whether they are to form a background for its contents, or to be in
themselves its chief decoration. In many cases the disappointing
effects of wall-decoration are due to the fact that this important
distinction has been overlooked. In rooms that are to be hung with
prints or pictures, the panelling or other treatment of the walls
should be carefully designed with a view to the size and number of the
pictures. Pictures should never be hung against a background of
pattern. Nothing is more distressing than the sight of a large
oil-painting in a ponderous frame seemingly suspended from a spray of
wild roses or any of the other naturalistic vegetation of the modern
wall-paper. The overlaying of pattern is always a mistake. It produces
a confusion of line in which the finest forms lose their individuality
and significance.
It is also important to avoid hanging pictures or prints too close to
each other. Not only do the colors clash, but the different designs of
the frames, some of which may be heavy, with deeply recessed
mouldings, while others are flat and carved in low relief, produce an
equally discordant impression. Every one recognizes the necessity of
selecting the mouldings and other ornamental details of a room with a
view to their position in the scheme of decoration; but few stop to
consider that in a room hung with pictures, the frames take the place
of wall-mouldings, and consequently must be chosen and placed as
though they were part of a definite decorative composition.
Pictures and prints should be fastened to the wall, not hung by a cord
or wire, nor allowed to tilt forward at an angle. The latter
arrangement is specially disturbing since it throws the picture-frames
out of the line of the wall. It must never be forgotten that pictures
on a wall, whether set in panels or merely framed and hung, inevitably
become a part of the wall-decoration. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, in rooms of any importance, pictures were always
treated as a part of the decoration, and frequently as panels sunk in
the wall in a setting of carved wood or stucco mouldings (see
paintings in Plates V and XIX). Even when not set in panels, they were
always fixed to the wall, and their frames, whether of wood or stucco,
were made to correspond with the ornamental detail of the rest of the
room. Beautiful examples of this mode of treatment are seen in many
English interiors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,[10] and
some of the finest carvings of Grinling Gibbons were designed for this
purpose.
Even where the walls are not to be hung with pictures, it is necessary
to consider what kind of background the furniture and objects of art
require. If the room is to be crowded with cabinets, bookcases and
other tall pieces, and these, as well as the tables and mantel-shelf,
are to be covered with porcelain vases, bronze statuettes, ivories,
Chinese monsters and Chelsea groups, a plain background should be
provided for this many-colored medley. Should the room contain only a
few important pieces of furniture, and one or two vases or busts, the
walls against which these strongly marked objects are to be placed may
receive a more decorative treatment. It is only in rooms used for
entertaining, dining, or some special purpose for which little
furniture is required, that the walls should receive a more elaborate
scheme of decoration.
Where the walls are treated in an architectural manner, with a
well-designed dado and cornice, and an over-mantel and over-doors
connecting the openings with the cornice, it will be found that in a
room of average size the intervening wall-spaces may be tinted in a
uniform color and left unornamented. If the fundamental lines are
right, very little decorative detail is needed to complete the effect;
whereas, when the lines are wrong, no overlaying of ornamental odds
and ends, in the way of pictures, bric-à-brac and other improvised
expedients, will conceal the structural deficiencies.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] _A Complete Body of Architecture_, Book II, chap. iii.
[10] See the saloon at Easton Neston, built by Nicholas Hawkesmoor
(Plate XIII), and various examples given in Pyne's _Royal Residences_.
IV
DOORS
The fate of the door in America has been a curious one, and had the
other chief features of the house--such as windows, fireplaces, and
stairs--been pursued with the same relentless animosity by architects
and decorators, we should no longer be living in houses at all. First,
the door was slid into the wall; then even its concealed presence was
resented, and it was unhung and replaced by a portière; while of late
it has actually ceased to form a part of house-building, and many
recently built houses contain doorways _without doors_. Even the front
door, which might seem to have too valid a reason for existence to be
disturbed by the variations of fashion, has lately had to yield its
place, in the more pretentious kind of house, to a wrought-iron
gateway lined with plate-glass, against which, as a climax of
inconsequence, a thick curtain is usually hung.
