Yale University Library 39002002271006 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Homes and Their Decoration <« WrUTlNG-TABLLS ARE TO BE 1'KEFERKLO TO DLSKS ' (SEt PACE 234) Homes and Their Decoration By Lillie Hamilton French Author of "Hezekiah's Wives," "My Old Maid's Corner," etc. New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1903 Copyright, ipoj By Dodd, Mead and Company Published September, 1 903 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON ¦ CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. TO ALICE CARRINGTON ROYCE CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Individual Requirements i II. The Method of Procedure 19 III. Color in Decoration 46 IV. Kitchens 61 V. Bedrooms : Apartments 75 VI. Bedrooms : Houses 88 VII. Beds and Bed-linen 107 VIII. Bathrooms 126 IX. Dining-rooms 139 X. The Dining-room: The Decoration of the Table 161 XI. The Dining-room : The Appointments of the Table 176 XII. Sideboards 183 XIII. Parlors 187 XIV. Drawinc-rooms 210 XV. Libraries and Living-rooms 121 XVI. Halls : Apartments 237 XVII. Halls : Houses 253 XVIII. Halls : Houses (continued) 266 XIX. Windows 274 XX. Windows (continued) 293 XXI. The Floors 308 XXII. The Fireplace 317 vii CONTENTS Chapter Page XXIII. Verandas, Loggia, and Balconies .... 336 XXIV. The Lighting of a House 348 XXV. Picture Hanging and Framing 355 XXVI. The Decorative Possibilities in Plaster Casts 363 XXVII. Writing-tables and Pianos 369 XXVIII. Divans 377 XXIX. Mountain Camps and Holiday Retreats . . 383 XXX. Single Rooms and Studios 393 XXXI. Making over Furniture 4°4 XXXII. Notes and Suggestions 4l6 vill LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Full-page Illustrations ' Writing-tables are to be preferred to desks " . . Frontispiece Facing Page 'Hung with copper cooking utensils " 62 •Just above this kitchen is another" 64 ' In ordinary apartments, then, the pillows must be left under the cover " 86 ' At the foot of the bed is the couch facing the fire" ... 96 ' The head of the bed goes against the blank wall " ... 98 ' The yellow of the brass and that of the window repeated each other" 130 ' The hot and cold water-pipes at the head of the tub were tapped" 132 'That with the corner cupboard has white wood work" 144 ' The only china appearing from under cover is the blue and white" 146 'The top of the low-boy is used as a sideboard" . . . 150 ' The sideboard stands in a conventional town-house dining- room " 154 ' Never for a display ofthe teaspoons and forks" . . . 183 • Sideboards which have been bought in old houses for a song" 184 " A claret bottle may stand on a sideboard, but a beer bottle — never" 186 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Facing Page How wall space may be utilized, (showing use or uk wait space as in illustration opposite page 191 ) 1 QO HOW Wall Space may be Utilized. (Showing use of same wall space as in illustration opposite page 190) I92 "The interests must be concentrated, not scattered " . . 196 The wall space running from the window 198 The wall space running from the window 200 " One parlor has been treated in green and white " . . 204 " Greens and yellows alone are permitted " ..... 206 " Living rooms and libraries . . . gain an air of distinction " 230 " It belongs to a boudoir or study " 232 " The majority of us must content ourselves with those which the builder has erected " 238 " My fire is my friend " 318 " Fireplaces were sometimes of enormous size " . . . . 322 Mantelpieces directly over each other in the same apartment- house. (See illustrations opposite pages 332 and 334) .... 3 3^ Mantelpieces directly over each other in the same apartment- house. (See illustrations opposite pages 330 and 334) 33 2 Mantelpieces directly over each other in the same apartment- house. (See illustrations opposite pages 330 and 33Z) . .... 334 " Every detail has been carefully studied " 378 " The upholsterer can make a background to match the divan" 380 Illustrations in the Text Page Old Cathedral Lamp of Hammered Brass 3 Pie-crust Table 8 Pie-crust Table 9 Old Dutch Chair of Oak, richly carved with cushions of dark red leather, Albany Historical Society .... 10 Old Chair used by the Governor of Virginia two hundred years ago 10 x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Florentine Chair 1 1 Smill Table, Tea-tray with Legs and Handles .... 13 Cosey Chair \± Lamp Shade made of a square of Crepe Paper with a hole in the centre 15 "Embowed" Chair, 1727, Yale Library 18 Fine Colonial Tea Service of Silver. Date 1798 ... 20 A Modern Electric Light from Belgium 23 Modern Chair of Oak (stained dark), used also without the back 24 Adam Secretary Bookcase 29 Hepplewhite Chair 34 Design for Door Grille adopted from an old Spanish motive 41 Venetian Lantern, brass (used on the Gondolas) ... 46 Chippendale Chair 49 Good example of simple old Leaded Glass, Haddon Hall . 5 1 Splendid Old Hanging. Spanish Applique. Cloth of Gold and Spangles on Silk Velvet of rich red. Early Renaissance 5 2 A typical old Dutch Chair. Seventeenth Century ... 54 Old Clock made in New England in 1767 61 Old-fashioned Candlestick 63 Dutch Plate Shelf 66 Tiny Ironing Board, to hook on a Table 67 Cantigalli Pitcher 70 " Cantigalli " (crowing cock) the mark on this Pottery . 70 A reproduction of an old Dutch Kitchen 71 Plan of a Tiny Kitchen in a small apartment in Paris . . 74 German Wrought Iron 75 Clothes Tree. 1820. Carved Mahogany 78 Combination Window-Seat and Book-Shelves built in a Hall Bedroom seven feet wide 80 Oak Mirror Frame, heavily carved. (Three hundred years old) 85 xi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Modern German Electric Light Fixture 88 Bureau for country Cottages 90 Simple Dressing Table 95 Very fine Empire Bureau, now in the Museum of Furniture, Paris 100 Plan of Guest Room 103 The Duxbury Chair. Very light, yet strong. Well braced from the seat up 104 Old Mahogany Dressing Table 105 Bedroom Candlestick. Brown pottery with green clover leaves. Modern Dresden ware 107 Silk muslin mosquito netting over Bed. Curtains, looped back in the daytime, are dropped at night . . . . 109 A Dainty Bed 1 1 1 Louis XVI. gilded Bedstead 113 Low post Mahogany Bedstead, now in Brooklyn . . . I 16 Electric Light Bracket, Hammered Brass 127 An interesting piece of Colonial Glass four feet long . . . 132 Stencilled border for Bathroom 134 Large Candlestick of heavy green pottery. Shade of parch ment with heraldic design 139 Chippendale Chair. Easthampton, L.I 141 Hepplewhite Chair 143 Chippendale Chair from New England, 1788 . . . . 144 Florentine Cabinet of carved Oak 145 Type of Chair very common in this country about 1800 . 147 Hepplewhite Chair, made in America 149 Sheraton Chair. Painted black, with decorations of scrolls, colored and gilded. American, about 1810 . . . . 151 Drop Light over Dining- Table, Wrought Iron and Leaded Glass in green and blue 1 60 An English Lamp 161 Fine old Nankeen Teapot (blue and white) 163 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Large Fruit Dish of blue and white Delft 1 66 Louis XVI. Table 171 Candle Brackets on either side of old Door in the Steen, Antwerp, 1899 187 Old English Table, two feet high 188 Small Colonial Tea Table (gayly painted) 190 Hepplewhite Chair 194 A Summer Parlor 197 Parlor with its most important Furniture 199 Glass Candlestick 200 Sketched in South Kensington Museum from a French Table ofthe Sixteenth Century 205 German Wrought Iron. Cresting for low Wooden Screen 209 An English Electrolier 210 Hepplewhite Chair, a type common here at the beginning ofthe Nineteenth Century 212 A Philadelphia House 217 Empire Cheval Glass 218 Reading Lamp 221 Library 223 Plan showing revised Library 224 Clock-face carved and stained ... 226 A Smoking Room 228 Weathered Oak Divan with Seat thirty inches deep . . . 230 Sketch of Library 231 Clock, carved and stained brown, scarlet, and green . . 232 Good example of a Morris Chair made in this country . . 233 Italian Table richly carved 234 Large Table for Library of heavy Oak 236 Large Lantern of perforated Brass, white and colored Glass 237 Swing Doors cutting off the end of a long, narrow Hall way in an Apartment 242 Screen five feet high 245 xiii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Oak Settle for a narrow Hall 248 Perforated Brass Cover for a Steam Radiator 251 Electric Light Fixture in Berlin 253 English Clock, 1740 255 Florentine Chair, richly carved Oak 256 Old Grille, Paris 257 New England Hall 260 Clock 262 Found over an old Door in Bleecker Street, New York . . 264 Side Light of Leaded Glass, Colonial New York House, three feet long 265 Wrought Iron Lantern 266 Side Light from an old House in Philadelphia .... 267 Wrought Iron Crane, supporting a Curtain in narrow Hallway 269 Hall Settle of Walnut, with carved Panels 270 Window arranged to present an attractive appearance from the street 274 Fan Light from an old House in Philadelphia 276 Window in an Entrance Hall in London, showing Seat, Leaded Glass Windows, and Bookcases 279 Window 283 Window 287 Fireplace 290 Leaded Glass from the Commandery. Lights, four inches by six inches. Quarries, black and yellow 293 XIV. Century Candle Bracket. Rowlestone Church . . 310 Old German Chandelier, made of Antlers, with a gayly colored plaster Figure in front 317 Fireplace with Cast over it 319 Design for Wrought Iron Fender 321 A Colonial Fireplace 322 Fireplace in a country Cottage . 324 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Design for long-handled Bellows 327 Stone Fireplace with plaster Cast over the Shelf .... 329 An old English Fireplace 331 Fine old Franklin Stove. Easthampton 333 Ship's Lamp standing on a Table 336 Well-constructed Table, two feet high 339 Swinging Seat to hang from Beams over Piazza .... 340 Heavy Rocker, with rush Bottom, excellent Piazza Seat . . 343 An Electric Drop-light from Belgium 348 Small Shade for a Candle or Gas-jet, made of perforated Brass, with large "Stage Jewels" of Glass, set in the Sides 353 Electric Drop-light, with melon-shaped Shade of Leaded green and blue Glass .¦ 355 Sketch showing Pictures hung in pyramidal Form. Furni ture forming a Base 358 Diagram showing the arrangement of Pictures over a low Bookcase 360 Old Wrought Iron Candlestick from the Steen, Antwerp, five feet, six inches high 363 Candlestick 369 Cottage Writing Table 372 Well-built Library Table of Flemish Oak 374 Old Flemish Candle Bracket 377 Divan, Mattress at the Back under the Shelf . . . . ; 379 Old Ship's Lamp, from a Whaler 383 Stairway leading out of Living-room in a country House . 390 Oak Settle, row of Miniatures hanging under Shelf . . . 393 Candle Brackets on either side of old Door in the Steen . 396 A Smoking Room 397 Old Chair at Thun, carved by the Swiss Peasants . . . 399 Oak Chair made in Boston. Copy of the one used by Governor Bradford 401 xv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Cheval-glass, arranged with Shelves for Shoes and Toilet Articles 402 A Japanese Wall Lamp, made of Paper in a Bamboo Frame 404 Stencil Pattern for one color 405 Early English Door Handles 406 Door Handle from Haddon Hall 407 Early English Metal- Work closing Ring, Chant Merle Farm, Cattistock, Dorsetshire 409 Brass Handle 410 Simple old closing Ring, from the "Commandery" at Worcester 411 Wrought Iron Hinge, two hundred years old. English . 412 Escutcheon, six inches high from the door ofthe Bishop's Palace, Wells 413 The Bed with Chintz Panel and Curtains 414 A Divan Corner treated with Chintz : in Bands on the Window-Trim ; in Panels on the Ceiling ; on Cushions for the simple white Furniture 415 Old Hanging Lamp for burning Oil, with a floating Wick, Brass, six inches high 416 Side Light from an old Colonial Doorway in New York . 418 Seat End 419 The Tudor Rose as used by Queen Elizabeth. A simple Motive for Decoration 421 Gothic Motive, suitable for Carving or for Burning on Wood 423 Old English Seat End 426 Light over a Door. Colonial Leaded Glass 429 xvi Homes and Their Decoration Old GstWral ^f l3,">.[9. HOMES &? THEIR DECORATION CHAPTER I INDIVIDUAL REQUIREMENTS ! N the following pages I have made no attempt to discuss architectural periods or problems. My purpose has been to help the bewildered householder to see clearly what re sults she has been striving for, and how to go to work to obtain them. I have **» discussed the question of decoration from this point of view only, quoting examples of suc cessful interiors whenever they have seemed helpful. An experience of some years in answering letters from all over this country, from Canada, and from our colonists abroad, — letters written by women of wealth, of limited means, by the schoolgirl and the bride, — has enabled me to know something of the needs of a portion of my country-women. By means of this correspondence I discovered that for the most part these women were harassed by a sense of their own limitations, and confused by a medley 3 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION of suggestions, and by various proclamations re lating to infallible standards in household decora tion, — standards which might have been infallible for somebody else in some other condition, perhaps, but which were altogether inappropriate for them in theirs. Because of the needs of these women, therefore, I have begun with this question of requirements. There is no escape from it, when a human habita tion comes under discussion, — whether this habita tion take the form of a palace, a barrack, or a camp ; whether whole houses are to be consecrated to the use of single families, or whole families are to be housed on a single floor ; whether the home is to be a tenement, a studio-building, a hut in the wil derness, or cottage in a country town ; whether it is to be in a hot climate or a cold one ; whether its owners are rich or poor, important or obscure, sin gle or married. To make the home successful, we must know the needs of those who are to dwell in it, their circumstances, and the relation they bear to the community in which they live. To put it briefly, these requirements are not only individual but communal. They are distinct in each instance, yet certain universal laws govern them all. A man's duties to himself must guide him on one side ; his obligations to his neighbor, on the other. These he must balance. Take, by way of illustration, the executive man sion of a capital, a domicile bearing to the commu nity in which it stands a distinct and recognized 4 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION relationship, the conduct of its inmates toward the public governed by certain fixed and arbitrary rules. Yet, in spite of the limitations prescribed by custom, how different the atmosphere which successive ten ants create in the solemn chambers ! One performs the duties of a station so gracefully as to become a tradition, another in a way never to be forgotten for its frigidity and its lack of charm. We, who look on, may praise in one instance and decry in another, yet we concede always to each individual the right to his own manner of expression. The responsibility of comprehending and respect ing the domestic and social requirements rests for the most part upon woman. To be successful as their interpreter she must make them a particular study. She must first of all understand what the position of her husband, her father, or her own place in the world makes obligatory in the conduct of her affairs. This understanding gained, she must en deavor to adopt the best and most approved methods of meeting all the demands which may be made upon her and upon her house. Until she has done this she can never hope to understand any question of household decoration ; because, after all, the dec oration of a house implies, primarily, making pro vision for special needs. The degree of felicity with which these provisions are made, of course,, marks the excellence of one decorator over another. To be more specific, suppose that a woman has been brought up in a quiet village, or a college town where life was simple, where entertaining was done 5 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION on a small scale ; where dinner-giving was not an art, not a part of a complicated social machinery, but an expression of hospitality, a dropping in of neighbors, or at best, the entertainment of some dis tinguished professor from another town ; a village in which there was much visiting of an evening, and a going home of everybody, with lights out, at ten o'clock ; where costumes were not elaborate, and where, since the streets were quiet and travelled principally by friends and acquaintances, she could go afoot in her best clothes, requiring no carriage for special functions in the afternoon, and none, un less of choice, for a party at night. Suppose next that she marry a man of wealth, and move to a town where she is called upon to preside over a large establishment ; or that she marry a politician and move to a capital, perhaps Washing ton, where receptions and dinners are the order of the day ; where she has to be plunged more or less into public life ; where her duties are not alone to her children, nor to her husband as the head of his house, but to the position which he holds before the world, to the office to which his constituents have elected him. Is it not easy to see that her whole knowledge of living and entertaining will need altering, that she will have to learn how to appoint and run a house on an altogether different scale? to furnish it after a manner that would never have been tolerated in her native village, bringing quite another point of view to bear upon the question of appointments, equipages, menus, costumes? In 6 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION other words, she will have to be educated to fill a new position, to follow a social order to which noth ing at the old home has accustomed her. She will have to appoint her house not only in a way accept able to herself, the woman in it, but to the commu nity in which she moves as a conspicuous figure. The decoration of the home then presents itself to her as quite a new problem. On the other hand, suppose that she had been reared in affluence and had then married a poor clergyman whose parish lay in some remote county ; or a lawyer who had his way to make ; or an officer in the army without a settled home. She might have to begin her new life in a parsonage, an apart ment, or an army post. How different the require ments of each case would be ! How differently she would have to consider them ! Or, again, she might be a spinster, choosing be tween a boarding-house, a couple of rooms, or a cheap apartment. She might, as the wife of an ar tist, have to live in a studio-building, or if she had lost her money, she might have to content herself with one room only. Had she to come down in the world, be reduced to the necessity of pondering the question of ways and means in the preservation of her dignity and refinement, she would have to ap proach the subject from still another standpoint, but she would not be so likely to make mistakes in judgment as other people who are trying to widen out; for she would have all her past experience to call upon, her knowledge of propriety and propor- 7 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION tion to guide her. She would know the essentials of refined living, and what unessentials to avoid. She would, for instance, know how to pick her way judiciously among cheap articles f furniture, how to choose one tea-cup because its lines were good, even though it cost a sixpence only, how to discard one that cost a little more, be cause it was pretentious and ugly. She would know, indeed, what good thing the cheap thing tried to imitate. For that reason she would never buy a fragile gilt chair, but she would sacri fice much in order to purchase a good sideboard and table. In this way she would prove, though unconsciously, that she understood what constituted pie-crust Table correct principles in the deco ration of the home. An undeniable stamp of re finement would at the same time be given to her environment. Were she, however, in furnishing a single room, to introduce appointments suitable only to elabo rate houses, — furniture covered with satins, bro cades, and costly stuffs, or worse still, with imitations of them, — what could be said of her ? The very fact 8 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION of her being able to possess but a single room would imply a modest station in life, well-born and high bred as she might be. But how could she prove her heritage unless she proved that what- ever its proud character _._ £~£ \/CJ^Tr_ she could yet adapt herself cjT'"^'^^ ^^^3r> — /<\H?X yy with dignity to the limita- ~"v ^^t*5-;^**^ tions of an altered and a cramped posi- < v^, a tion ? She could lend her single room a certain distinction by keeping it simple and by keeping it clean, and " cleanliness," as some distinguished critic has said, " is a decoration in itself." She could, too, make the one room hospitable even if there were but one chair in it to offer. It would depend upon herself, not upon her posses- . T , . , . Pie-cnist Table sions. In the placing of that soli tary chair, as in the choice of it, she could prove her knowledge of refinement, — imitation brocades and gilt chairs could never prove it. Inappropriate as the mere elegance of upholstered satins would be in a single room, it must never be forgotten that the presence of a beautiful work of art would lift it at once off the plane of the merely commonplace and essential. A beautiful work of art is never inappropriate anywhere, unless its size prove too overpowering, as in the case of a marble statue in a small room. Having such in her posses sion, a bit of carving, a painting, a bronze, or even a piece of silver or crystal, were a woman forced to 9 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION fA b iiwj 7"Ti »tbr ic ol live in a hovel, a certain dignity would be lent to her surroundings. And for this reason, it has often seemed wrong to me for the well-to-do to object to the giving of beautiful things to those of limited means, because the beautiful things were unsuitable, or be cause only the physical necessities of the genteel poor ought to be consid ered. Furbelows are inappropri ate in poverty, but beautiful objects never, if their owners love them. House hold gifts ought not to be chosen with ref erence to the pecu niary limitations of the recipients, but with refer ence to a power in the gift to lift and glad den, bringing the suggestion of better things into the lives of those unable to provide such things for them selves. A foolish satin sofa cush ion will not do this, nor an elaborate combination of marble and gilt, but a beautiful picture will, or a piece of bronze, a carved chair or table, even if those who receive them must live out their days in a single room. 10 Old. Dutch. cHair cf ok ticWy cotvcoI, .wMH. CuaKiarta of. cUrkrccl Socnl / Old cW. VjpVfcT T2P\" u&ccil by "i.e oi Virgin. i -a. two runndred years a^o HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION Suppose, once more, a change of condition com pelling a woman to a new study of requirements. She had lived a life of social obligations in town, and wanted to escape the formalities and the man agement of servants, to indulge a holiday spirit under the trees. How ill-judged were she to fur nish a cabin in the woods or by the sea with the same appointments as those appropriate to a city house ! The charm of the camps in the Adirondack and Can ada woods, luxurious costly as some of them lies in the fact that although every comfort is provided, ([j^^ nothing suggesting care ^^ cw is introduced ; nothing — - that would imply inter ference with the free enjoyment of the woods or the untrammelled life of those who have gone there for rest and refreshment. A satin hanging in a camp would be inappropriate ; ebonies, ma hoganies, costly inlaid woods, as much out of key as an elaborate service of silver and glass. On finely appointed yachts, where the whole life is luxu rious and where the management of details does not devolve upon the owner, but is made over to com petent hands, a question of possessions implying too much care does not enter in. Life on board a yacht, too, is more isolated, more compact, if I may use the word, than life in a camp, where everything 1 1 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION is open, even to the squirrels and the birds. Com fort can then be indulged with propriety and with out the sacrifice of any sense of freedom in a camp, a solitary cabin in the woods, or on a yacht ; but the choice of materials for providing that comfort or for introducing the beautiful must vary with each environment. So must the choice of materials used in decoration. A woman I know, who understands this question thoroughly, will never, for instance, permit geraniums in the boxes on the porches of an Adirondack camp, nor the boxes themselves to be made of porcelain, tiles, or any other imported material. The fruits and vegetables consumed on her table come from a distance, since they help to nourish the physical man. Her table decorations, however, are of ferns, not garden flowers. Whatever the life of the individual, whether it represents a growing prosperity, an enlarging, or a cramping, of means, a woman must prove her knowl edge of requirements in still another way, — in the provision made for her servants, and in the number of those she provides for the running of her house. When a home is planned and furnished, she must not only know what to do for the well-being of those under her, for their physical comfort, their recreation, and their discipline, but she must know what their conduct should be, not only in the care of her personal belongings, but in the care of her guests, so that they represent her worthily, as ser vants should, expressing the spirit of her house, whatever its spirit may be, whether one of hospi- HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION &w-»H Tibia- Ti»-1r»y wlKlftJJ atU ti.»n«l£e&, tality, dignity, reserve, or magnificence. If she en tertains on a large scale, she must know what enter taining should be, how to train her maid for her cloak-room, and her but ler for her dining-room. She must know even better than they what silver should go on her sideboard, what linen on her table, what flowers in her vases, and how tea should be served in the afternoon ; or how a glass of sherry and a biscuit should be carried to the exhausted old lady who has come to make an afternoon visit. She should know these things whether she were rich or poor ; whether she had twenty domestics to carry out her wishes, or the necessity were hers of preserving the refinements with the help of but one — or none ; whether she had an apartment or a house ; whether a formal or an informal manner of living were hers. And in whatever condition of splendor or of simplicity she lived, she would still have her own views, tastes, and sympathies to con sider. The question of individuality is paramount. There is no real decoration of the home without it, however splendid the environment. A house dec orated to order, and lacking this individual touch, is often little better than a railway station. You, as a householder and a woman, must know just what your house is to stand for, what of your self you want to express in it and through it. Sup pose that your whole idea was to have a hospitable '3 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION home, one with wide welcoming doors open to every friend ; a home in which those who came were made at ease and from which they went away refreshed. Suppose, I say, that you began your house with this idea. Could you, if this were so, imagine your keeping in your parlor an uncomfortable chair, with its legs too short J | or too long, and its back bent [_. so that no one could sit in it | without breaking his own ? Jb ; Were you sincere in your claim to the hospitable spirit, could you rest content until you had substituted an other chair for that one entailing such universal discomfort ? Could you ever hope to understand anything about the dec- or'ation of the home if you went on ignoring details like these ? Suppose, again, that you were proud of a certain lamp in your room, but that your visitors were al ways wriggling to get away from its glare — holding up a fan or a pamphlet to protect the eyes. What sort of hospitality would be yours if you permitted the lamp to remain? In the arrangement of your lamps, as in that of your chairs, to be truly comple mentary to the spirit and the purport of your home, you should study the needs of every inmate. >4 Cosey Chair HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION Lamps should not be in out-of-the-way corners when one wants to read, nor in places where the light would be wearisome if people cared only to talk. Chairs should be placed where they provide the most comfort. The decoration of a home means nothing but a consideration of the requirements of a family or its guests, providing for them in the best and most felicitous manner possible. I know a large, beautifully proportioned, country-house hall, panelled in oak, with heavy timbers in the ceiling. It is as empty as lower Broadway after midnight. " I have never known what to do with it, " its pros perous owner sighed in my ear. Never known what to do with it, I thought ; and yet she has lived in that house for years. She has a hus band, too, and a house full of young children, besides an unlimited bank account and a few friends. I can, in imagination, see the members of her house hold all go skipping through that gloomy hall when twilight has fallen or when dinner is over, and so on into the one room really comfortable in her house, — the library; which is not a library, since every one sits in it and there is not a corner quiet enough for a book. She has never known what to do with her hall, because she has never known what she wanted that hall to do for her. She has never had any ideas to express in it. Yet she might, out of mere politeness, as a compliment to her guests or to her family, but especially to her guests, who pass through, have long ago filled it with fine old carved '5 ba*ip ¦Vad.j mick of » mauarc of crtpe JMMr win* a hole in ffi« centre. — .— HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION chests (she can afford to buy them). She could have had a fire burning on its ample hearth, its blaze adding a note of welcoming color. She could have introduced pictures, bronzes, plants. Plants are beautiful anywhere. I have said just above, " especially the guests," for I believe that no decoration of a house can be beautiful which ignores the comfort and the well- being of those who are invited within its portals. Man is a social being. As he ascends in the scale of civilization, his social needs become more and more defined. He must not live for himself alone, neither should he build his house without consid eration of his fellow-beings. Of course, by making his own life full, he equips himself for enriching that of others; but the two processes should go side by side, in obedience to interdependent obligations and necessities. The best architects understand this. They consider the human relations, the graces and the charms of life, whether they are designing the simplest of parlors or the most splendid of re ception-rooms. They understand that something besides the formal salutations of a hostess should welcome her guests to a ball ; that a way of ap proach to her side should be made easy, and the way from it ; the way also of loitering with one friend or of joining another ; that at every step there should be beguilement and pleasure for the eye and comfort for the body. The true spirit of decora tion leaves none of these questions neglected, and the eternal quest of the home-lover should be for 16 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION the best means by which these various requirements could be met. To arrange and rearrange until the desideratum is reached, is the business of all those who are interested in the decoration of homes, whether simple or elaborate. Wall-papers, curtains, rugs, and stuffs for upholstery are so many tools whereby the decorator obtains the atmosphere he desires. And the question of atmosphere will not always come from a successful handling of these in struments. You may purchase the interior decora tions of a palace and set them up in your house, and find the result sadly lacking in harmony, in dignitv. The setting should never be out of keep ing with the life that is to be lived before it : only by the harmony of the two can you arrive at the best results. For instance, should you, as I said, desire above all other things to be hospitable, to have your house express welcome, you must not suppose that this means a throwing down of all the barriers in order to admit each visitor to the intimacies. " We treat you as one of the family," a certain woman once said to a visitor. But to be treated as one of the family, this visitor afterwards discovered, was to be made absolutely and thoroughly uncomfortable. And here a delicate subject is touched upon, since there are many who urge that true hospitality con sists in giving to guests only that to which you yourself are accustomed every day; only such a dinner as you would eat alone; only such a chair as that in which you would be comfortable. " What 2 I7 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION Emboweci Yale. Ljhrapy is good enough for me is good enough for my friends," the vulgar man expresses it. These per sons would have no room for the reception of vis itors except one used in the daily life of the family. But it seems to me that the hospitable instinct has to do only with the comfort and well-being of others, and that if it means anything it means giving to others your best. If, on the other hand, your guest wants only what you have, wants the intimacies and you want to admit him to them, then by all means do as he desires. But if your guest wants to make a formal visit when he comes, a family living-room is not the Vj) room in which that formal visit should be made. At one time in this country there was a great outcry against the " best parlors " of small country houses, those vault-like chambers in which no sun ever shone, and into which the occasional visitor was invariably ushered, to shiver or to wilt according to his sus ceptibility or powers of resistance. The reaction away from these awful places, with their cold, musty odors, carried us into parlors in which it was obli gatory to display some sign of having but that very iS <7 27 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATiON instant been vacated by a mistress. It was fash ionable to see an open book laid upside down on a sofa, or a few sheets of music spread carelessly on the open piano, and I remember a certain parlor in Boston in which a lady's worsted work always appeared on a particular table, a particular chair being drawn up by it. That was in the days when Morris had begun to educate the people in ques tions of beauty and when the rage of crewels began, especially for the greens, the olives, and dull golds. So this was why the work-bag of the lady in Boston was always left open on a table and showed the long strands of greens and olives in her crewels laid flat on a piece of spotless linen. How well I remember them ! Indeed, why should I have for gotten them ? I saw the same strands week after week throughout an entire winter. Everybody else in Boston knew those crewels, too. They used to remind me of the baby's little linen shirt which Becky Sharp kept in her work-basket on her draw ing-room table. She never sewed on the shirt ex cept when she wanted to make an impression, and her son Rawdon was a boy in trousers before it was half finished. Another departure carried us away from parlors and living-rooms into reception-rooms furnished at great cost and hung with pictures, every effort being made to create an impression of elegance in them. But how dreary and unlivable and pretentious were these costly reception-rooms, almost as unendurable as the best parlors of an earlier generation. All of '9 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION which goes to prove that the subject is absorbing and not easy of solution, and that only as men and women grow in grace and cultivation and in true consideration of their neighbors can we hope to arrive at that point where beauty and grace and all the hospitable virtues can be expressed within the limitations prescribed by formal codes. But then, after all, what else is art but a constant endeavor to do this very thing, to express beauty through limitations, and to do so with felicity ? There is a last word I would like to say about requirements. It seems to me that were the subject understood better, envy of one's neighbors would disappear, and the idle striving to imitate or outdo his splendor. We would understand that to the householder of conspicuous possession, fine apart ments were a necessity, as they would not be to those in humbler places. Moreover, our feelings would not be so easily injured, since an understand ing of requirements would quicken our understand ing of the many differences of condition in life. Tfaa CotoTuat "Tea Service, of a'uvep. "Date 1798 . HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION CHAPTER II THE METHOD OF PROCEDURE IN planning or furnishing a dwelling, whatever or wherever it may be, you must be governed by three considerations, — what you want, what you need, what you can have. I have put these considerations in what seems to me their rightful order, because, in every departure that is made, each person begins by wanting certain things, which is quite different from needing them, and altogether different from being able to possess them. Your wants may be legitimate and rational, or selfish and vain, but whatever they are, they express you. If they express the best in you, you should strive to let them guide you even when sat isfying only your needs. Your needs, however, will vary according to your environment, your occupa tion, or profession, the place which you occupy in the world, and ultimately the amount of money which you are able to expend. The question of requirements discussed in the previous chapter, then, must govern you in your choice of a dwelling-place. But that choice made, and a habitation provided, you are at once con fronted with the problem of how to furnish and appoint the hall-ways and rooms of your house. 21 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION As no man can live without eating and sleeping, the logical order of furnishing would compel you to begin with those departments in which provision is made for bodily necessities. All that follows after ward in the appointing of the home must take cognizance of your mental and moral needs, intel lectual and artistic sympathies, and of those partic ular tastes and accomplishments which have been developed in special directions. This is as it should be, since the whole purpose of life is growth. Bed rooms, kitchens, and dining-rooms are arranged first, that growth may take place in one essential direction, and make for the increase of the mental and physical strength upon which rests the foun dation of success. Drawing-rooms, libraries, and music-rooms, on the other hand, provide for a dif ferent order of necessities. Development here takes place in the graces and amenities of life, in an ap preciation of the arts. This is really the reason why the walls of your dining-room may be treated in one way, and the walls of a living-room or a parlor in another. The dining-room is a place for eating. Its purpose is defined. But the living-room, or the one parlor, is a place for recreation, where new interests are, or should be, introduced con stantly— -new books, new pictures, new pieces of furniture, perhaps, and certainly, if there are young people, new amusements and pleasures. A wall paper o f pronounced and obtrusive character, then, is unde sirable in a family living-room. Its tend ency would be to keep everything about it bound HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION down to its level. A beautiful and artistic wall- hanging might represent a selection as unfortunate, if it brought the room up to so high a key that nothing of homelier interest ther a lady's work-bag, book — without de Neither a family liv mistress should have delicate a nature that day interests jar. Nei fair and good for hu food." f\ f\>de.vn } could appear — nei- nor a paper-bound stroying the scheme. ing-room nor its sensibilities of so the ordinary every- ther should be " too man nature's daily DecTnic *3 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION If you have but one room for recreation, never furnish it when beginning your housekeeping. In so doing you may find yourself perpetually cramped .Acxlern. cln&ir* oL oaU.(_alain.£eV ^»m) \i%«k also WiAout "t^e back . by some early expression of yourself, from which you would find it as difficult to grow away, as men find it difficult to escape the records of a youthful misdemeanor. A parlor with a flowered carpet, white lace curtains falling straight, shining green ¦24 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION wall-paper with pink roses, and — (that pride of some purchasers) a whole suit of furniture made of a tufted cotton-back satin ; here and there about the room, perhaps, a gilt chair or table with brass legs, or a marble-top table — such a parlor would mean for you a place from which there could be no escape, no chance of rising to better things, no op portunity for expansion. Its case would be hope less. Nothing could be done with it without a revolution, a complete overthrow, a getting back to first principles. If a man must wax in strength and stature, some chance must be left him in which to expand. " What are you looking for? " said the lady of the house to a friend, who, instead of ad miring a room crowded with beautiful things, stood silently gazing about her. " A place for your soul to grow in," was the answer. If in building you intend to reproduce a given period, consultation with a good designer is im perative. He will tell you what the proportions of your room should be — decide the height of your doors and windows, the character of your fire place, and the special treatment of your wall-surface and ceiling. " Decoration is always subservient to proportion," says a writer on the subject, " and a room, whatever its decoration may be, must repre sent the style to which its proportions belong. The less cannot include the greater. Unfortu nately, it is usually by ornamental details, rather than by proportion, that people distinguish one style from another. To many persons, garlands, 25 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION bow-knots, quivers, and a great deal of gilding rep resent the Louis XVI style ; if they object to these, they condemn the style. To an architect familiar with the subject, the same style means something absolutely different. He knows that a Louis XVI room may exist without any of these, and he often deprecates them as representing the cheaper and more trivial effects of the period — those that have most helped to vulgarize it. In nine cases out of ten his use of them is a concession to the client who, having asked for a Louis XVI room, would not know he had got it with these details left out." The simple possession of some Louis XVI hang ings, therefore, is not sufficient to give you a Louis XVI room. Nor can an Empire curtain, sofas, and chairs transform the parlor of an ordinary city house into a room of the Napoleonic period. Neither can the presence of a few heavy draperies, low tables, perforated brass vases, and lamps make for an American house a Turkish interior. I wish the attempt were not so often made. There are, to be sure, certain studios, boys' rooms, and dens, into which these materials may be introduced with pro priety ; but when finished these rooms should sug gest unpretentious motives. If you have made no study of decoration, you should have confidence in your architect. To hamper him with your little insistences, demanding that he use certain possessions for which you may have a sentiment, but which do not belong to the period, is to handicap him at every turn. But if 26 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION you have made a study of the subject and your tastes and sympathies are thoroughly established, then you and your architect can work together. Upon you in such cases depends the ultimate selec tion of designs, the details of cornice and ceiling, of materials and colors, which he submits for your approval. To you, too, may fall the choice of the various stuffs and hangings. When such a respon sibility is yours, try first to secure the genuine arti cles ; failing these, select designs copied from the best examples of the proper period, but never rest content with a search through modern shops and a purchase of those imitations of particular periods with which the manufacturers have filled the market. Books giving complete, carefully illustrated descrip tions of the architectural details of the decorations and furniture of each different period are to be had. You should study these, even if you have travelled and observed extensively. For if the privilege of following your own taste be yours, in the building of a house possessing architectural excellence your obligation is great. The work should be under taken seriously ; intrusted to hands not only capable of carrying your ideas to a satisfactory conclusion, but of guiding you to a perception of still better things. Yours is not a privilege to be regarded lightly. If your house be beautiful, you have made a contribution to the world. Most of us must inhabit houses already modelled on prescribed lines, until we have in town a dreary monotony of brown stone fronts and unbroken 27 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION wall surfaces, and in country districts the hopeless ness of narrow halls and stairs, front and back parlors exactly alike, and bedrooms above, with mantel shelves over hot-air registers. The simplest form of wall-surface, the one often suggested as a problem in decoration, is that left by the builder as a plain surface of plaster or cement filling the places between the doors, windows, and fireplace. It can be treated exactly as the judgment of the owner dictates. It can be painted, white washed, calcimined, covered with paper or with a textile, — burlaps, silks, cretonnes, or tapestry. It can be panelled in wood, covered with leather or marble, or hung with silks and embroideries. Each individual decides these questions according to her means and the use for which she wishes the room. In one intended for pictures she wants no distrac tions on the wall in the way of flowers, strong colors, or obtrusive designs. If a picture is worthy at all of a place on the walls, it should be spared the affront of discordant surroundings. The owner of " A Dutch Tulip Garden " would be guilty of an unpardonable crime were she to hang it over paper already covered with tulips, good as that tulip paper might be ; or to hang a Venetian sketch with its delicacy and transparency of tone — or a picture of Bermuda with pale colored skies and whitewashed houses — on vivid crimson or blue papers. Yet the same sort of folly is being committed every day by people who cover their walls with flowered papers and sketches in water-colors. 26 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION In any room intended for reading and study, walls covered with blossoms, or intricate, over-ac centuated designs, are dis- ^j- tracting and unsatisfactory. Books are in themselves a decoration. The colors of their bindings, — reds, greens, blues, and gold, — broken by the tawny hue of old calf, have richness of tone. In those libraries in which the shelves do not run to the ceiling, a plain background above the shelves is a neces sity, primarily on account of the books, but also as a background for the busts, pictures, or casts which you may also introduce. In liv ing-rooms and parlors, where pictures, brasses, and pottery are introduced, an unobtru sive wall color is a necessity. In dining-rooms the ques tion of a background for the objects on the walls need not be so carefully consid ered. A dining-room may ' be well appointed with nothing displayed in it but the glass and silver. In bedrooms, light-flowered or striped papers, with colors suggesting bright- 29 Adam. ¦OecxaTmv BocVcag. HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION ness, repose, and daintiness, are of paramount im portance. In a room that is long and narrow, a large-figured or flowered paper only accentuates the length, until the room is made to look like the inside of a cable- car. Treat it with vertical stripes of two tones softly merging into each other. A flowered or figured material over the windows at the end will shorten the room, bringing the most distant point nearer to you. If you are committed to a large-flowered paper, plain hangings of quiet tone should be put over the windows at the end. When the end of the room is occupied by a blank wall-space, a mir ror, with plants arranged as a foreground, answers a good purpose, provided the reflections in the mirror are studied and the end of the room brought nearer, the eye not being enticed to a greater distance. The wood-work of a room — the door and win dow casings, the base, even the picture-moulding — must be considered in relation to the covering to be chosen for the walls. If on moving into a house you are committed to one kind of wood-work (some landlords will permit none of theirs to be changed), select your paper with reference to it. Red, for in stance, may do very well if the wood be white, but it is out of the question with light oak. On the other hand, white wood-work may be an impossibil ity with red, or any dark paper, because its lines may be bad. A dark paper would throw it into too strong relief, making a series of broken and distract ing streaks distributed without grace or symmetry. 30 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION If so situated, your business should be to subdue the unfortunate conditions, so that they may be for gotten. If the house were yours, you might do this by painting the wood-work to match the walls, or a shade darker. You cannot do this if the paper be red. Red wood-work and paper combined would be heavy. When a red paper is desired, the trim, of course, might be scraped and stained, — so ex pensive an operation that perhaps a wiser course would be to choose a different color. Always bear in mind, however, that the wood-work frames the wall-covering, and that its color must never be ignored. It often happens, unfortunately, that the wall-space is divided by a series of doors and win dows distributed without regard to symmetry or proportion. Thus, there may be at times many doors and a single window in a room, these open ings having been managed awkwardly when addi tions were made to the house. Doors and windows in a room are often an advantage in breaking up the lines of a long bare wall, if the composition of the sides of the room is well studied. An ingenious treatment of superfluous doors in an apartment — doors which mean nothing because unused — will be found in illustration on page 31, where old India shawls have been hung as backgrounds for plaster casts or brasses and coppers. A mirror is always effective. Mirrors have been almost universally adopted as a means of improving rooms of small size, where the need of suggesting at least greater breathing space is imperative. Palms may be 31 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION grouped in front of them, and sofas so arranged that no one thinks of them, but is unconsciously satis fied with the feeling of space. On no account commit yourself to a wall-paper until you have brought home a generous sample and have lived with it in your house for several days. Hang it up and study it from several points of view ; turn away and forget it, then turn round again suddenly and see how its color and design im press you, — whether pleasantly or with a shock ; put two widths together and notice how the pattern repeats ; try it back of your sofas and pictures ; see it in daylight and at night. It may have seemed to you delightful when hanging in the shop, and yet prove itself to be the most uncomfortable of com panions at home ; like some acquaintance made in summer, — charming enough on a hotel piazza, or on his native heath — altogether intolerable upon longer and more intimate acquaintance. And this brings me to another point, — one to be still more strongly urged. Before beginning a hunt for papers, save your>self trouble by making a list and entering on it the things which you should avoid. At the head of this list place papers with gilt figures ; until they have been tried no one can know the agonies they are capable of inspiring. They are one thing to-day and another to-morrow. They have no stability, no surety. They are for ever deceiving you. They are bright and promis ing in one light, gloomy and repellant in another. HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION They have no repose ; they permit none. You may arrange a corner carefully, having reference to such a paper as its background. Change your seat and look at your corner from another side. Every thing is wrong ! Put second on your list a paper with a shin ing, smooth surface. It can be as bad as a pol ished tin. It holds no light, softens no reflection, takes on no tone : it is hard and repellent always. Next on your " Index Purgatorium " put the ordinary frieze that repeats a paper in color and design, then straggles off into lighter tones above. This frieze, you may be sure, is bad. You want none of it. You can run your paper up to your ceiling, if you desire, or bring your ceiling down to it. The every-day frieze is a mistake ; is indeed no longer used by the best decorators. I speak in no language of exaggeration when I say that my heart has often ached for women in different parts of the country who have sent me samples of the paper chosen for their walls, their frieze, and their ceilings. With what pride these samples have been submitted at times ! And how impossible they have proved to be, although their purchasers have been assured they all " went well together." It used to take every bit of my cour age to declare against them. Now and then, how ever, a woman would write to me that she was in despair. "It all sounded so well, this particular combination," she would say in her letter, " but now that the papers are hung I cannot bear to go 3 33 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION into the room. My husband and I keep the door shut. What shall we do to make the room bear able ? " And I would unfold her samples, spread them out before me, and not wonder at her suffer ing ; indeed, I have generally found my respect grow for the woman, and for the hus band capable of sympathizing with her mistake. " The mark of rank in nature " is certainly the "capacity for pain." Her pain proved her ex cellence. There is always hope for those like her : I have tested and jJUllll (..('ijigW tried, but never found them vvant- 'uUIIIIiIuJotHv ing5 even when I counselled new papers, going without a dinner or two, if necessary, in order to pay for them. None of those truly craving the beautiful are unwilling to deny themselves to attain it ; to starve gracefully and cheerfully and silently — exulting in the possession ofthe beauty gained. Many a meal the impecunious book-lover denies himself to de fray the cost of a special volume; many a luncheon the restricted home-lover goes without to pay for a beautiful hanging or a bit of old mahogany that will add gladness to her days. Many a shabby hat has been worn to gain the price of a new sofa cushion. And this is as it should be, and not foolish. In our homes we work for more than ephemeral pleasures. We must remember that as the color-schemes of individual rooms are studied, so those of whole 34 Hepplewhite Chair HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION houses must be studied in relation to each other, that one room need not be thrown out of harmony with another. Thus in a certain country house the owner determined to permit no paper or picture that did not express a feeling for nature, and no appointment that suggested care. Her house is green and white throughout, but the green of each room is the green of some tree or some bush. Even her lamp-shades show green on a white ground. In one case, for instance, the green of the pine-tree enters in as a design of needles and cones on the shade. No pictures are permitted in certain rooms that do not suggest forest interiors. The effect is by no means monotonous, but cool and refreshing, and she has surrounded herself with a delightfully original expression of her own individuality. Cartridge papers, with their uneven surfaces which break the light, have stood the test of many experiments. Improved examples of this paper are made. In a more expensive material nothing in the way of a wall-covering has yet been manu factured so satisfactory for a variety of purposes as a burlaps. It adapts itself to so many different conditions. Architects use it as a background for the finest tapestries. It appears in beautiful libra ries ; it is congenial in simple surroundings. It fades delightfully. It never annoys you by the reflection for which you have not asked. It can be painted, stained, or treated with a wash of gold. It is easily kept clean with a wet rag and 35 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION ammonia. Moreover, — and this really recom mends it most highly, — it comes in good colors, the manufacturers having devoted much attention to the subject ; though more expensive than ordi nary papers, it lasts longer. Burlaps is put on like paper. Denim can be put on in the same way. When cretonnes, bro cades, and costly stuffs are used, the habit is to employ fine, invisible brass nails, which are after wards concealed by a gimp. When woods are employed on a wall the services of a carpenter are necessary. He can at any time ceil an ordi nary room with pine, walls and ceiling alike. Rooms treated in this way are especially desirable in camps, in cabins, or in simple country-house dining-rooms and bedrooms ; those, for instance, built in out-of-the way places, where the house holder wants to save herself the trouble of papers. The soft browns and yellows of the grain of the wood are agreeable, lending themselves to a variety of hangings. It can be stained if desired. Sometimes, for the sake of variety, it can be made to stop a foot or so below the ceiling, the frieze being filled with a piece of chintz or calico. I know a young girl's bedroom so treated in the Catskills. She repeated the chintz of her frieze in the hangings of her bed, on the covers of her low window-seats, and again in her curtains. Their colors were charming with the simple, unpainted pine. A carpenter can make a wainscoting which may 36 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION be painted white or stained. When wood is impos sible, a dado of some stuff, or burlaps, or velours, may, in ordinary houses, take the place ofthe wood. The object of either is twofold, — to lift the wall- decoration to a level with the eye, and to form a background for the pieces of furniture placed against it. Nothing, for instance, is so ugly as a long, narrow room with a very light paper running down to the base-board, while against this paper and all around the room pieces of dark furniture are shown, — tables and chairs with slim legs. One is always seeing the light walls between the legs. The eye is distracted, whereas the object should be to leave the eye free to rest upon or to follow the. wall- decorations above, — the pictures or bronzes. Low bookcases running around a room serve the same purpose, and like a wainscoting or a dado, keep the lower part of the room as it should be kept, in a lower key. When costly woods are employed on a wall, or when marbles appear, an architect or designer must be consulted. The woods generally used are French walnut, mahogany, chestnut, oak, brown ash, Cali fornia redwood. These woods may appear as a wainscoting, be made to run all the way to the ceiling, or, stopping a few feet below, be finished with a shelf or moulding under a frieze of plaster, Spanish leather, tapestry, stucco, silk, or occasionally a piece of cretonne of particularly good color or design. When wood is put to other uses and elaborate designs are followed for the inlay of 37 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION mirrors, tapestry, silk, or brocades, the whole room must be carefully designed, and by an artist. A room, so treated, is of itself the finished whole. No liberties should be taken with it. No pictures should be hung on its walls at the whim of the householder, and never unless a space has been specially created for such a purpose by the archi tect, and the design of the wood or stucco has been made to form the frame of that which is to be placed in it. The every-day householder should attempt no elaborations of her ceilings. When she desires beams or panels, or stucco on her ceiling, she should seek the guidance of a well-trained designer. Had builders and contractors been as careful, we might have been spared the horror of many a ceiling in the old-fashioned houses, — coves, cornices, and ornate plaster scrolls treated with applications of fan tastic tints. A misunderstanding of this subject, in deed, swept a generation of moneyed people off their feet, leaving us to deplore the results which still afflict us long after their perpetrators are dead and gone. One man had his ceilings painted to re produce the floral designs of his carpet, so that one walked through his rooms with a dizzying sense of being suspended in mid-air, flowers above and flow ers below, or, worse still, of not knowing whether one were walking quite in the proper place — every thing seemed topsy-turvy. Another man painted his ceiling to look like, "the blue vault on high" — the blue solid and studded with gilt stars. 38 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION Many years are required for a recovery from evil examples like these, especially when they have been all about us. Bad colors, proportions which defy every law of grace or beauty, over-elaboration of the trivial, if they have been part of the environ ment in which we have been born and bred, come to be accepted as our standard. Time seems to have sanctioned their use, the approval of our an cestors has given them weight and value. A more enlightened generation suffers and questions, but only a revolutionist or a prophet can bring about a new order. For this reason we have considered stucco and stencilled ceilings a necessity, and have been long discovering the beauty of simplicity in contrast to elaborations not directed by an expe rienced touch. The ceilings of an ordinary country or town house should be treated with great discretion ; never trusted to a painter who will insist on some stencilled design for which he has a partiality. If the ceiling is low, the effect of such a design is of something pressing down on the head. The ordi nary ceiling ought never to be accentuated. When both the walls and the wood-work of the room are of one tone — a green, for instance — the ceiling should be slightly tinted with green, but merely enough of it used to carry the tone away from the white. If, on the other hand, the walls are green and the wood-work is white, then the ceiling should be white. Height is diminished by bringing the ceiling color down to the picture-moulding. The 39 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION ceiling can then be finished with a wash or covered with a paper. In some rooms a flowered paper is used in this way, the color of the paper below re peating that of some detail in the ceiling-paper. This treatment is best suited to bedrooms, bath rooms, and parlors. A paper showing flowers or foliage too heavily massed, without space between, is not desirable. The idea is to produce the im pression of an arbor with vines interlaced overhead. A flowered paper of conventional design can be used on the ceiling where a decoration of bands or figures would be impossible. The flowers would give an idea of space overhead, while the stencilled design would tend to oppress you as though a box- cover had been put over your head. When the room is ready for the furniture and hangings, all the tact of the householder will be required. She must never be impatient of results nor think that she has attained her object with a first trial. She must live in a room to make it thoroughly habitable, live there in imagination as well as in person. She must shift her furniture about, try it in this place and that, and never rest until she is satisfied. When a room is small she must strive for compactness ; when it is large, for comfort — but whatever she does she must not only work with a reason for each act and selection she may make, but she must be able to prove her reason for every move. She must, too, interest herself constantly with a question of vistas, until the various openings from her rooms frame a series of pictures. To do 40 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION l^.id-rL Par cloor U^' H . c. "I t— 41 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION this she must sit in different parts of a room and study effects through open doorways, or at the end of some line of division. If a mirror is hung, the mirror must be full of pleasant reflections. Just as the French in" the country put statues at the end of avenues so that the eye may be carried to something which will make an agreeable resting- place, she must see to it that in her house the vision is led to nothing suggesting discomfort or unpleasantness. I was once in a house in which several rooms opened out of each other. The colors were charming, the arrangement tactful and agreeable, except for one blot. In an angle near the doorway of the farthest room, a large blue jar, in perfect harmony with the room in which it was placed, formed a discordant note with the lovely color combinations ofthe intervening chambers. As this blue jar was at the end of the line of vision, I could see nothing else, and still more unfortunately, when I turned away I could remember nothing else — none of the lovely carvings, none of the hang ings — only that miserable blue jar at the end of the vista. What I have said in this chapter by way of counsel will fail to help the individual if she is reluctant to discard superfluous things, not only when arranging a house for the first time, but as she lives in it from day to day. Every house, how ever humble, however exalted above its surround ings, ought to be provided with some closet, or chest of drawers, or store-room, some one receptacle large 42 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION enough to hold all that is ugly and superfluous, everything that is out of key, and everything that is jarring. Things of this character may come as heirlooms, as Christmas presents, as tokens of de voted attachment from friends who have no under standing of beauty, of propriety, or of the proper relations of one object to another. Rubbish of this sort must not be permitted to remain. A celebrated sculptor used to make it a rule every Sunday morn ing to go about his house and get rid of the unnec essary and the out-of-key. He regarded his house as an artist his work, as we should all regard what ever object we undertake to perfect, never failing in a ceaseless vigilance, nor a constant going back to old ideals, first impressions, the better to perfect their expression. The injured feelings of our dear ones may have to be considered in this heroic performance. Sen timent hampers us in our effort to attain true excel lence in decoration ; we must not allow ourselves to be influenced. To cast out all offending matter, should be the rule, before we have a chance to be reconciled to it or are beguiled into building upon bad foundations. I am tempted to quote a letter of advice written by a woman who had succeeded in making her home beautiful. Her method of procedure is one which other women might adopt to advantage. " You ask me how I went to work. I began by loving and longing for a home with an eagerness I cannot describe, and I wanted that home to be to 43 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION those whom I welcomed to it not only a refuge, but a rest, a refreshment, a delight. I had all this in the home in which 1 lived as a young person. I took for granted such a place was easy to make when I began. But! — Mine used to look so lonely, in the first place. None of the things I put in it seemed right. I welcomed my guests, but I felt their discomfort. I saw when lights in their eyes bothered them. I took the chairs they vacated when they left, and saw what ugly vistas another room presented. I had a hideous gilt paper on my wall that my landlord would not change. Every thing showed badly against it. So I began to study into the question. I threw away ruthlessly all the things which I knew were bad, but to which I had accustomed myself. I said I would have empty rooms rather than hideous ones. The great secret of growth is to rid one's self of things which by- and-by are going to contaminate one's taste. It is like plucking out the eye that offends you. I used to go about studying every house I saw. If I saw anything that grated on me, I tried to think why it was, and then I avoided it in mine. If I found something good, and it was appropriate to my sur roundings, I tried to get it. But I always studied into the reasons. For instance, I knew that gilt filigree chairs in a room meant for comfort, or in one where books and pictures prevailed, must be bad, since they were uncomfortable to sit on, and since they were too unsubstantial and too palpably an attempt at elegance to place in a room in which 44 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION the work of some good artist was on the walls or the books of some great author on the shelf. I did not want gilt filigree chairs, therefore, any more than I should have wanted to wear celluloid belts or gaudy jewelry. I read and studied every picture of any interior I saw, always keeping two points in view when selection was necessary — my own require ments and the proprieties. It was very easy to see that point-lace curtains or blue satin, however beau tiful in themselves, would be improper for a library or a picture gallery." 45 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION CHAPTER III COLOR IN DECORATION COLOR is a mystery, a charm, an enticement. It is stimulating, depressing, enervating, or uplifting. It warms or it chills. It will irri tate, take the pleasure out of every thing, and even go so far as to produce — one woman assures me — acute indigestion. Why not? Color, like music, is a question of vibration, affecting some of our nerves more easily than others. Take, for instance, the epigastric nerve lying over the stomach, one of the most sensitive in the body: Venetian. Vgrxtern^. both color and sound affect it. I / xa " , >. know people who on this nerve (iisti oti. -Hie dondolfls \ r r feel every vibration of an orchestra ; feel the vibratory waves of sound as clearly as a wind blowing against the hand. I know others who feel the vibrations from color quite as acutely, the epigastric nerve being so affected by those from a 46 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION distasteful color that a feeling of repugnance, of illness even, is produced. All this, of course, is nonsense to people devoid of sensitiveness, and a dubious question to those who feel cheered or depressed by different colors but have never had the explanation discussed in their presence. The fact remains, that the vibra tions of color affect different persons differently. The most marvellous instance of sensitiveness to color vibrations that I know is found in Miss Helen Keller, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl whose intel lectual prowess and accomplishments never cease to astonish us. She knows color by the touch, and has tastes and predilections as strongly developed, — nay, even more strongly developed — than the aver age human being in full possession of all his senses. Her friends tell me that she knows the colors of her dresses, whether one is blue or brown or black ; that she will go into the garden and never make a mis take between pink or white roses. She will do more — enjoy the pink for one quality, the white rose for another. Doctors from time to time have tried to make use of these color vibrations in the cure of patients. Not many years ago we had the blue-glass craze. Invalids were immured in rooms the windows of which were filled with panes of blue glass, so that the sunlight entering through them might set the blue vibrations in motion. Occultists are always discussing the influence of color upon the mental and spiritual nature of man. " You will outgrow green," said 47 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION one occultist to a student in his class, and suggested faint rose tones as more elevating to the character. The subject is inexhaustible. My reason for touching upon it here is to suggest that color in the home has an importance irrespective of its value from an artistic point of view, or yet from the standpoint of fashion, which declares in favor of yel low walls to-day, and of green to-morrow. Many a tired woman has found a change of color in her room as refreshing as a change of air. Color can do more than anything else to beau tify the homes of the impecunious. Colors well arranged may take the place of richer appointments and costly furniture, in creating an impression of prosperity. Yellow is capable of accomplishing wonders in the homes of the indigent. In one case a woman earning a scanty income, counting each penny before she spent it, was supposed to have inherited a fortune because her walls, originally a dingy maroon with sprawling figures, blossomed out one day in a soft yellow paper for which the landlady paid. The rumor of her prosperity spread and carried her through several financial panics, finally establishing her in success. Yellow is like cheerfulness under affliction. It is the color which metaphysicians say works directly on the brain. Magenta could never create an impression of pros perity ; neither would blue when seen by itself. If blue did, it would be because of the quality of the textile in which it appeared, — the beauty of satin or brocade. Blue is refreshing to some, reposeful to 48 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION others. It is always associated with daintiness. But to convey a conviction of prosperity, there is nothing in the whole scale of color so potent, so infallible, as yellow. It has an exultant quality, a joyous, sunny atmosphere ; but it never gives a sense of cosiness or warmth — never one of draw ing together for intimacy, for confidential touches and interchanges of thought. Yellow helped to give the old Colonial drawing-rooms of the Hudson their air of cold and quiet reserve, of being al ways on their best behavior, and, like the straight-backed chairs of our ancestors, recalls an atmosphere in which no relaxation, even in pri vate, was permitted. Long after the fortunes of those Hudson River householders were lost, these yellow drawing-rooms helped the impoverished inmates to, maintain cMppendaie cbair a certain proud and isolated dignity before the world. I never remember a greenish cast in those yellows, like that seen in many wall-papers of to day, — without it the red of the beautiful old dam ask curtains was delightful in drawing-rooms with yellow walls. When there is a suggestion of brown in yellow wall-paper, mahogany furniture with yellow-brown hangings is harmonious, the hangings taking up both the yellow of the walls, and the brown, broken by black, of the mahogany. 4 49 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION Blues with certain yellows are captivating. I re member a bit of old Venetian yellow brocade used as a table-cover, on which one day a blue Nankin jar was placed. The result was as delightful as the smile of a child, flashing a cheerfulness at us as we passed. In ball-rooms this color scheme has been carried out in fullest degree. Rooms of to-day, modelled upon those of French palaces, have taffeta silk curtains of golden tones edged with a blue gimp. The yellow of the lemon is greenish, that of orange reddish, and you cannot mix them. It is difficult to explain to an amateur the reasons for this. People with a color-sense discover its truth without aid. I had some sofa cushions of a soft yellow shadow silk in which pinkish tones predomi nated. One day I introduced among them a cush ion of yellow in which the green tones were strongly felt. The result was disastrous, as if a voice out of tune had joined in a chorus and spoiled it. The same feeling of discord is produced by introducing a blue-green into a room where the rest are olive- greens, or in placing two green pots together, one a blue-green and one a yellow-green. This makes it imperative for the inexperienced man or woman, desiring harmonious results, to keep to one color or set of colors. Curtains, chair-covers, and even the walls may be of the same material. Relief from monotony is secured by the introduction of pictures, books, flowers, sofa cushions. Yellow, by the way, and not red, should be used 50 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION in rooms where the sun does not shine. Yellow gives the effect of sunlight. When yellow is employed in the glass of a leaded pane, the effect on the gloomiest of days is of bright skies without. If blue is used in a north room, it should be relieved by white, — the soft, fluffy white of lace or sheer muslin, preferably of lace. The merest suggestion of deli cate pink should appear in the room at intervals. Then you get a coloring as of white apple-blossoms against the blue of the sky. There seems a promise of com ing sunshine somewhere. Nothing would induce some persons to use red in a north room ; or red with oak ; or the bright new red of modern manufacture ; or that with purple in it, the most hideous red of all. The old faded reds of Venetian and Spanish stuffs are not to be confused with these. They are beautiful anywhere. They are de lightful, too, with dark oak. These old reds, however, are generally seen with the rich yellow of a gold braid or an em broidery. A golden thread is sure to ap pear. When red velvet is used to cover chairs, brass nails are introduced. These golds enhance the richness of effect. We cannot do without red. Some instinct in man makes him crave it, especially when 5« ^ i VA t®H Qpodl. «x om.pl e of simple oI«l. Hadd.o-'V HWlt. HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION the cold begins and nature herself shows a dash of it in forest and field. It is like a stimulant. It S plead id .old. n.a-ncfin.fj . ' ' IClolrl oP doldl and «,pan^es ^^^ I- ' on e>iH<. velwr o\ T^R ve4. 