process of house-furnishing, and has produced much of the discomfort
which causes so many rooms to be shunned by everybody in the house, in
spite (or rather because) of all the money and ingenuity expended on
their arrangement. Yet to penetrate the mystery of house-furnishing it
is only necessary to analyze one satisfactory room and to notice
wherein its charm lies. To the fastidious eye it will, of course, be
found in fitness of proportion, in the proper use of each moulding and
in the harmony of all the decorative processes; and even to those who
think themselves indifferent to such detail, much of the sense of
restfulness and comfort produced by certain rooms depends on the due
adjustment of their fundamental parts. Different rooms minister to
different wants and while a room may be made very livable without
satisfying any but the material requirements of its inmates it is
evident that the perfect room should combine these qualities with what
corresponds to them in a higher order of needs. At present, however,
the subject deals only with the material livableness of a room, and
this will generally be found to consist in the position of the doors
and fireplace, the accessibility of the windows, the arrangement of
the furniture, the privacy of the room and the absence of the
superfluous.
The position of doors and fireplace, though the subject comes properly
under the head of house-planning, may be included in this summary,
because in rearranging a room it is often possible to change its
openings, or at any rate, in the case of doors, to modify their
dimensions.
The fireplace must be the focus of every rational scheme of
arrangement. Nothing is so dreary, so hopeless to deal with, as a room
in which the fireplace occupies a narrow space between two doors, so
that it is impossible to sit about the hearth.[7] Next in importance
come the windows. In town houses especially, where there is so little
light that every ray is precious to the reader or worker, window-space
is invaluable. Yet in few rooms are the windows easy of approach, free
from useless draperies and provided with easy-chairs so placed that
the light falls properly on the occupant's work.
It is no exaggeration to say that many houses are deserted by the men
of the family for lack of those simple comforts which they find at
their clubs: windows unobscured by layers of muslin, a fireplace
surrounded by easy-chairs and protected from draughts, well-appointed
writing-tables and files of papers and magazines. Who cannot call to
mind the dreary drawing-room, in small town houses the only possible
point of reunion for the family, but too often, in consequence of its
exquisite discomfort, of no more use as a meeting-place than the
vestibule or the cellar? The windows in this kind of room are
invariably supplied with two sets of muslin curtains, one hanging
against the panes, the other fulfilling the supererogatory duty of
hanging against the former; then come the heavy stuff curtains, so
draped as to cut off the upper light of the windows by day, while it
is impossible to drop them at night: curtains that have thus ceased to
serve the purpose for which they exist. Close to the curtains
stands the inevitable lamp or jardinière, and the wall-space
between the two windows, where a writing-table might be put, is
generally taken up by a cabinet or console, surmounted by a picture
made invisible by the dark shadow of the hangings. The writing-table
might find place against the side-wall near either window; but these
spaces are usually sacred to the piano and to that modern futility,
the silver-table. Thus of necessity the writing-table is either
banished or put in some dark corner, where it is little wonder that
the ink dries unused and a vase of flowers grows in the middle of the
blotting-pad.
[Illustration: _PLATE VII._
FRENCH BERGÈRE, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.]
The hearth should be the place about which people gather; but the
mantelpiece in the average American house, being ugly, is usually
covered with inflammable draperies; the fire is, in consequence,
rarely lit, and no one cares to sit about a fireless hearth. Besides,
on the opposite side of the room is a gap in the wall eight or ten
feet wide, opening directly upon the hall, and exposing what should be
the most private part of the room to the scrutiny of messengers,
servants and visitors. This opening is sometimes provided with doors;
but these, as a rule, are either slid into the wall or are unhung and
replaced by a curtain through which every word spoken in the room must
necessarily pass. In such a room it matters very little how the rest
of the furniture is arranged, since it is certain that no one will
ever sit in it except the luckless visitor who has no other refuge.