It is not difficult to explain such architectural vagaries. In
general, their origin is to be found in the misapplication of some
serviceable feature and its consequent rejection by those who did not
understand that it had ceased to be useful only because it was not
properly used.
[Illustration: _PLATE XIV._
DOORWAY WITH MARBLE ARCHITRAVE,
DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA. XVI CENTURY.]
In the matter of doors, such an explanation at once presents itself.
During the latter half of the eighteenth century it occurred to
some ingenious person that when two adjoining rooms were used for
entertaining, and it was necessary to open the doors between them,
these doors might be in the way; and to avoid this possibility, a
recess was formed in the thickness of the wall, and the door was made
to slide into it.
This idea apparently originated in England, for sliding doors, even in
the present day, are virtually unknown on the continent; and Isaac
Ware, in the book already quoted, speaks of the sliding door as having
been used "at the house, late Mr. de Pestre's, near Hanover Square,"
and adds that "the manner of it there may serve as an example to other
builders," showing it to have been a novelty which he thought worthy
of imitation.
English taste has never been so sure as that of the Latin races; and
it has, moreover, been perpetually modified by a passion for
contriving all kinds of supposed "conveniences," which instead of
simplifying life not unfrequently tend to complicate it. Americans
have inherited this trait, and in both countries the architect or
upholsterer who can present a new and more intricate way of planning a
house or of making a piece of furniture, is more sure of a hearing
than he who follows the accepted lines.
It is doubtful if the devices to which so much is sacrificed in
English and American house-planning always offer the practical
advantages attributed to them. In the case of the sliding door these
advantages are certainly open to question, since there is no reason
why a door should not open into a room. Under ordinary circumstances,
doors should always be kept shut; it is only, as Ware points out, when
two adjoining rooms are used for entertaining that it is necessary to
leave the door between them open. Now, between two rooms destined for
entertaining, a double door (_à deux battants_) is always preferable
to a single one; and as an opening four feet six inches wide is
sufficient in such cases, each of the doors will be only two feet
three inches wide, and therefore cannot encroach to any serious extent
on the floor-space of the room. On the other hand, much has been
sacrificed to the supposed "convenience" of the sliding door: first,
the decorative effect of a well-panelled door, with hinges, box-locks
and handle of finely chiselled bronze; secondly, the privacy of both
rooms, since the difficulty of closing a heavy sliding door always
leads to its being left open, with the result that two rooms are
necessarily used as one. In fact, the absence of privacy in modern
houses is doubtless in part due to the difficulty of closing the doors
between the rooms.
The sliding door has led to another abuse in house-planning: the
exaggerated widening of the doorway. While doors were hung on hinges,
doorways were of necessity restricted to their proper dimensions; but
with the introduction of the sliding door, openings eight or ten feet
wide became possible. The planning of a house is often modified by a
vague idea on the part of its owners that they may wish to give
entertainments on a large scale. As a matter of fact, general
entertainments are seldom given in a house of average size; and those
who plan their houses with a view to such possibilities sacrifice
their daily comfort to an event occurring perhaps once a year. But
even where many entertainments are to be given large doorways are of
little use. Any architect of experience knows that ease of circulation
depends far more on the planning of the house and on the position of
the openings than on the actual dimensions of the latter. Indeed, two
moderate-sized doorways leading from one room to another are of much
more use in facilitating the movements of a crowd than one opening ten
feet wide.
Sliding doors have been recommended on the ground that their use
preserves a greater amount of wall-space; but two doorways of moderate
dimensions, properly placed, will preserve as much wall-space as one
very large opening and will probably permit a better distribution of
panelling and furniture. There was far more wall-space in seventeenth
and eighteenth-century rooms than there is in rooms of the same
dimensions in the average modern American house; and even where this
space was not greater in actual measurement, more furniture could be
used, since the openings were always placed with a view to the proper
arrangement of what the room was to contain.