1 1 E/btIv [ Renaissance . C^-v- <- — acts like the " trumpet call " to which the blind man, quoted by Locke, compared it. It rouses men to action and excites them to vigor. In sum- 52 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION mer we want to get rid of it in our rooms because it looks hot; but it looks hot because it looks ener getic — not reposeful as green is reposeful. All this brings me to a point that I wish particu larly to make. It is not necessary to introduce red into a house to create an impression of warmth, though this color is often — and wrongly — em ployed for that purpose. A hall of white marble, if filled with growing plants and trickling fountains, not only suggests warmth, but convinces you of it. On entering a room where flowers flourish and water flows, you recognize instinctively the existence of heat. You realize that unless it were warm the flowers would droop, the water freeze. A room with white-panelled walls, green carpets and hang ings, may be made more suggestive of warmth by the introduction of growing plants than by all the red hangings in the world. Notes of red among the greens make the composition better, add a cer tain tonic, as it were, like bitters to a beverage, or pepper to a sauce. I stayed, not long since, in a country house. One of its parlors was covered with a paper showing branches of green willow-leaves on a white ground. The wood-work was white, the sofas green. There were bare floors and rugs. The southern windows were filled with plants, one a flowering geranium. I saw this room afterward on one of the coldest winter days, when winds were howling and snow drifting. A fire burned on the hearth. There were wood-fires in all the other rooms, and south- 53 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION ern windows in some, but none had the sense of snugness and warmth felt in that green and white parlor with its geraniums in bloom. As a decoration red is most interesting, but it must be used with discretion. A room with walls covered with Turkish red, embroideries, and draperies, — crimson, rose, brick, tawny reds, and soft pinks, — may be made beautiful, but only when an adept has been at work. The amateur attempt ing such a room would in all probability produce a series of discords. The good pinks are made by a combi- S nation of red and white. Some pinks set •=* I one's teeth on edge, — those having in them a mixture of blue. Others that run into soft tea-rose tones and made by a little yellow mixed in with red and white are full of a refreshing quality. With pink walls white wood work seems imperative, as it does equally with blue. White s. - . y.„,. or very light furniture is suita- I Vf£^ „ ble, although mahogany never |J A rVp.'d ^JJTP fails to adapt itself to pink « , „ r __=. walls. Mahogany always ' seems like a well-bred guest: introduce a bit of it into almost any home and it will adapt itself at once to its environment. I saw it in a pink and white morning-room the other 54 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION day, among satin couches, and I felt it added a note of distinction, as the well-bred, of affable manners, always do. In the simplest of rooms it would have been quite as much at home. This particular morn ing-room had a wainscoting of white wood running from the floor to a four-inch border of white rose- wreathed paper enclosing a paper imitating pink watered silk. The windows were hung with satin sim ilar to that covering the couches. It was a room strictly adapted to the needs of its beautiful owner, who used it only for the writing of letters and the reading of light literature after breakfast. Serious pursuits would have been impossible in it. Pink is never the color of a student's mood, although it may be that of a cheerful philosopher's. Although mahogany will make itself at home in different environments, it is never so happy as when associated with golden browns, with the browns that have been made sunny with yellow and red. When a room is to be hung with many pictures, or filled with pottery or porcelain, this sunny brown makes a charming setting. The chairs and sofas that are covered with it subordinate themselves, keeping the lower part of the room, as it should be kept, in a subdued key, leaving the eye free to travel where it will over the pictures or the pottery above. By combining golden browns and dull yellows with notes of red, you can make your interior not only sunny and cheerful, but hospitable, since you can introduce almost anything into it. You may get the greens of mosses or ferns among the red 55 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION browns of oak-leaves covering the ground in a wood land — exhilarating effects which, as you see them, make you wonder what has happened to inspire you with so cheerful a mood. Russet tones aredelightful in living-rooms, whether in country or town. They can be introduced into a room having oak or walnut wood-work, by using golden brown on the walls and in the furniture, having a lower key in the carpet, and somewhere among the golden greens of the cushions a flam ing note of red. Whenever the yellow oak of com merce must be retained in the trim and wainscoting, russet tones are to be recommended. The grays and greens of nature are symphonies, especially the purple grays and greens of French forests. Grays and greens in houses seldom pro duce an agreeable impression, unless some artist understanding color has been at work. The gray wood now so fashionable when used as a high wain scoting in a dining-room blends happily with the green of ferns or the silvery green of fine velvets. The soft greenish or silvery grays of a burlaps that has been treated by an artist is delightful as a background for tapestries, pictures, and carvings. Of all colors used in our houses green makes the most satisfactory and reposeful background, — not light pea-green, nor blue-green, nor yet a certain flashy, shiny, uncomfortable green; none of the greens that are seen in some shop-window and, alas! in many houses. The greens to which I refer as being reposeful are the dark olives, which do not 56 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION change under lamplight, and which make a wall an inconspicuous setting for pictures, books, and flow ers. With this green can be combined pinkish tones, yellow, or red. Blue is also good with it, when in troduced as blue plates on dining-room walls. If you like yellow, you can introduce it into a green room, in brass, in the braid of a curtain, or as the gold mats of your pictures. The green of the mullein stalk, or an apple-green, will carry a room up to a higher key and give an effect suitable for bedrooms and dining-rooms. Recently it has been the fashion to combine red with green. It has become an every-day occurrence to see green walls with red hangings, or red walls with green draperies and carpets. The reds of hangings, either on the walls or at the openings, are seldom of a solid unbroken color. Thus with red velvets there is almost always the braid, eight or ten inches wide, and shot with a gold thread or a yellow silk. When brocades or damasks are used, their raised figures break the light as it falls, and carry the eye away from the tedium of an unrelieved solidity. One country house, used in winter, has been treated with reds and greens in this way. All the floors are covered with a rich red velvet carpet — a sweep of splendid color lying across the drawing- room floor, the much-divided hall, up the stairs to the bedrooms above, down the flight of a dozen steps or more to the library door, and on across that floor to the. fireplace at its end, some forty 57 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION feet away. The walls of the drawing-room are covered with a large red figure on a white ground. The hall is green, — a better background for the pictures ; the library, red. No sense of confusion is conveyed by the breaking up of the wall-colors. That splendid sweep of red in the carpet, when the doors are thrown open, brings everything together. An unbroken stretch of wall-space could never have done this. When dependence must be placed upon color to make a room interesting, costly materials and furni ture are not a necessity, although it is well to re member that certain reds, fine yellows, and grays are found only in expensive textiles. Repose in a room comes from a certain evenness of tone. A room, however simple, can in its color and proportion suggest charm and repose. The dyes of most denims are excellent, and a room hung, curtained, and upholstered in a denim of good tone can be invested with dignity. Take a certain room in which I am a frequent visitor. The wood-work and ceiling are white, the walls cov ered with a dark-red paper, the floor is bare except for a single rug. The divan cushions are covered with red denim ; the curtains, having a valance across the top, are of the same material. Plants fill the windows. The walls are lined with photographs, — Van Dycks and Rembrandts, in dark frames without mats. The white mantel is decorated with an old-fashioned mirror in a gilt frame, a pair of crystal candlesticks, and a vase of flowers. There 58 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION are books on the white shelves, and on the well- appointed writing-table. Here is a room which is simplicity itself, and costs but a few dollars to fur nish ; yet every visitor who crosses the threshold rec ognizes at once that its inmate is a lady, intellectual and refined ; that while economy has of necessity been practised, its mistress has utilized limited means at her command with discretion and intelli gence. Indeed, as I discovered one day, she has a series of pasteboard boxes high up on a closet shelf, filled with superfluous things, — presents and lega cies- that would have been out of key with the sim plicity of her present condition, or with colors and tones that would have made her room a discord. Compare such a room with one hung with a paper showing gilt figures, maroon curtains at the win dows, chairs tied with blue bows, and lamps with globes decorated with pink roses. One room is reposeful and dignified, in spite of the inexpen- siveness of the materials in it; the other would be discordant, obtrusive, unrestful, however costly the stuffs employed. Indeed, a question of cost does not enter into the subject at all, except as money is a means of purchase. The most exquisite old Colonial house I ever saw was spoiled by colors at variance with its traditions and its builder's taste : they seemed foreign in that beautiful old house ; intruders, hav ing no business to lodge there even for a night — out of harmony with the walls, the lovely win dows, the simple fireplace. Yet the woman who 59 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION chose those colors could have bought anything she wanted ; she was always buying, always busy over selections; but she knew nothing of relative values, of what constituted the appropriate, or belonged to the period of which her home was, architecturally, so beautiful an example. Failing this knowledge, she failed in every purchase, and the result was a hopeless discord. This gives me, just here, the opportunity to say, that the owner of a beautiful house has that which is a contribution to her time, an education to her contemporaries. For this rea son it should be obligatory to make the house a perfect presentment of the period it represents, either the present or the past. One is untrue to ideals who inherits a noble example ot old architec ture, and allows the whims of an uncultivated taste to destroy its dignity and repose. It is only when we keep in view this point about houses, booksj or pictures, when we regard them as we ought, that we need feel no sense of self-reproach in criticizing the dwelling-places of our neighbors. When its occupant makes no pretence in a house, being too poor to do more than make a habitation comfortable and hospitable, the case is altered. Then criticism would be criticism of another's limi tations, another's poverties, and nothing is worse than that. But a faultless piece of architecture spoiled by the bad taste of a legatee, who does not know one good thing from another, and who is too vain and too indifferent to seek advice, becomes a fit subject for criticism. 60 HOMES AND THEIR DECORATION CHAPTER IV KITCHENS 914 Clock -M*He.it». Ty^ITCHENS have always had a fasci- -*¦ *- nation for me, possibly because I remember how delightful were some of those that I knew in my youth, — long, wide rooms, with white scrubbed floors, old Dutch ovens, and spotless motherly cooks (they Jltx Ew«