In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly
_chambres de parade_, where everyone was received and much business was
transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These
_chambres de parade_ were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and
hung with fine damasks and tapestries--tapestries thick with bullion
fringes. The horror of fresh air felt by our ancestors was well
illustrated here. No draughts from ill-constructed windows or badly hung
doors could reach the sleeper in such a bed.
[Illustration: AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD]
This was certainly different from our modern ideas of hygiene: In those
days furniture that could not be hastily moved was of little importance.
The bed was usually a mere frame of wood, made to be covered with
valuable hangings which could easily be packed and carried away on
occasions that too often arose in the troublous days of the early Middle
Ages. The benches and tables one sees in many foreign palaces to-day are
covered with gorgeous lengths of velvet and brocade. This is a survival
of the custom when furniture was merely so much baggage. With the early
Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being _les petits
appartements_, in which the larger space formerly accorded the bedroom
was divided into ante-chamber, salon or sitting-room, and the bedroom.
Very often the bed was placed in an alcove, and the heavy brocades and
bullion embroideries were replaced by linen or cotton hangings.
When Oberkampf established himself at Jouy in 1760 France took first
place in the production of these printed linens and cottons. This was
the beginning of the age of chintz and of the delightful decorative
fabrics that are so suited to our modern ideas of hygiene. It seems to
me there are no more charming stuffs for bedroom hangings than these
simple fabrics, with their enchantingly fanciful designs. Think of the
changes one could have with several sets of curtains to be changed at
will, as Marie Antoinette used to do at the Petit Trianon. How amusing
it would be in our own modern houses to change the bed coverings, window
curtains, and so forth, twice or three times a year! I like these loose
slip covers and curtains better than the usual hard upholstery, because
if properly planned the slips can be washed without losing their color
or their lines.
Charming Eighteenth Century prints that are full of valuable hints as to
furniture and decorations for bedrooms can be found in most French
shops. The series known as "_Moreau le Jeun_" is full of suggestion.
Some of the interiors shown are very grand, it is true, but many are
simple enough to serve as models for modern apartments. A set of these
pictures will do much to give one an insight into the decoration of the
Eighteenth Century, a vivid insight that can be obtained in no other
way, perhaps.
I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American
architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at
the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal
suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved
should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge
vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a
despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from
dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was
glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed
in my smaller and humbler quarters.
I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber
should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal
arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room,
then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer
chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may
serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and
concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a
luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of
silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.
[Illustration: MISS CROCKER'S LOUIS XVI. BED]
To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply
paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be
afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is
the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings
very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and
plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of
times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design
in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you
will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the
figures.
One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper
that does not belong to the "busy" class, for while the design is
decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This
is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens
and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge
scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and
methodical thumping of a drum. I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly
in such a room!
This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man. The hangings are
of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall
covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin. The furniture is of
oak, of the Jacobean period. The bed is true to its inspiration, with
turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards. The legs and
runners of the bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the
period. This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that
may be adapted from old models. It goes without saying that the beds of
that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is
really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an
original one.
There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it
most difficult to decide on any one scheme. One of my greatest joys in
planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many
bedrooms. And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual
impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels. I
worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to live in it myself,
and while they all differed in decorative schemes the essentials were
the same in each room: a comfortable bed, with a small table beside it
to hold a reading light, a clock, and a telephone; a _chaise-longue_ for
resting; a long mirror somewhere; a dressing table with proper lights
and a glass covered top; a writing table, carefully equipped, and the
necessary chairs and stools. Some of the bedrooms had no connecting
baths, and these were given wash stands with bowls and pitchers of clear
glass. Most of these bedrooms were fitted with mahogany four post beds,
pie crust tables, colonial highboys, gay chintzes, and such, but there
were several rooms of entirely different scheme.
[Illustration: A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM]
Perhaps the most fascinating of them all is the bird room. The walls
are covered with an Oriental paper patterned with marvelous blue and
green birds, birds of paradise and paroquets perched on flowering
branches. The black lacquer furniture was especially designed for the
room. The rug and the hangings are of jade green. I wonder how this
seems to read of--I can only say it is a very gay and happy room to live
in!
There is another bedroom in pink and white, which would be an adorable
room for a young girl. The bed is of my own design, a simple white
painted metal bed. There is a _chaise-longue_, upholstered in the pink
and white striped chintz of the room. The same chintz is used for window
hangings, bed spread, and so forth. There is a little spindle legged
table of mahogany, and another table at the head of the bed which
contains the reading light. There is also a little white stool, with a
cushion of the chintz, beside the bed. The dressing-table is so simple
that any girl might copy it--it is a chintz-hung box with a sheet of
plate glass on top, and a white framed mirror hung above it. The
electric lights in this room are cleverly made into candlesticks which
are painted to match the chintz. The writing-table is white, with a
mahogany chair in front of it.
Another bedroom has a narrow four post bed of mahogany, with hangings of
China blue sprigged with small pink roses. There was another in green
and white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped with rugs of
neutral and harmonious tone. The dressing-tables were always painted to
harmonize with the chintzes or the furniture. Wherever possible there
was an open fireplace. Roomy clothes closets added much to the comfort
of each room, and there was always a couch of delicious softness, or a
_chaise-longue,_ and lounging chairs which invited repose.
