The Decoration of Houses
by Edith Wharton · English · Gutenberg #40367 · 406,490 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Decoration of Houses
Author: Edith Wharton
Ogden Codman
Release date: July 29, 2012 [eBook #40367]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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THE DECORATION OF HOUSES
Charles Scribner's
Sons
New York
1914
The
Decoration of
Houses
By
Edith Wharton
and
Ogden Codman Jr.
Copyright, 1897, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
"_Une forme doit être belle en elle-même et on ne doit jamais compter
sur le décor appliqué pour en sauver les imperfections._"
HENRI MAYEUX: _La Composition Décorative_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xix
I THE HISTORICAL TRADITION 1
II ROOMS IN GENERAL 17
III WALLS 31
IV DOORS 48
V WINDOWS 64
VI FIREPLACES 74
VII CEILINGS AND FLOORS 89
VIII ENTRANCE AND VESTIBULE 103
IX HALL AND STAIRS 106
X THE DRAWING-ROOM, BOUDOIR, AND MORNING-ROOM 122
XI GALA ROOMS: BALL-ROOM, SALOON, MUSIC-ROOM, GALLERY 134
XII THE LIBRARY, SMOKING-ROOM, AND "DEN" 145
XIII THE DINING-ROOM 155
XIV BEDROOMS 162
XV THE SCHOOL-ROOM AND NURSERIES 173
XVI BRIC-À-BRAC 184
CONCLUSION 196
INDEX 199
LIST OF PLATES
FACING PAGE
I ITALIAN GOTHIC CHEST 1
II FRENCH ARM-CHAIRS, XV AND XVI CENTURIES 6
III FRENCH _Armoire_, XVI CENTURY 10
IV FRENCH SOFA AND ARM-CHAIR, LOUIS XIV PERIOD 12
V ROOM IN THE GRAND TRIANON, VERSAILLES 14
VI FRENCH ARM-CHAIR, LOUIS XV PERIOD 16
VII FRENCH _Bergère_, LOUIS XVI PERIOD 20
VIII FRENCH _Bergère_, LOUIS XVI PERIOD 24
IX FRENCH SOFA, LOUIS XV PERIOD 28
X FRENCH MARQUETRY TABLE, LOUIS XVI PERIOD 30
XI DRAWING-ROOM, HOUSE IN BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON 34
XII ROOM IN THE VILLA VERTEMATI 38
XIII DRAWING-ROOM AT EASTON NESTON HALL 42
XIV DOORWAY, DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA 48
XV SALA DEI CAVALLI, PALAZZO DEL T 54
XVI DOOR IN THE SALA DELLO ZODIACO, DUCAL PALACE,
MANTUA 58
XVII EXAMPLES OF MODERN FRENCH LOCKSMITHS' WORK 60
XVIII CARVED DOOR, PALACE OF VERSAILLES 62
XIX SALON DES MALACHITES, GRAND TRIANON, VERSAILLES 68
XX MANTELPIECE, DUCAL PALACE, URBINO 74
XXI MANTELPIECE, VILLA GIACOMELLI 78
XXII FRENCH FIRE-SCREEN, LOUIS XIV PERIOD 86
XXIII CARVED WOODEN CEILING, VILLA VERTEMATI 90
XXIV CEILING IN PALAIS DE JUSTICE, RENNES 92
XXV CEILING OF THE SALA DEGLI SPOSI, DUCAL PALACE,
MANTUA 96
XXVI CEILING IN THE STYLE OF BÉRAIN 100
XXVII CEILING IN THE CHÂTEAU OF CHANTILLY 102
XXVIII ANTECHAMBER, VILLA CAMBIASO, GENOA 104
XXIX ANTECHAMBER, DURAZZO PALACE, GENOA 106
XXX STAIRCASE, PARODI PALACE, GENOA 108
XXXI STAIRCASE, HÔTEL DE VILLE, NANCY 112
XXXII STAIRCASE, PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU 116
XXXIII FRENCH _Armoire_, LOUIS XIV PERIOD 120
XXXIV SALA DELLA MADDALENA, ROYAL PALACE, GENOA 122
XXXV CONSOLE IN PETIT TRIANON, VERSAILLES 124
XXXVI SALON, PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU 126
XXXVII ROOM IN THE PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU 128
XXXVIII _Lit de Repos_, EARLY LOUIS XV PERIOD 130
XXXIX _Lit de Repos_, LOUIS XV PERIOD 130
XL PAINTED WALL-PANEL AND DOOR, CHANTILLY 132
XLI FRENCH BOUDOIR, LOUIS XVI PERIOD 132
XLII _Salon à l'italienne_ 136
XLIII BALL-ROOM, ROYAL PALACE, GENOA 138
XLIV SALOON, VILLA VERTEMATI 140
XLV SALA DELLO ZODIACO, DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA 140
XLVI FRENCH TABLE, TRANSITION BETWEEN LOUIS XIV AND
LOUIS XV PERIODS 142
XLVII LIBRARY OF LOUIS XVI, PALACE OF VERSAILLES 144
XLVIII SMALL LIBRARY, AUDLEY END 146
XLIX FRENCH WRITING-CHAIR, LOUIS XV PERIOD 150
L DINING-ROOM, PALACE OF COMPIÈGNE 154
LI DINING-ROOM FOUNTAIN, PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU 156
LII FRENCH DINING-CHAIR, LOUIS XIV PERIOD 158
LIII FRENCH DINING-CHAIR, LOUIS XVI PERIOD 158
LIV BEDROOM, PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU 162
LV BATH-ROOM, PITTI PALACE, FLORENCE 168
LVI BRONZE ANDIRON, XVI CENTURY 184
BOOKS CONSULTED
FRENCH
ANDROUET DU CERCEAU, JACQUES.
Les Plus Excellents Bâtiments de France. _Paris, 1607._
LE MUET, PIERRE.
Manière de Bien Bâtir pour toutes sortes de Personnes.
OPPENORD, GILLES MARIE.
Oeuvres. _1750._
MARIETTE, PIERRE JEAN.
L'Architecture Françoise. _1727._
BRISEUX, CHARLES ÉTIENNE.
L'Art de Bâtir les Maisons de Campagne. _Paris, 1743._
LALONDE, FRANÇOIS RICHARD DE.
Recueil de ses Oeuvres.
AVILER, C. A. D'.
Cours d'Architecture. _1760._
BLONDEL, JACQUES FRANÇOIS.
Architecture Françoise. _Paris, 1752._
Cours d'Architecture. _Paris, 1771-77._
De la Distribution des Maisons de Plaisance et de la
Décoration des Édifices. _Paris, 1737._
ROUBO, A. J., FILS.
L'Art du Menuisier.
HÉRÉ DE CORNY, EMMANUEL.
Recueil des Plans, Élévations et Coupes des Châteaux,
Jardins et Dépendances que le Roi de Pologne occupe en
Lorraine. _Paris, n. d._
PERCIER ET FONTAINE.
Choix des plus Célèbres Maisons de Plaisance de Rome et de
ses Environs. _Paris, 1809._
Palais, Maisons, et autres Édifices Modernes dessinés à
Rome. _Paris, 1798._
Résidences des Souverains. _Paris, 1833._
KRAFFT ET RANSONNETTE.
Plans, Coupes, et Élévations des plus belles Maisons et
Hôtels construits à Paris et dans les Environs. _Paris,
1801._
DURAND, JEAN NICOLAS LOUIS.
Recueil et Parallèle des Édifices de tout Genre. _Paris,
1800._
Précis des Leçons d'Architecture données à l'École Royale
Polytechnique. _Paris, 1823._
QUATREMÈRE DE QUINCY, A. C.
Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages des plus Célèbres
Architectes du XIe siècle jusqu'à la fin du XVIII siècle.
_Paris, 1830._
PELLASSY DE L'OUSLE.
Histoire du Palais de Compiègne. _Paris, n. d._
LETAROUILLY, PAUL MARIE.
Édifices de Rome Moderne. _Paris, 1825-57._
RAMÉE, DANIEL.
Histoire Générale de l'Architecture. _Paris, 1862._
Meubles Religieux et Civils Conservés dans les principaux
Monuments et Musées de l'Europe.
VIOLLET LE DUC, EUGÈNE EMMANUEL.
Dictionnaire Raisonné de l'Architecture Française du XIe au
XVIe siècle. _Paris, 1868._
SAUVAGEOT, CLAUDE.
Palais, Châteaux, Hôtels et Maisons de France du XVe au
XVIIIe siècle.
DALY, CÉSAR.
Motifs Historiques d'Architecture et de Sculpture
d'Ornement.
ROUYER ET DARCEL.
L'Art Architectural en France depuis François Ier jusqu'à
Louis XIV.
HAVARD, HENRY.
Dictionnaire de l'Ameublement et de la Décoration depuis le
XIIIe siècle jusqu'à nos Jours. _Paris, n. d._
Les Arts de l'Ameublement.
GUILMARD, D.
Les Maîtres Ornemanistes. _Paris, 1880._
BAUCHAL, CHARLES.
Dictionnaire des Architectes Français. _Paris, 1887._
ROUAIX, PAUL.
Les Styles. _Paris, n. d._
BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE L'ENSEIGNEMENT DES BEAUX ARTS.
Maison Quantin, _Paris_.
ENGLISH
WARE, ISAAC.
A Complete Body of Architecture. _London, 1756._
BRETTINGHAM, MATTHEW.
Plans, Elevations and Sections of Holkham in Norfolk, the
Seat of the late Earl of Leicester. _London, 1761._
CAMPBELL, COLEN.
Vitruvius Britannicus; or, The British Architect. _London,
1771._
ADAM, ROBERT AND JAMES.
The Works in Architecture. _London, 1773-1822._
HEPPLEWHITE, A.
The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide.
SHERATON, THOMAS.
The Cabinet-Maker's Dictionary. _London, 1803._
PAIN, WILLIAM.
The British Palladio; or The Builder's General Assistant.
_London, 1797._
SOANE, SIR JOHN.
Sketches in Architecture. _London, 1793._
HAKEWILL, ARTHUR WILLIAM.
General Plan and External Details, with Picturesque
Illustrations, of Thorpe Hall, Peterborough.
LEWIS, JAMES.
Original Designs in Architecture.
PYNE, WILLIAM HENRY.
History of the Royal Residences of Windsor Castle, St.
James's Palace, Carlton House, Kensington Palace, Hampton
Court, Buckingham Palace, and Frogmore. _London, 1819._
GWILT, JOSEPH.
Encyclopedia of Architecture. New edition. _Longman's,
1895._
FERGUSSON, JAMES.
History of Architecture. _London, 1874._
History of the Modern Styles of Architecture. Third edition,
revised by Robert Kerr. _London, 1891._
GOTCH, JOHN ALFRED.
Architecture of the Renaissance in England.
HEATON, JOHN ALDAM.
Furniture and Decoration in England in the Eighteenth
Century.
ROSENGARTEN.
Handbook of Architectural Styles. _New York, 1876._
HORNE, H. P.
The Binding of Books. _London, 1894._
LOFTIE, W. J.
Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. _London, 1893._
KERR, ROBERT.
The English Gentleman's House. _London, 1865._
STEVENSON, J. J.
House Architecture. _London, 1880._
GERMAN AND ITALIAN
BURCKHARDT, JACOB.
Architektur der Renaissance in Italien. _Stuttgart, 1891._
REINHARDT.
Palast Architektur von Ober Italien und Toskana.
GURLITT, CORNELIUS.
Geschichte des Barockstiles in Italien. _Stuttgart, 1887._
EBE, GUSTAV.
Die Spät-Renaissance. _Berlin, 1886._
LA VILLA BORGHESE, FUORI DI PORTA PINCIANA, CON L'ORNAMENTI
CHE SI OSSERVANO NEL DI LEI PALAZZO. _Roma, 1700._
INTRA, G. B.
Mantova nei suoi Monumenti.
LUZIO E RENIER.
Mantova e Urbino. _Torino-Roma, 1893._
MOLMENTI, POMPEO.
La Storia di Venezia nella Vita Privata. _Torino, 1885._
MALAMANI, VITTORIO.
Il Settecento a Venezia. _Milano, 1895._
LA VITA ITALIANA NEL SEICENTO. CONFERENZE TENUTE A FIRENZE
NEL 1890.
INTRODUCTION
Rooms may be decorated in two ways: by a superficial application of
ornament totally independent of structure, or by means of those
architectural features which are part of the organism of every house,
inside as well as out.
In the middle ages, when warfare and brigandage shaped the conditions
of life, and men camped in their castles much as they did in their
tents, it was natural that decorations should be portable, and that
the naked walls of the mediæval chamber should be hung with arras,
while a _ciel_, or ceiling, of cloth stretched across the open timbers
of its roof.
When life became more secure, and when the Italian conquests of the
Valois had acquainted men north of the Alps with the spirit of classic
tradition, proportion and the relation of voids to masses gradually
came to be regarded as the chief decorative values of the interior.
Portable hangings were in consequence replaced by architectural
ornament: in other words, the architecture of the room became its
decoration.
This architectural treatment held its own through every change of
taste until the second quarter of the present century; but since then
various influences have combined to sever the natural connection
between the outside of the modern house and its interior. In the
average house the architect's task seems virtually confined to the
elevations and floor-plan. The designing of what are to-day regarded
as insignificant details, such as mouldings, architraves, and
cornices, has become a perfunctory work, hurried over and unregarded;
and when this work is done, the upholsterer is called in to "decorate"
and furnish the rooms.
As the result of this division of labor, house-decoration has ceased
to be a branch of architecture. The upholsterer cannot be expected to
have the preliminary training necessary for architectural work, and it
is inevitable that in his hands form should be sacrificed to color and
composition to detail. In his ignorance of the legitimate means of
producing certain effects, he is driven to all manner of expedients,
the result of which is a piling up of heterogeneous ornament, a
multiplication of incongruous effects; and lacking, as he does, a
definite first conception, his work becomes so involved that it seems
impossible for him to make an end.
The confusion resulting from these unscientific methods has reflected
itself in the lay mind, and house-decoration has come to be regarded
as a black art by those who have seen their rooms subjected to the
manipulations of the modern upholsterer. Now, in the hands of
decorators who understand the fundamental principles of their art, the
surest effects are produced, not at the expense of simplicity and
common sense, but by observing the requirements of both. These
requirements are identical with those regulating domestic
architecture, the chief end in both cases being the suitable
accommodation of the inmates of the house.
The fact that this end has in a measure been lost sight of is perhaps
sufficient warrant for the publication of this elementary sketch. No
study of _house-decoration as a branch of architecture_ has for at
least fifty years been published in England or America; and though
France is always producing admirable monographs on isolated branches
of this subject, there is no modern French work corresponding with
such comprehensive manuals as d'Aviler's _Cours d'Architecture_ or
Isaac Ware's _Complete Body of Architecture_.
The attempt to remedy this deficiency in some slight degree has made
it necessary to dwell at length upon the strictly architectural
principles which controlled the work of the old decorators. The
effects that they aimed at having been based mainly on the due
adjustment of parts, it has been impossible to explain their methods
without assuming their standpoint--that of _architectural
proportion_--in contradistinction to the modern view of
house-decoration as _superficial application of ornament_. When
house-decoration was a part of architecture all its values were
founded on structural modifications; consequently it may seem that
ideas to be derived from a study of such methods suggest changes too
radical for those who are not building, but are merely decorating.
Such changes, in fact, lie rather in the direction of alteration than
of adornment; but it must be remembered that the results attained will
be of greater decorative value than were an equal expenditure devoted
to surface-ornament. Moreover, the great decorators, if scrupulous in
the observance of architectural principles, were ever governed, in the
use of ornamental detail, by the [Greek: sôphrosynê], the "wise
moderation," of the Greeks; and the rooms of the past were both
simpler in treatment and freer from mere embellishments than those of
to-day.
Besides, if it be granted for the sake of argument that a reform in
house-decoration, if not necessary, is at least desirable, it must be
admitted that such reform can originate only with those whose means
permit of any experiments which their taste may suggest. When the rich
man demands good architecture his neighbors will get it too. The
vulgarity of current decoration has its source in the indifference of
the wealthy to architectural fitness. Every good moulding, every
carefully studied detail, exacted by those who can afford to indulge
their taste, will in time find its way to the carpenter-built cottage.
Once the right precedent is established, it costs less to follow than
to oppose it.
In conclusion, it may be well to explain the seeming lack of accord
between the arguments used in this book and the illustrations chosen
to interpret them. While much is said of simplicity, the illustrations
used are chiefly taken from houses of some importance. This has been
done in order that only such apartments as are accessible to the
traveller might be given as examples. Unprofessional readers will
probably be more interested in studying rooms that they have seen, or
at least heard of, than those in the ordinary private dwelling; and
the arguments advanced are indirectly sustained by the most ornate
rooms here shown, since their effect is based on such harmony of line
that their superficial ornament might be removed without loss to the
composition.
Moreover, as some of the illustrations prove, the most magnificent
palaces of Europe contain rooms as simple as those in any private
house; and to point out that simplicity is at home even in palaces is
perhaps not the least service that may be rendered to the modern
decorator.
[Illustration: _PLATE I._
ITALIAN GOTHIC CHEST.
MUSEUM OF THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE.]
I
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION
The last ten years have been marked by a notable development in
architecture and decoration, and while France will long retain her
present superiority in these arts, our own advance is perhaps more
significant than that of any other country. When we measure the work
recently done in the United States by the accepted architectural
standards of ten years ago, the change is certainly striking,
especially in view of the fact that our local architects and
decorators are without the countless advantages in the way of schools,
museums and libraries which are at the command of their European
colleagues. In Paris, for instance, it is impossible to take even a
short walk without finding inspiration in those admirable buildings,
public and private, religious and secular, that bear the stamp of the
most refined taste the world has known since the decline of the arts
in Italy; and probably all American architects will acknowledge that
no amount of travel abroad and study at home can compensate for the
lack of daily familiarity with such monuments.
It is therefore all the more encouraging to note the steady advance in
taste and knowledge to which the most recent architecture in America
bears witness. This advance is chiefly due to the fact that American
architects are beginning to perceive two things that their French
colleagues, among all the modern vagaries of taste, have never quite
lost sight of: first that architecture and decoration, having wandered
since 1800 in a labyrinth of dubious eclecticism, can be set right
only by a close study of the best models; and secondly that, given the
requirements of modern life, these models are chiefly to be found in
buildings erected in Italy after the beginning of the sixteenth
century, and in other European countries after the full assimilation
of the Italian influence.
As the latter of these propositions may perhaps be questioned by those
who, in admiring the earlier styles, sometimes lose sight of their
relative unfitness for modern use, it must be understood at the outset
that it implies no disregard for the inherent beauties of these
styles. It would be difficult, assuredly, to find buildings better
suited to their original purpose than some of the great feudal
castles, such as Warwick in England, or Langeais in France; and as
much might be said of the grim machicolated palaces of republican
Florence or Siena; but our whole mode of life has so entirely changed
since the days in which these buildings were erected that they no
longer answer to our needs. It is only necessary to picture the lives
led in those days to see how far removed from them our present social
conditions are. Inside and outside the house, all told of the
unsettled condition of country or town, the danger of armed attack,
the clumsy means of defence, the insecurity of property, the few
opportunities of social intercourse as we understand it. A man's house
was in very truth his castle in the middle ages, and in France and
England especially it remained so until the end of the sixteenth
century.
Thus it was that many needs arose: the tall keep of masonry where the
inmates, pent up against attack, awaited the signal of the watchman
who, from his platform or _échauguette_, gave warning of assault; the
ponderous doors, oak-ribbed and metal-studded, with doorways often
narrowed to prevent entrance of two abreast, and so low that the
incomer had to bend his head; the windows that were mere openings or
slits, narrow and high, far out of the assailants' reach, and piercing
the walls without regard to symmetry--not, as Ruskin would have us
believe, because irregularity was thought artistic, but because the
mediæval architect, trained to the uses of necessity, knew that he
must design openings that should afford no passage to the besiegers'
arrows, no clue to what was going on inside the keep. But to the
reader familiar with Viollet-le-Duc, or with any of the many excellent
works on English domestic architecture, further details will seem
superfluous. It is necessary, however, to point out that long after
the conditions of life in Europe had changed, houses retained many
features of the feudal period. The survival of obsolete customs which
makes the study of sociology so interesting, has its parallel in the
history of architecture. In the feudal countries especially, where the
conflict between the great nobles and the king was of such long
duration that civilization spread very slowly, architecture was
proportionately slow to give up many of its feudal characteristics. In
Italy, on the contrary, where one city after another succumbed to some
accomplished condottiere who between his campaigns read Virgil and
collected antique marbles, the rugged little republics were soon
converted into brilliant courts where, life being relatively secure,
social intercourse rapidly developed. This change of conditions
brought with it the paved street and square, the large-windowed
palaces with their great court-yards and stately open staircases, and
the market-place with its loggia adorned with statues and marble
seats.
Italy, in short, returned instinctively to the Roman ideal of civic
life: the life of the street, the forum and the baths. These very
conditions, though approaching so much nearer than feudalism to our
modern civilization, in some respects make the Italian architecture of
the Renaissance less serviceable as a model than the French and
English styles later developed from it. The very dangers and
barbarities of feudalism had fostered and preserved the idea of home
as of something private, shut off from intrusion; and while the Roman
ideal flowered in the great palace with its galleries, loggias and
saloons, itself a kind of roofed-in forum, the French or English
feudal keep became, by the same process of growth, the modern private
house. The domestic architecture of the Renaissance in Italy offers
but two distinctively characteristic styles of building: the palace
and the villa or hunting-lodge.[1] There is nothing corresponding in
interior arrangements with the French or English town house, or the
_manoir_ where the provincial nobles lived all the year round. The
villa was a mere perch used for a few weeks of gaiety in spring or
autumn; it was never a home as the French or English country-house
was. There were, of course, private houses in Renaissance Italy, but
these were occupied rather by shopkeepers, craftsmen, and the
_bourgeoisie_ than by the class which in France and England lived in
country houses or small private hôtels. The elevations of these small
Italian houses are often admirable examples of domestic architecture,
but their planning is rudimentary, and it may be said that the
characteristic tendencies of modern house-planning were developed
rather in the mezzanin or low-studded intermediate story of the
Italian Renaissance palace than in the small house of the same period.
It is a fact recognized by political economists that changes in
manners and customs, no matter under what form of government, usually
originate with the wealthy or aristocratic minority, and are thence
transmitted to the other classes. Thus the _bourgeois_ of one
generation lives more like the aristocrat of a previous generation
than like his own predecessors. This rule naturally holds good of
house-planning, and it is for this reason that the origin of modern
house-planning should be sought rather in the prince's mezzanin than
in the small middle-class dwelling. The Italian mezzanin probably
originated in the habit of building certain very high-studded saloons
and of lowering the ceiling of the adjoining rooms. This created an
intermediate story, or rather scattered intermediate rooms, which
Bramante was among the first to use in the planning of his palaces;
but Bramante did not reveal the existence of the mezzanin in his
façades, and it was not until the time of Peruzzi and his
contemporaries that it became, both in plan and elevation, an accepted
part of the Italian palace. It is for this reason that the year 1500
is a convenient point from which to date the beginning of modern
house-planning; but it must be borne in mind that this date is purely
arbitrary, and represents merely an imaginary line drawn between
mediæval and modern ways of living and house-planning, as exemplified
respectively, for instance, in the ducal palace of Urbino, built by
Luciano da Laurano about 1468, and the palace of the Massimi alle
Colonne in Rome, built by Baldassare Peruzzi during the first half of
the sixteenth century.
The lives of the great Italian nobles were essentially open-air lives:
all was organized with a view to public pageants, ceremonies and
entertainments. Domestic life was subordinated to this spectacular
existence, and instead of building private houses in our sense, they
built palaces, of which they set aside a portion for the use of the
family. Every Italian palace has its mezzanin or private apartment;
but this part of the building is now seldom seen by travellers in
Italy. Not only is it usually inhabited by the owners of the palace
but, its decorations being simpler than those of the _piano nobile_,
or principal story, it is not thought worthy of inspection. As a
matter of fact, the treatment of the mezzanin was generally most
beautiful, because most suitable; and while the Italian Renaissance
palace can seldom serve as a model for a modern private house, the
decoration of the mezzanin rooms is full of appropriate suggestion.
In France and England, on the other hand, private life was gradually,
though slowly, developing along the lines it still follows in the
present day. It is necessary to bear in mind that what we call modern
civilization was a later growth in these two countries than in Italy.