According to the best authorities, the height of a well-proportioned
doorway should be twice its width; and as the height is necessarily
regulated by the stud of the room, it follows that the width varies;
but it is obvious that no doorway should be less than six feet high
nor less than three feet wide.
When a doorway is over three feet six inches wide, a pair of doors
should always be used; while a single door is preferable in a narrow
opening.
In rooms twelve feet or less in height, doorways should not be more
than nine feet high. The width of openings in such rooms is therefore
restricted to four feet six inches; indeed, it is permissible to make
the opening lower and thus reduce its width to four feet; six inches
of additional wall-space are not to be despised in a room of average
dimensions.
The treatment of the door forms one of the most interesting chapters
in the history of house-decoration. In feudal castles the interior
doorway, for purposes of defense, was made so small and narrow that
only one person could pass through at a time, and was set in a plain
lintel or architrave of stone, the door itself being fortified by
bands of steel or iron, and by heavy bolts and bars. Even at this
early period it seems probable that in the chief apartments the lines
of the doorway were carried up to the ceiling by means of an over-door
of carved wood, or of some painted decorative composition.[11] This
connection between the doorway and the ceiling, maintained through all
the subsequent phases of house-decoration, was in fact never
disregarded until the beginning of the present century.
It was in Italy that the door, in common with the other features of
private dwellings, first received a distinctly architectural
treatment. In Italian palaces of the fifteenth century the doorways
were usually framed by architraves of marble, enriched with
arabesques, medallions and processional friezes in low relief,
combined with disks of colored marble. Interesting examples of this
treatment are seen in the apartments of Isabella of Este in the ducal
palace at Mantua (see Plate XIV), in the ducal palace at Urbino, and
in the Certosa of Pavia--some of the smaller doorways in this
monastery being decorated with medallion portraits of the Sforzas, and
with other low reliefs of extraordinary beauty.
The doors in Italian palaces were usually of inlaid wood, elaborate in
composition and affording in many cases beautiful instances of that
sense of material limitation that preserves one art from infringing
upon another. The intarsia doors of the palace at Urbino are among the
most famous examples of this form of decoration. It should be noted
that many of the woods used in Italian marquetry were of a light
shade, so that the blending of colors in Renaissance doors produces a
sunny golden-brown tint in perfect harmony with the marble architrave
of the doorway. The Italian decorator would never have permitted so
harsh a contrast as that between the white trim and the mahogany doors
of English eighteenth-century houses. This juxtaposition of colors was
disapproved by French decorators also, and was seldom seen except in
England and in the American houses built under English influence. It
should be observed, too, that the polish given to hard-grained wood in
England, and imitated in the wood-varnish of the present day, was
never in favor in Italy and France. Shiny surfaces were always
disliked by the best decorators.
The classic revival in Italy necessarily modified the treatment of the
doorway. Flat arabesques and delicately chiselled medallions gave way
to a plain architrave, frequently masked by an order; while the
over-door took the form of a pediment, or, in the absence of shafts,
of a cornice or entablature resting on brackets. The use of a pediment
over interior doorways was characteristic of Italian decoration.
In studying Italian interiors of this period from photographs or
modern prints, or even in visiting the partly dilapidated palaces
themselves, it may at first appear that the lines of the doorway were
not always carried up to the cornice. Several causes have combined to
produce this impression. In the first place, the architectural
treatment of the over-door was frequently painted on the wall, and has
consequently disappeared with the rest of the wall-decoration (see
Plate XV). Then, again, Italian rooms were often painted with
landscapes and out-of-door architectural effects, and when this was
done the doorways were combined with these architectural compositions,
and were not treated as part of the room, but as part of what the room
_pretended to be_. In the suppressed Scuola della Carità (now the
Academy of Fine Arts) at Venice, one may see a famous example of this
treatment in the doorway under the stairs leading up to the temple, in
Titian's great painting of the "Presentation of the Virgin."[12]
Again, in the high-studded Italian saloons containing a musician's
gallery, or a clerestory, a cornice was frequently carried around the
walls at suitable height above the lower range of openings, and the
decorative treatment above the doors, windows and fireplace extended
only to this cornice, not to the actual ceiling of the room.
Thus it will be seen that the relation between the openings and
cornice in Italian decoration was in reality always maintained except
where the decorator chose to regard them as forming a part, not of the
room, but of some other architectural composition.
In the sixteenth century the excessive use of marquetry was abandoned,
doors being panelled, and either left undecorated or painted with
those light animated combinations of figure and arabesque which
Raphael borrowed from the Roman fresco-painters, and which since his
day have been peculiarly characteristic of Italian decorative
painting.[13]
Wood-carving in Italy was little used in house-decoration, and, as a
rule, the panelling of doors was severely architectural in character,
with little of the delicate ornamentation marking the French work of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[14]
[Illustration: _PLATE XV._
SALA DEI CAVALLI, PALAZZO DEL T, MANTUA. XVI CENTURY.
(EXAMPLE OF PAINTED ARCHITECTURAL DECORATION.)]
In France the application of the orders to interior doorways was never
very popular, though it figures in French architectural works of
the eighteenth century. The architrave, except in houses of great
magnificence, was usually of wood, sometimes very richly carved. It
was often surmounted by an entablature with a cornice resting on
carved brackets; while the panel between this and the ceiling-cornice
was occupied by an over-door consisting either of a painting, of a
carved panel or of a stucco or marble bas-relief. These over-doors
usually corresponded with the design of the over-mantel.
Great taste and skill were displayed in the decoration of door-panels
and embrasure. In the earlier part of the seventeenth century, doors
and embrasures were usually painted, and nothing in the way of
decorative painting can exceed in beauty and fitness the French
compositions of this period.[15]
During the reign of Louis XIV, doors were either carved or painted,
and their treatment ranged from the most elaborate decoration to the
simplest panelling set in a plain wooden architrave. In some French
doors of this period painting and carving were admirably combined; and
they were further ornamented by the chiselled locks and hinges for
which French locksmiths were famous. So important a part did these
locks and hinges play in French decoration that Lebrun himself is said
to have designed those in the Galerie d'Apollon, in the Louvre, when
he composed the decoration of the room. Even in the simplest private
houses, where chiselled bronze was too expensive a luxury, and
wrought-iron locks and hinges, with plain knobs of brass or iron, were
used instead, such attention was paid to both design and execution
that it is almost impossible to find in France an old lock or hinge,
however plain, that is not well designed and well made (see Plate
XVII). The miserable commercial article that disgraces our modern
doors would not have been tolerated in the most unpretentious
dwelling.
The mortise-lock now in use in England and America first made its
appearance toward the end of the eighteenth century in England, where
it displaced the brass or iron box-lock; but on the Continent it has
never been adopted. It is a poor substitute for the box-lock, since it
not only weakens but disfigures the door, while a well-designed
box-lock is both substantial and ornamental (see Plate XVII).
In many minds the Louis XV period is associated with a general
waviness of line and excess of carving. It has already been pointed
out that even when the rocaille manner was at its height the main
lines of a room were seldom allowed to follow the capricious movement
of the ornamental accessories. Openings being the leading features of
a room, their main lines were almost invariably respected; and while
considerable play of movement was allowed in some of the accessory
mouldings of the over-doors and over-mantels, the plan of the panel,
in general symmetrical, was in many cases a plain rectangle.[16]
During the Louis XV period the panelling of doors was frequently
enriched with elaborate carving; but such doors are to be found only
in palaces, or in princely houses like the Hôtels de Soubise, de
Rohan, or de Toulouse (see Plate XVIII). In the most magnificent
apartments, moreover, plain panelled doors were as common as those
adorned with carving; while in the average private hôtel, even where
much ornament was lavished on the panelling of the walls, the doors
were left plain.