Even the visitor might be thought entitled to the solace of a few
books; but as all the tables in the room are littered with
knick-knacks, it is difficult for the most philanthropic hostess to
provide even this slight alleviation.
When the town-house is built on the basement plan, and the
drawing-room or parlor is up-stairs, the family, to escape from its
discomforts, habitually take refuge in the small room opening off the
hall on the ground floor; so that instead of sitting in a room twenty
or twenty-five feet wide, they are packed into one less than half that
size and exposed to the frequent intrusions from which, in basement
houses, the drawing-room is free. But too often even the "little room
down-stairs" is arranged less like a sitting-room in a private house
than a waiting-room at a fashionable doctor's or dentist's. It has the
inevitable yawning gap in the wall, giving on the hall close to the
front door, and is either the refuge of the ugliest and most
uncomfortable furniture in the house, or, even if furnished with
taste, is arranged with so little regard to comfort that one might as
well make it part of the hall, as is often done in rearranging old
houses. This habit of sacrificing a useful room to the useless
widening of the hall is indeed the natural outcome of furnishing rooms
of this kind in so unpractical a way that their real usefulness has
ceased to be apparent. The science of restoring wasted rooms to their
proper uses is one of the most important and least understood branches
of house-furnishing.
Privacy would seem to be one of the first requisites of civilized
life, yet it is only necessary to observe the planning and arrangement
of the average house to see how little this need is recognized. Each
room in a house has its individual uses: some are made to sleep in,
others are for dressing, eating, study, or conversation; but whatever
the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not
preserved as a small world by itself. If the drawing-room be a part of
the hall and the library a part of the drawing-room, all three will be
equally unfitted to serve their special purpose. The indifference to
privacy which has sprung up in modern times, and which in France, for
instance, has given rise to the grotesque conceit of putting sheets
of plate-glass between two rooms, and of replacing doorways by
openings fifteen feet wide, is of complex origin. It is probably due
in part to the fact that many houses are built and decorated by people
unfamiliar with the habits of those for whom they are building. It may
be that architect and decorator live in a simpler manner than their
clients, and are therefore ready to sacrifice a kind of comfort of
which they do not feel the need to the "effects" obtainable by vast
openings and extended "vistas." To the untrained observer size often
appeals more than proportion and costliness than suitability. In a
handsome house such an observer is attracted rather by the ornamental
detail than by the underlying purpose of planning and decoration. He
sees the beauty of the detail, but not its relation to the whole. He
therefore regards it as elegant but useless; and his next step is to
infer that there is an inherent elegance in what is useless.
Before beginning to decorate a house it is necessary to make a
prolonged and careful study of its plan and elevations, both as a
whole and in detail. The component parts of an undecorated room are
its floor, ceiling, wall-spaces and openings. The openings consist of
the doors, windows and fireplace; and of these, as has already been
pointed out, the fireplace is the most important in the general scheme
of decoration.
No room can be satisfactory unless its openings are properly placed
and proportioned, and the decorator's task is much easier if he has
also been the architect of the house he is employed to decorate; but
as this seldom happens his ingenuity is frequently taxed to produce a
good design upon the background of a faulty and illogical structure.
Much may be done to overcome this difficulty by making slight changes
in the proportions of the openings; and the skilful decorator, before
applying his scheme of decoration, will do all that he can to correct
the fundamental lines of the room. But the result is seldom so
successful as if he had built the room, and those who employ different
people to build and decorate their houses should at least try to
select an architect and a decorator trained in the same school of
composition, so that they may come to some understanding with regard
to the general harmony of their work.
In deciding upon a scheme of decoration, it is necessary to keep in
mind the relation of furniture to ornament, and of the room as a whole
to other rooms in the house. As in a small house a very large room
dwarfs all the others, so a room decorated in a very rich manner will
make the simplicity of those about it look mean. Every house should be
decorated according to a carefully graduated scale of ornamentation
culminating in the most important room of the house; but this plan
must be carried out with such due sense of the relation of the rooms
to each other that there shall be no violent break in the continuity
of treatment. If a white-and-gold drawing-room opens on a hall with a
Brussels carpet and papered walls, the drawing-room will look too fine
and the hall mean.