[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM]
Nothing so nice has happened in a long time as the revival of painted
furniture, and the application of quaint designs to modern beds and
chairs and chests. You may find inspiration in a length of chintz, in an
old fan, in a faded print--anywhere! The main thing is to work out a
color plan for the background--the walls, the furniture, and the
rugs--and then you can draw or stencil the chosen designs wherever they
seem to belong, and paint them in with dull tones and soft colors, rose
and buff and blue and green and a little bit of gray and cream and
black. Or, if you aren't even as clever as that (and you probably
_are!_) you can decorate your painted furniture with narrow lines of
color: dark green on a light green ground; dark blue on yellow; _any_
color on gray or cream--there are infinite possibilities of color
combinations. In one of the rooms shown in the illustrations the posy
garlands on the chest of drawers were inspired by a lamp jar. This
furniture was carefully planned, as may be seen by the little urns on
the bedposts, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful
results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture
and applying fanciful decorations.
Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice
cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn
you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself.
Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and
things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant
effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing
table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have
small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall,
well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be
_examined_, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect,
but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the
guest-room fewer still!
I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is
very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from
two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light
bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on
each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room
from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just
below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four
inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug
is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an alluring _Chinoiserie_
chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in
the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a
deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a
pale turquoise taffeta.
Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little
buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the
guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and
adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with
a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a
young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and
white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and
tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an
enchanting affair! And simple--why, she could hinge the mirrors
together, and make the chintz ruffle, and enamel the shelves white, and
do every bit of it except cut the plate glass. Of course the glass is
very clean and nice, but an enameled surface with a white linen cover
would be very pleasant.
The same blue and white chintz was used for the hangings and bed
coverings. Everything else in the room was white except the thick cream
rug with its border of blue and rose and buff, and the candlesticks and
appliques which repeated those colors.
[Illustration: MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER'S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED]
[Illustration: MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY'S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED]
There is a chintz I love to use called the Green Feather chintz. It is
most decorative in design and color, and such an aristocratic sort of
chintz you can use it on handsome old sofas and your post beds that
would scorn a more commonplace chintz. Mrs. Payne Whitney has a most
enchanting bed covered with the Green Feather chintz, one of those great
beds that depend entirely on their hangings for effect, for not a bit of
the wooden frame shows. Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer has a similar bed
covered with a _Chinoiserie_ chintz. These great beds are very beautiful
in large rooms, but they would be out of place in small ones. There are
draped beds, however, that may be used in smaller rooms. I am showing a
photograph of a bedroom in the Crocker house in Burlingame, California,
where I used a small draped bed with charming effect. This bed is placed
flat against the wall, like a sofa, and the drapery is adapted from that
of a Louis XVI room. The bed is of gray painted wood, and the hangings
are of blue and cream chintz lined with blue taffetas. I used the same
idea in a rose and blue bedroom in a New York house. In this case,
however, the bed was painted cream white and the large panels of the
head and foot boards were filled with a rose and blue chintz. The
bedspread was of deep rose colored taffetas, and from a small canopy
above the bed four curtains of the rose and blue chintz, lined with the
taffetas, are pulled to the four corners of the bed. This novel
arrangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small room.
In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-rooms, so much of the
usual furniture is not necessary. My own bedroom, for instance, is built
around the same old Breton bed I had in the Washington Irving house. The
bed dominates the room, but there are also a _chaise-longue_, several
small tables, many comfortable chairs, and a real fireplace. The
business of dressing takes place in the dressing-room, so there is no
dressing-table here, but there are long mirrors filling the wall spaces
between windows and doors. Miss Marbury's bedroom is just over mine, and
is a sunshiny place of much rose and blue and cream. Her rooms are
always full of blue, just as my rooms are always full of rose color.
This bedroom has cream woodwork and walls of a bluish-gray, cream
painted furniture covered with a mellow sort of rose-and-cream chintz,
and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows
are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe.
The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The
most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the
Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over the
mantel.
I haven't said a word about our nice American Colonial bedrooms, because
all of you know their beauties and requirements as well as I. The great
drawback to the stately old furniture of our ancestors is the space it
occupies. Haven't you seen a fine old four post bed simply overflowing a
poor little room? Fortunately, the furniture-makers are designing
simple beds of similar lines, but lighter build, and these beds are very
lovely. The owner of a massive old four-post bed is justly proud of it,
but our new beds are built for a new service and a new conception of
hygiene, and so must find new lines and curves that will be friendly to
the old dressing tables and highboys and chests of drawers.
When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we
will give them proper furniture--if we can find it.
I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious
bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small
dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and
floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There
was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an
unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and
nothing _but_ sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of
the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke
of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a
royal bed on a dais.
We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about
it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass
beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut
beds of the last generation. White painted metal beds came first, and
will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of
ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we
should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that
they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider
sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds. And
why shouldn't white iron beds, which are modest and unassuming in
appearance, serve for homes as well? The truth is that the glitter of
brass appeals to the untrained eye. But that is passing. Go into the
better shops and you will see! Recently there was a spasmodic outbreak
of silver-plated beds, but I think there won't be a vogue for this
newest object of bad taste. It is a little too much!
If your house is clean and you intend to keep it so, a wooden bed that
has some relation to the rest of your furniture is the best bed
possible. Otherwise, a white painted metal one. There is never an excuse
for a brass one. Indeed, I think the three most glaring errors we
Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace curtains, and brass beds.
[Illustration: MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED]