substantial. Well-designed furniture of this kind is seldom made by
modern manufacturers, and those who can afford the slight extra
expense should commission a good cabinet-maker to reproduce some of
the simple models which may be found in the manuals of old French and
English designers. It is of special importance to provide a large,
solid writing-table: children are too often subjected to the needless
constraint and fatigue of writing at narrow unsteady desks, too small
to hold even the books in use during the lesson.
A well-designed bookcase with glass doors is a valuable factor in the
training of children. It teaches a respect for books by showing that
they are thought worthy of care; and a child is less likely to knock
about and damage a book which must be taken from and restored to such
a bookcase, than one which, after being used, is thrust back on an
open shelf. Children's books, if they have any literary value, should
be bound in some bright-colored morocco: dingy backs of calf or black
cloth are not likely to attract the youthful eye, and the better a
book is bound the more carefully it will be handled. Even
lesson-books, when they become shabby, should have a covering of some
bright-colored cloth stitched over the boards.
The general rules laid down for the decoration of the school-room may,
with some obvious modifications, be applied to the treatment of
nursery and of children's rooms. These, like the school-room, should
have painted walls and a floor of hard wood with a removable rug or a
square of matting. In a house containing both school-room and nursery,
the decoration of the latter room will of course be adapted to the
tastes of the younger children. Mothers often say, in answer to
suggestions as to the decoration of the nursery, that little children
"like something bright"--as though this precluded every form of art
above the newspaper chromo and the Christmas card! It is easy to
produce an effect of brightness by means of white wood-work and walls
hung with good colored prints, with large photographs of old Flemish
or Italian pictures,--say, for example, Bellini's baby-angels playing
on musical instruments,--and with a few of the Japanese plant and
animal drawings already referred to. All these subjects would interest
and amuse even very young children; and there is no reason why a gay
Japanese screen, with boldly drawn birds and flowers, should not
afford as much entertainment as one composed of a heterogeneous
collection of Christmas cards, chromos, and story-book pictures, put
together without any attempt at color-harmony or composition.
Children's rooms should be as free as possible from all superfluous
draperies. The windows may be hung with either shades or curtains: it
is needless to have both. If curtains are preferred, they should be of
chintz, or of some washable cotton or linen. The reproductions of the
old _toiles de Jouy_, with pictures from Æsop and La Fontaine, or from
some familiar myth or story, are specially suited to children's rooms;
while another source of interest and amusement may be provided by
facing the fireplace with blue and white Dutch tiles representing the
finding of Moses, the story of David and Goliath, or some such
familiar episode.
As children grow older, and are allotted separate bedrooms, these
should be furnished and decorated on the same principles and with the
same care as the school-room. Pieces of furniture for these bedrooms
would make far more suitable and interesting presents than the costly
odds and ends so often given without definite intention. In the
arrangement of the child's own room the expression of individual taste
should be encouraged and the child allowed to choose the pictures and
casts with which the walls are hung. The responsibility of such
selection will do much to develop the incipient faculties of
observation and comparison.
To sum up, then: the child's visible surroundings form the basis of
the best, because of the most unconscious, cultivation: and not of
æsthetic cultivation only, since, as has been pointed out, the
development of any artistic taste, if the child's general training is
of the right sort, indirectly broadens the whole view of life.
XVI
BRIC-À-BRAC
It is perhaps not uninstructive to note that we have no English word
to describe the class of household ornaments which French speech has
provided with at least three designations, each indicating a delicate
and almost imperceptible gradation of quality. In place of bric-à-brac,
bibelots, _objets d'art_, we have only knick-knacks--defined by
Stormonth as "articles of small value."
This definition of the knick-knack fairly indicates the general level
of our artistic competence. It has already been said that cheapness is
not necessarily synonymous with trashiness; but hitherto this
assertion has been made with regard to furniture and to the other
necessary appointments of the house. With knick-knacks the case is
different. An artistic age will of course produce any number of
inexpensive trifles fit to become, like the Tanagra figurines, the
museum treasures of later centuries; but it is hardly necessary to
point out that modern shop-windows are not overflowing with such
immortal toys. The few objects of art produced in the present day are
the work of distinguished artists. Even allowing for what Symonds
calls the "vicissitudes of taste," it seems improbable that our
commercial knick-knack will ever be classed as a work of art.
[Illustration: _PLATE LVI._
BRONZE ANDIRON. VENETIAN SCHOOL.
XVI CENTURY.]
It is clear that the weary man must have a chair to sit on, the
hungry man a table to dine at; nor would the most sensitive judgment
condemn him for buying ugly ones, were no others to be had; but
objects of art are a counsel of perfection. It is quite possible to go
without them; and the proof is that many do go without them who
honestly think to possess them in abundance. This is said, not with
any intention of turning to ridicule the natural desire to "make a
room look pretty," but merely with the purpose of inquiring whether
such an object is ever furthered by the indiscriminate amassing of
"ornaments." Decorators know how much the simplicity and dignity of a
good room are diminished by crowding it with useless trifles. Their
absence improves even bad rooms, or makes them at least less
multitudinously bad. It is surprising to note how the removal of an
accumulation of knick-knacks will free the architectural lines and
restore the furniture to its rightful relation with the walls.
Though a room must depend for its main beauty on design and furniture,
it is obvious that there are many details of luxurious living not
included in these essentials. In what, then, shall the ornamentation
of rooms consist? Supposing walls and furniture to be satisfactory,
how put the minor touches that give to a room the charm of
completeness? To arrive at an answer, one must first consider the
different kinds of minor embellishment. These may be divided into two
classes: the object of art _per se_, such as the bust, the picture, or
the vase; and, on the other hand, those articles, useful in
themselves,--lamps, clocks, fire-screens, bookbindings,
candelabra,--which art has only to touch to make them the best
ornaments any room can contain. In past times such articles took the
place of bibelots. Few purely ornamental objects were to be seen, save
in the cabinets of collectors; but when Botticelli decorated the
panels of linen chests, and Cellini chiselled book-clasps and
drinking-cups, there could be no thought of the vicious distinction
between the useful and the beautiful. One of the first obligations of
art is to make all useful things beautiful: were this neglected
principle applied to the manufacture of household accessories, the
modern room would have no need of knick-knacks.
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to know what constitutes an
object of art. It was said at the outset that, though cheapness and
trashiness are not always synonymous, they are apt to be so in the
case of the modern knick-knack. To buy, and even to make, it may cost
a great deal of money; but artistically it is cheap, if not worthless;
and too often its artistic value is in inverse ratio to its price. The
one-dollar china pug is less harmful than an expensive onyx lamp-stand
with moulded bronze mountings dipped in liquid gilding. It is one of
the misfortunes of the present time that the most preposterously bad
things often possess the powerful allurement of being expensive. One
might think it an advantage that they are not within every one's
reach; but, as a matter of fact, it is their very unattainableness
which, by making them more desirable, leads to the production of that
worst curse of modern civilization--cheap copies of costly horrors.
An ornament is of course not an object of art because it is
expensive--though it must be owned that objects of art are seldom
cheap. Good workmanship, as distinct from designing, almost always
commands a higher price than bad; and good artistic workmanship having
become so rare that there is practically no increase in the existing
quantity of objects of art, it is evident that these are more likely
to grow than to diminish in value. Still, as has been said, costliness
is no test of merit in an age when large prices are paid for bad
things. Perhaps the most convenient way of defining the real object of
art is to describe it as _any ornamental object which adequately
expresses an artistic conception_. This definition at least clears the
ground of the mass of showy rubbish forming the stock-in-trade of the
average "antiquity" dealer.
Good objects of art give to a room its crowning touch of distinction.