Towards the close of this reign, when the influence of Gabriel began
to simplify and restrain the ornamental details of house-decoration,
the panelled door was often made without carving and was sometimes
painted with attenuated arabesques and grisaille medallions, relieved
against a gold ground. Gabriel gave the key-note of what is known as
Louis XVI decoration, and the treatment of the door in France followed
the same general lines until the end of the eighteenth century. As the
classic influence became more marked, paintings in the over-door and
over-mantel were replaced by low or high reliefs in stucco: and
towards the end of the Louis XVI period a processional frieze in the
classic manner often filled the entablature above the architrave of
the door (see Plate XVI).
Doors opening upon a terrace, or leading from an antechamber into a
summer-parlor, or _salon frais_, were frequently made of glass; while
in gala rooms, doors so situated as to correspond with the windows of
the room were sometimes made of looking-glass. In both these instances
the glass was divided into small panes, with such strongly marked
mouldings that there could not be a moment's doubt of the apparent, as
well as the actual, solidity of the door. In good decorative art first
impressions are always taken into account, and the immediate
satisfaction of the eye is provided for.
In England the treatment of doorway and door followed in a general way
the Italian precedent. The architrave, as a rule, was severely
architectural, and in the eighteenth century the application of an
order was regarded as almost essential in rooms of a certain
importance. The door itself was sometimes inlaid,[17] but oftener
simply panelled (see Plate XI).
In the panelling of doors, English taste, except when it closely
followed Italian precedents, was not always good. The use of a pair of
doors in one opening was confined to grand houses, and in the average
dwelling single doors were almost invariably used, even in openings
over three feet wide. The great width of some of these single doors
led to a curious treatment of the panels, the door being divided by a
central stile, which was sometimes beaded, as though, instead of a
single door, it were really a pair held together by some invisible
agency. This central stile is almost invariably seen in the doors of
modern American houses.
Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the use of highly
polished mahogany doors became general in England. It has already been
pointed out that the juxtaposition of a dark-colored door and a white
architrave was not approved by French and Italian architects. Blondel,
in fact, expressly states that such contrasts are to be avoided, and
that where walls are pale in tint the door should never be dark: thus
in vestibules and antechambers panelled with Caen stone he recommends
painting the doors a pale shade of gray.
In Italy, when doors were left unpainted they were usually made of
walnut, a wood of which the soft, dull tone harmonizes well with
almost any color, whether light or dark; while in France it would not
be easy to find an unpainted door, except in rooms where the
wall-panelling is also of natural wood.
[Illustration: _PLATE XVI._
DOOR IN THE SALA DELLO ZODIACO,
DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA. XVIII CENTURY.]
In the better type of house lately built in America there is seen a
tendency to return to the use of doors hung on hinges. These, however,
have been so long out of favor that the rules regulating their
dimensions have been lost sight of, and the modern door and architrave
are seldom satisfactory in these respects. The principles of
proportion have been further disturbed by a return to the confused
and hesitating system of panelling prevalent in England during the
Tudor and Elizabethan periods.
The old French and Italian architects never failed to respect that
rule of decorative composition which prescribes that where there is
any division of parts, one part shall unmistakably predominate. In
conformity with this rule, the principal panel in doors of French or
Italian design is so much higher than the others that these are at
once seen to be merely accessory; whereas many of our modern doors are
cut up into so many small panels, and the central one so little
exceeds the others in height, that they do not "compose."
The architrave of the modern door has been neglected for the same
reasons as the window-architrave. The use of the heavy sliding door,
which could not be opened or shut without an effort, led to the
adoption of the portière; and the architrave, being thus concealed,
was no longer regarded as a feature of any importance in the
decoration of the room.