In the furnishing of each room the same rule should be as carefully
observed. The simplest and most cheaply furnished room (provided the
furniture be good of its kind, and the walls and carpet
unobjectionable in color) will be more pleasing to the fastidious eye
than one in which gilded consoles and cabinets of buhl stand side by
side with cheap machine-made furniture, and delicate old marquetry
tables are covered with trashy china ornaments.
[Illustration: _PLATE VIII._
FRENCH BERGÈRE, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.]
It is, of course, not always possible to refurnish a room when it is
redecorated. Many people must content themselves with using their
old furniture, no matter how ugly and ill-assorted it may be; and it
is the decorator's business to see that his background helps the
furniture to look its best. It is a mistake to think that because the
furniture of a room is inappropriate or ugly a good background will
bring out these defects. It will, on the contrary, be a relief to the
eye to escape from the bad lines of the furniture to the good lines of
the walls; and should the opportunity to purchase new furniture ever
come, there will be a suitable background ready to show it to the best
advantage.
Most rooms contain a mixture of good, bad, and indifferent furniture.
It is best to adapt the decorative treatment to the best pieces and to
discard those which are in bad taste, replacing them, if necessary, by
willow chairs and stained deal tables until it is possible to buy
something better. When the room is to be refurnished as well as
redecorated the client often makes his purchases without regard to the
decoration. Besides being an injustice to the decorator, inasmuch as
it makes it impossible for him to harmonize his decoration with the
furniture, this generally produces a result unsatisfactory to the
owner of the house. Neither decoration nor furniture, however good of
its kind, can look its best unless each is chosen with reference to
the other. It is therefore necessary that the decorator, before
planning his treatment of a room, should be told what it is to
contain. If a gilt set is put in a room the walls of which are treated
in low relief and painted white, the high lights of the gilding will
destroy the delicate values of the mouldings, and the walls, at a
little distance, will look like flat expanses of whitewashed plaster.
When a room is to be furnished and decorated at the smallest possible
cost, it must be remembered that the comfort of its occupants depends
more on the nature of the furniture than of the wall-decorations or
carpet. In a living-room of this kind it is best to tint the walls and
put a cheerful drugget on the floor, keeping as much money as possible
for the purchase of comfortable chairs and sofas and substantial
tables. If little can be spent in buying furniture, willow
arm-chairs[8] with denim cushions and solid tables with stained legs
and covers of denim or corduroy will be more satisfactory than the
"parlor suit" turned out in thousands by the manufacturer of cheap
furniture, or the pseudo-Georgian or pseudo-Empire of the dealer in
"high-grade goods." Plain bookcases may be made of deal, painted or
stained; and a room treated in this way, with a uniform color on the
wall, and plenty of lamps and books, is sure to be comfortable and can
never be vulgar.
It is to be regretted that, in this country and in England, it should
be almost impossible to buy plain but well-designed and substantial
furniture. Nothing can exceed the ugliness of the current designs: the
bedsteads with towering head-boards fretted by the versatile jig-saw;
the "bedroom suits" of "mahoganized" cherry, bird's-eye maple, or some
other crude-colored wood; the tables with meaninglessly turned legs;
the "Empire" chairs and consoles stuck over with ornaments of cast
bronze washed in liquid gilding; and, worst of all, the supposed
"Colonial" furniture, that unworthy travesty of a plain and dignified
style. All this showy stuff has been produced in answer to the
increasing demand for cheap "effects" in place of unobtrusive merit in
material and design; but now that an appreciation of better things in
architecture is becoming more general, it is to be hoped that the
"artistic" furniture disfiguring so many of our shop-windows will no
longer find a market.
There is no lack of models for manufacturers to copy, if their
customers will but demand what is good. France and England, in the
eighteenth century, excelled in the making of plain, inexpensive
furniture of walnut, mahogany, or painted beechwood (see Plates
VII-X). Simple in shape and substantial in construction, this kind of
furniture was never tricked out with moulded bronzes and machine-made
carving, or covered with liquid gilding, but depended for its effect
upon the solid qualities of good material, good design and good
workmanship. The eighteenth-century cabinet-maker did not attempt
cheap copies of costly furniture; the common sense of his patrons
would have resented such a perversion of taste. Were the modern public
as fastidious, it would soon be easy to buy good furniture for a
moderate price; but until people recognize the essential vulgarity of
the pinchbeck article flooding our shops and overflowing upon our
sidewalks, manufacturers will continue to offer such wares in
preference to better but less showy designs.
The worst defects of the furniture now made in America are due to an
Athenian thirst for novelty, not always regulated by an Athenian sense
of fitness. No sooner is it known that beautiful furniture was made in
the time of Marie-Antoinette than an epidemic of supposed
"Marie-Antoinette" rooms breaks out over the whole country. Neither
purchaser nor manufacturer has stopped to inquire wherein the
essentials of the style consist. They know that the rooms of the
period were usually painted in light colors, and that the furniture
(in palaces) was often gilt and covered with brocade; and it is taken
for granted that plenty of white paint, a pale wall-paper with
bow-knots, and fragile chairs dipped in liquid gilding and covered
with a flowered silk-and-cotton material, must inevitably produce a
"Marie-Antoinette" room. According to the creed of the modern
manufacturer, you have only to combine certain "goods" to obtain a
certain style.
This quest of artistic novelties would be encouraging were it based on
the desire for something better, rather than for something merely
different. The tendency to dash from one style to another, without
stopping to analyze the intrinsic qualities of any, has defeated the
efforts of those who have tried to teach the true principles of
furniture-designing by a return to the best models. If people will buy
the stuff now offered them as Empire, Sheraton or Louis XVI, the
manufacturer is not to blame for making it. It is not the maker but
the purchaser who sets the standard; and there will never be any
general supply of better furniture until people take time to study the
subject, and find out wherein lies the radical unfitness of what now
contents them.
Until this golden age arrives the householder who cannot afford to buy
old pieces, or to have old models copied by a skilled cabinet-maker,
had better restrict himself to the plainest of furniture, relying for
the embellishment of his room upon good bookbindings and one or two
old porcelain vases for his lamps.
Concerning the difficult question of color, it is safe to say that the
fewer the colors used in a room, the more pleasing and restful the
result will be. A multiplicity of colors produces the same effect as a
number of voices talking at the same time. The voices may not be
discordant, but continuous chatter is fatiguing in the long run. Each
room should speak with but one voice: it should contain one color,
which at once and unmistakably asserts its predominance, in obedience
to the rule that where there is a division of parts one part shall
visibly prevail over all the others.
[Illustration: _PLATE IX._
FRENCH SOFA, LOUIS XV PERIOD.
TAPESTRY DESIGNED BY BOUCHER.]
To attain this result, it is best to use the same color and, if
possible, the same material, for curtains and chair-coverings. This
produces an impression of unity and gives an air of spaciousness to
the room. When the walls are simply panelled in oak or walnut, or are
painted in some neutral tones, such as gray and white, the carpet may
contrast in color with the curtains and chair-coverings. For instance,
in an oak-panelled room crimson curtains and chair-coverings may be
used with a dull green carpet, or with one of dark blue patterned in
subdued tints; or the color-scheme may be reversed, and green hangings
and chair-coverings combined with a plain crimson carpet.