Their intrinsic beauty is hardly more valuable than their suggestion
of a mellower civilization--of days when rich men were patrons of "the
arts of elegance," and when collecting beautiful objects was one of
the obligations of a noble leisure. The qualities implied in the
ownership of such bibelots are the mark of their unattainableness. The
man who wishes to possess objects of art must have not only the means
to acquire them, but the skill to choose them--a skill made up of
cultivation and judgment, combined with that feeling for beauty that
no amount of study can give, but that study alone can quicken and
render profitable.
Only time and experience can acquaint one with those minor
peculiarities marking the successive "manners" of a master, or even
with the technical _nuances_ which at once enable the collector to
affix a date to his Sèvres or to his maiolica. Such knowledge is
acquired at the cost of great pains and of frequent mistakes; but no
one should venture to buy works of art who cannot at least draw such
obvious distinctions as those between old and new Saxe, between an old
Italian and a modern French bronze, or between Chinese peach-bloom
porcelain of the Khang-hi period and the Japanese imitations to be
found in every "Oriental emporium."
Supposing the amateur to have acquired this proficiency, he is still
apt to buy too many things, or things out of proportion with the rooms
for which they are intended. The scoffers at style--those who assume
that to conform to any known laws of decoration is to sink one's
individuality--often justify their view by the assertion that it is
ridiculous to be tied down, in the choice of bibelots, to any given
period or manner--as though Mazarin's great collection had comprised
only seventeenth-century works of art, or the Colonnas, the Gonzagas,
and the Malatestas had drawn all their treasures from contemporary
sources! As a matter of fact, the great amateurs of the past were
never fettered by such absurd restrictions. All famous patrons of art
have encouraged the talent of their day; but the passion for
collecting antiquities is at least as old as the Roman Empire, and
Græco-Roman sculptors had to make archaistic statues to please the
popular fancy, just as our artists paint pre-Raphaelite pictures to
attract the disciples of Ruskin and William Morris. Since the Roman
Empire, there has probably been no period when a taste for the best of
all ages did not exist.[36] Julius II, while Michel Angelo and Raphael
worked under his orders, was gathering antiques for the Belvedere
_cortile_; under Louis XIV, Greek marbles, Roman bronzes, cabinets of
Chinese lacquer and tables of Florentine mosaic were mingled without
thought of discord against Lebrun's tapestries or Bérain's arabesques;
and Marie-Antoinette's collection united Oriental porcelains with
goldsmiths' work of the Italian Renaissance.
Taste attaches but two conditions to the use of objects of art: that
they shall be in scale with the room, and that the room shall not be
overcrowded with them. There are two ways of being in scale: there is
the scale of proportion, and what might be called the scale of
appropriateness. The former is a matter of actual measurement, while
the latter is regulated solely by the nicer standard of good taste.
Even in the matter of actual measurement, the niceties of proportion
are not always clear to an unpractised eye. It is easy to see that the
Ludovisi Juno would be out of scale in a boudoir, but the discrepancy,
in diminishing, naturally becomes less obvious. Again, a vase or a
bust may not be out of scale with the wall-space behind it, but may
appear to crush the furniture upon which it stands; and since
everything a room contains should be regarded as a factor in its
general composition, the relation of bric-à-brac to furniture is no
less to be studied than the relation of bric-à-brac to wall-spaces.
Much of course depends upon the effect intended; and this can be
greatly modified by careful adjustment of the contents of the room. A
ceiling may be made to look less high by the use of wide, low pieces
of furniture, with massive busts and vases; while a low-studded room
may be heightened by tall, narrow commodes and cabinets, with objects
of art upon the same general lines.
It is of no less importance to observe the scale of appropriateness. A
bronze Pallas Athene or a cowled mediæval _pleureur_ would be
obviously out of harmony with the spirit of a boudoir; while the
delicate graces of old Saxe or Chelsea would become futile in library
or study.
Another kind of appropriateness must be considered in the relation of
objects of art to each other: not only must they be in scale as
regards character and dimensions, but also--and this, though more
important, is perhaps less often considered--as regards quality. The
habit of mixing good, bad, and indifferent in furniture is often
excused by necessity: people must use what they have. But there is no
necessity for having bad bric-à-brac. Trashy "ornaments" do not make a
room more comfortable; as a general rule, they distinctly diminish its
comfort; and they have the further disadvantage of destroying the
effect of any good piece of work. Vulgarity is always noisier than
good breeding, and it is instructive to note how a modern commercial
bronze will "talk down" a delicate Renaissance statuette or bust, and
a piece of Deck or Minton china efface the color-values of
blue-and-white or the soft tints of old Sèvres. Even those who set
down a preference for old furniture as an affectation will hardly
maintain that new knick-knacks are as good as old bibelots; but only
those who have some slight acquaintance with the subject know how wide
is the distance, in conception and execution, between the old object
of art and its unworthy successor. Yet the explanation is simple. In
former times, as the greatest painters occupied themselves with
wall-decoration, so the greatest sculptors and modellers produced the
delicate statuettes and the incomparable bronze mountings for vases
and furniture adorning the apartments of their day. A glance into the
window of the average furniture-shop probably convinces the most
unobservant that modern bronze mountings are not usually designed by
great artists; and there is the same change in the methods of
execution. The bronze formerly chiselled is now moulded; the iron once
wrought is cast; the patina given to bronze by a chemical process
making it a part of the texture of the metal is now simply applied as
a surface wash; and this deterioration in processes has done more than
anything else to vulgarize modern ornament.
It may be argued that even in the golden age of art few could have
walls decorated by great painters, or furniture-mountings modelled by
great sculptors; but it is here that the superiority of the old method
is shown. Below the great painter and sculptor came the trained
designer who, formed in the same school as his superiors, did not
attempt a poor copy of their masterpieces, but did the same kind of
work on simpler lines; just as below the skilled artificer stood the
plain artisan whose work was executed more rudely, but by the same
genuine processes. This explains the supposed affectation of those who
"like things just because they are old." Old bric-à-brac and furniture
are, indeed, almost always worthy of liking, since they are made on
good lines by a good process.
Two causes connected with the change in processes have contributed to
the debasement of bibelots: the substitution of machine for hand-work
has made possible the unlimited reproduction of works of art; and the
resulting demand for cheap knick-knacks has given employment to a
multitude of untrained designers having nothing in common with the
_virtuoso_ of former times.
It is an open question how much the mere possibility of unlimited
reproduction detracts from the intrinsic value of an object of art. To
the art-lover, as distinguished from the collector, uniqueness _per
se_ can give no value to an inartistic object; but the distinction,
the personal quality, of a beautiful object is certainly enhanced when
it is known to be alone of its kind--as in the case of the old bronzes
made _à cire perdue_. It must, however, be noted that in some
cases--as in that of bronze-casting--the method which permits
reproduction is distinctly inferior to that used when but one object
is to be produced.
In writing on objects of art, it is difficult to escape the charge of
saying on one page that reproductions are objectionable, and on the
next that they are better than poor "originals." The United States
customs laws have drawn a rough distinction between an original work
and its reproductions, defining the former as a work of art and the
latter as articles of commerce; but it does not follow that an article
of commerce may not be an adequate representation of a work of art.
The technical differences incidental to the various forms of
reproduction make any general conclusion impossible. In the case of
bronzes, for instance, it has been pointed out that the _cire perdue_
process is superior to that by means of which reproductions may be
made; nor is this the only cause of inferiority in bronze
reproductions. The nature of bronze-casting makes it needful that the
final touches should be given to bust or statue after it emerges from
the mould. Upon these touches, given by the master's chisel, the
expressiveness and significance of the work chiefly depend; and
multiplied reproductions, in lacking this individual stamp, must lack
precisely that which distinguishes the work of art from the commercial
article.
Perhaps the safest general rule is to say that the less the
reproduction suggests an attempt at artistic interpretation,--the more
literal and mechanical is its rendering of the original,--the better
it fulfils its purpose. Thus, plaster-casts of sculpture are more
satisfactory than bronze or marble copies; and a good photograph of a
painting is superior to the average reproduction in oils or
water-color.
The deterioration in gilding is one of the most striking examples of
the modern disregard of quality and execution. In former times gilding
was regarded as one of the crowning touches of magnificence in
decoration, was little used except where great splendor of effect was
desired, and was then applied by means of a difficult and costly
process. To-day, after a period of reaction during which all gilding
was avoided, it is again unsparingly used, under the mistaken
impression that it is one of the chief characteristics of the French
styles now once more in demand. The result is a plague of liquid
gilding. Even in France, where good gilding is still done, the great
demand for cheap gilt furniture and ornaments has led to the general
use of the inferior process. The prevalence of liquid gilding, and the
application of gold to furniture and decoration not adapted to such
treatment, doubtless explain the aversion of many persons to any use
of gilding in decoration.
In former times the expense of good gilding was no obstacle to its
use, since it was employed only in gala rooms, where the whole
treatment was on the same scale of costliness: it would never have
occurred to the owner of an average-sized house to drench his walls
and furniture in gilding, since the excessive use of gold in
decoration was held to be quite unsuited to such a purpose. Nothing
more surely preserves any form of ornament from vulgarization than a
general sense of fitness.
Much of the beauty and propriety of old decoration was due to the fact
that the merit of a work of art was held to consist, not in substance,
but in design and execution. It was never thought that a badly
designed bust or vase could be saved from mediocrity by being made of
an expensive material. Suitability of substance always enhances a work
of art; mere costliness never. The chryselephantine Zeus of Olympia
was doubtless admirably suited to the splendor of its surroundings;
but in a different setting it would have been as beautiful in marble.
In plastic art everything depends on form and execution, and the
skilful handling of a substance deliberately chosen for its
resistance (where another might have been used with equal fitness) is
rather a _tour de force_ than an artistic achievement.
These last generalizations are intended to show, not only that there
is an intrinsic value in almost all old bibelots, but also that the
general excellence of design and execution in past times has handed
down to us many unimportant trifles in the way of furniture and
household appliances worthy of being regarded as minor objects of art.
In Italy especially, where every artisan seems to have had the gift of
the _plasticatore_ in his finger-tips, and no substance was thought
too poor to express a good design, there are still to be found many
bits of old workmanship--clocks, _appliques_, terra-cottas, and carved
picture-frames with touches of gilding--that may be characterized in
the terms applied by the builder of Buckingham House to his collection
of pictures:--"Some good, _none disagreeable_." Still, no accumulation
of such trifles, even where none is disagreeable, will give to a room
the same distinction as the presence of a few really fine works of
art. Any one who has the patience to put up with that look of bareness
so displeasing to some will do better to buy each year one superior
piece rather than a dozen of middling quality.
Even the buyer who need consult only his own pleasure must remember
that his very freedom from the ordinary restrictions lays him open to
temptation. It is no longer likely that any collector will be
embarrassed by a superfluity of treasures; but he may put too many
things into one room, and no amount of individual merit in the objects
themselves will, from the decorator's standpoint, quite warrant this
mistake. Any work of art, regardless of its intrinsic merit, must
justify its presence in a room by being _more valuable than the space
it occupies_--more valuable, that is, to the general scheme of
decoration.
Those who call this view arbitrary or pedantic should consider, first,
the importance of plain surfaces in decoration, and secondly the
tendency of overcrowding to minimize the effect of each separate
object, however striking in itself. Eye and mind are limited in their
receptivity to a certain number of simultaneous impressions, and the
Oriental habit of displaying only one or two objects of art at a time
shows a more delicate sense of these limitations than the Western
passion for multiplying effects.