I have loved them while making them. Now there is a
little sitting-room and bedroom combined in a certain New York house
that I worked out from a pair of Chinese jars. They were the oddest
things, of a sort of blue-green and mauve and mulberry, with flecks of
black, on a cream porcelain ground.
First I found a wee Oriental rug that repeated the colors of the jugs.
This was to go before the hearth. Then I worked out the shell of the
room: the woodwork white, the walls bluish green, the plain carpet a
soft green. I designed the furniture and had it made by a skilful
carpenter, for I could find none that would harmonize with the room.
The day bed which is forty-two inches wide, is built like a wide roomy
sofa. One would never suspect it of being a plain bed. Still it makes no
pretensions to anything else, for it has the best of springs and the
most comfortable of mattresses, and a dozen soft pillows. The bed is of
wood and is painted a soft green, with a dark-green line running all
around, and little painted festoons of flowers in decoration. The
mattress and springs are covered with a most delightful mauve chintz, on
which birds and flowers are patterned. There are several easy chairs
cushioned with this chintz, and the window hangings are also of it. The
chest of drawers is painted in the same manner. There are glass knobs on
the drawers, and a sheet of plate glass covers the top of it. An old
painting hangs above it.
The open bookshelves are perfectly plain in construction. They are
painted the same bluish-green, and the only decoration is the line of
dark green about half an inch from the edge. Any woman who is skilful
with her brush could decorate furniture of this kind, and I daresay many
women could build it.
There is another bedroom in this house, a room in red and blue. "Red and
blue"--you shudder. I know it! But _such_ red and _such_ blue!
Will you believe me when I assure you that this room is called cool and
restful-looking by everyone who sees it? The walls are painted plain
cream. The woodwork is white. The perfectly plain carpet rug is of a
dull red that is the color of an old-fashioned rose--you know the roses
that become lavender when they fade? The mantel is of Siena marble, and
over it there is an old mirror with an upper panel painted in colors
after the manner of some of those delightful old rooms found in France
about the time of Louis XVI. If you have one very good picture and will
use it in this way, inset over the mantel with a mirror below it, you
will need no other pictures in your room.
[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM]
The chintz used in this room is patterned in the rose red of the carpet
and a dull cool blue, on a white ground. This chintz is used on the
graceful sofa, the several chairs and the bed, which are ivory in tone.
The hangings of the bed are lined with taffetas of rose red. The
bedcover is of the same silk, and the inner curtains at the window are
lined with it. The small table at the head of the bed, the kidney table
beside the sofa, and the small cabinets near the mantel, are of
mahogany. There is a mahogany writing-table placed at right angles to
the windows.
From this rose and blue bedroom you enter a little dressing-room that is
also full of color. Here are the same cream walls, the dull red carpet,
the old blue silk shades on lamps and candles, but the chintz is
different: the ground is black, and gray parrots and paroquets swing in
blue-green festoons of leaves and branches. The dressing-table is placed
in front of the window, so that you can see yourself for better or for
worse. There is a three-fold mirror of black and gold lacquer, and a
Chinese cabinet of the same lacquer in the corner. The low seat before
the dressing-table is covered with the chintz. A few costume prints hang
on the wall. You can imagine how impossible it would be to be
ill-tempered in such a cheerful place.