Where the walls are covered with tapestry, or hung with a large number
of pictures, or, in short, are so treated that they present a variety
of colors, it is best that curtains, chair-coverings and carpet should
all be of one color and without pattern. Graduated shades of the same
color should almost always be avoided; theoretically they seem
harmonious, but in reality the light shades look faded in proximity
with the darker ones. Though it is well, as a rule, that carpet and
hangings should match, exception must always be made in favor of a
really fine old Eastern rug. The tints of such rugs are too subdued,
too subtly harmonized by time, to clash with any colors the room may
contain; but those who cannot cover their floors in this way will do
well to use carpets of uniform tint, rather than the gaudy rugs now
made in the East. The modern red and green Smyrna or Turkey carpet is
an exception. Where the furniture is dark and substantial, and the
predominating color is a strong green or crimson, such a carpet is
always suitable. These Smyrna carpets are usually well designed; and
if their colors be restricted to red and green, with small admixture
of dark blue, they harmonize with almost any style of decoration. It
is well, as a rule, to shun the decorative schemes concocted by the
writers who supply our newspapers with hints for "artistic interiors."
The use of such poetic adjectives as jonquil-yellow, willow-green,
shell-pink, or ashes-of-roses, gives to these descriptions of the
"unique boudoir" or "ideal summer room" a charm which the reality
would probably not possess. The arrangements suggested are usually
cheap devices based upon the mistaken idea that defects in structure
or design may be remedied by an overlaying of color or ornament. This
theory often leads to the spending of much more money than would have
been required to make one or two changes in the plan of the room, and
the result is never satisfactory to the fastidious.
There are but two ways of dealing with a room which is fundamentally
ugly: one is to accept it, and the other is courageously to correct
its ugliness. Half-way remedies are a waste of money and serve rather
to call attention to the defects of the room than to conceal them.
[Illustration: _PLATE X._
FRENCH MARQUETRY TABLE, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] There is no objection to putting a fireplace between two doors,
provided both doors be at least six feet from the chimney.
[8] Not rattan, as the models are too bad.
III
WALLS
Proportion is the good breeding of architecture. It is that something,
indefinable to the unprofessional eye, which gives repose and
distinction to a room: in its origin a matter of nice mathematical
calculation, of scientific adjustment of voids and masses, but in its
effects as intangible as that all-pervading essence which the ancients
called the soul.
It is not proposed to enter here into a technical discussion of the
delicate problem of proportion. The decorator, with whom this book is
chiefly concerned, is generally not consulted until the house that he
is to decorate has been built--and built, in all probability, quite
without reference to the interior treatment it is destined to receive.
All he can hope to do is, by slight modifications here and there in
the dimensions or position of the openings, to re-establish that
harmony of parts so frequently disregarded in modern house-planning.
It often happens, however, that the decorator's desire to make these
slight changes, upon which the success of his whole scheme depends, is
a source of perplexity and distress to his bewildered client, who sees
in it merely the inclination to find fault with another's work.
Nothing can be more natural than this attitude on the part of the
client. How is he to decide between the architect, who has possibly
disregarded in some measure the claims of symmetry and proportion in
planning the interior of the house, and the decorator who insists upon
those claims without being able to justify his demands by any
explanation comprehensible to the unprofessional? It is inevitable
that the decorator, who comes last, should fare worse, especially as
he makes his appearance at a time when contractors' bills are pouring
in, and the proposition to move a mantelpiece or change the dimensions
of a door opens fresh vistas of expense to the client's terrified
imagination.
Undoubtedly these difficulties have diminished in the last few years.
Architects are turning anew to the lost tradition of symmetry and to a
scientific study of the relation between voids and masses, and the
decorator's task has become correspondingly easier. Still, there are
many cases where his work is complicated by some trifling obstacle,
the removal of which the client opposes only because he cannot in
imagination foresee the improvement which would follow. If the client
permits the change to be made, he has no difficulty in appreciating
the result: he cannot see it in advance.
A few words from Isaac Ware's admirable chapter on "The Origin of
Proportions in the Orders"[9] may serve to show the importance of
proportion in all schemes of decoration, and the necessity of
conforming to certain rules that may at first appear both arbitrary
and incomprehensible.