If this fact is insisted upon, it is only because it explains the
relative unsuitability of French Renaissance or Tudor and Elizabethan
architecture to modern life. In France, for instance, it was not until
the Fronde was subdued and Louis XIV firmly established on the throne,
that the elements which compose what we call modern life really began
to combine. In fact, it might be said that the feudalism of which the
Fronde was the lingering expression had its counterpart in the
architecture of the period. While long familiarity with Italy was
beginning to tell upon the practical side of house-planning, many
obsolete details were still preserved. Even the most enthusiastic
admirer of the French Renaissance would hardly maintain that the
houses of that period are what we should call in the modern sense
"convenient." It would be impossible for a modern family to occupy
with any degree of comfort the Hôtel Voguë at Dijon, one of the best
examples (as originally planned) of sixteenth-century domestic
architecture in France.[2] The same objection applies to the furniture
of the period. This arose from the fact that, owing to the unsettled
state of the country, the landed proprietor always carried his
furniture with him when he travelled from one estate to another.
Furniture, in the vocabulary of the middle ages, meant something which
may be transported: "Meubles sont apelez qu'on peut transporter";--hence
the lack of variety in furniture before the seventeenth century, and
also its unsuitableness to modern life. Chairs and cabinets that had
to be carried about on mule-back were necessarily somewhat stiff and
angular in design. It is perhaps not too much to say that a
comfortable chair, in our self-indulgent modern sense, did not exist
before the Louis XIV arm-chair (see Plate IV); and the cushioned
_bergère_, the ancestor of our upholstered easy-chair, cannot be
traced back further than the Regency. Prior to the time of Louis XIV,
the most luxurious people had to content themselves with hard
straight-backed seats. The necessities of transportation permitted
little variety of design, and every piece of furniture was constructed
with the double purpose of being easily carried about and of being
used as a trunk (see Plate I). As Havard says, "Tout meuble se
traduisait par un coffre." The unvarying design of the cabinets is
explained by the fact that they were made to form two trunks,[3] and
even the chairs and settles had hollow seats which could be packed
with the owners' wardrobe (see Plate II). The king himself, when he
went from one château to another, carried all his furniture with him,
and it is thus not surprising that lesser people contented themselves
with a few substantial chairs and cabinets, and enough arras or cloth
of Douai to cover the draughty walls of their country-houses. One of
Madame de Sévigné's letters gives an amusing instance of the
scarceness of furniture even in the time of Louis XIV. In describing a
fire in a house near her own hôtel in Paris, she says that one or two
of the persons from the burning house were brought to her for shelter,
because it was known in the neighborhood (at that time a rich and
fashionable one) that she had _an extra bed_ in the house!
[Illustration: _PLATE II._
FRENCH CHAIRS, XV AND XVI CENTURIES.
FROM THE GAVET COLLECTION.]
It was not until the social influences of the reign of Louis XIV were
fully established that modern domestic life really began. Tradition
ascribes to Madame de Rambouillet a leading share in the advance in
practical house-planning; but probably what she did is merely typical
of the modifications which the new social conditions were everywhere
producing. It is certain that at this time houses and rooms first
began to be comfortable. The immense cavernous fireplaces originally
meant for the roasting of beeves and the warming of a flock of frozen
retainers,--"les grandes antiquailles de cheminées," as Madame de
Sévigné called them,--were replaced by the compact chimney-piece of
modern times. Cushioned _bergères_ took the place of the throne-like
seats of Louis XIII, screens kept off unwelcome draughts, Savonnerie
or moquette carpets covered the stone or marble floors, and grandeur
gave way to luxury.[4]
English architecture having followed a line of development so similar
that it need not here be traced, it remains only to examine in detail
the opening proposition, namely, that modern architecture and
decoration, having in many ways deviated from the paths which the
experience of the past had marked out for them, can be reclaimed only
by a study of the best models.
It might of course be said that to attain this end originality is more
necessary than imitativeness. To this it may be replied that no lost
art can be re-acquired without at least for a time going back to the
methods and manner of those who formerly practised it; or the
objection may be met by the question, What is originality in art?
Perhaps it is easier to define what it is _not_; and this may be done
by saying that it is never a wilful rejection of what have been
accepted as the necessary laws of the various forms of art. Thus, in
reasoning, originality lies not in discarding the necessary laws of
thought, but in using them to express new intellectual conceptions; in
poetry, originality consists not in discarding the necessary laws of
rhythm, but in finding new rhythms within the limits of those laws.
Most of the features of architecture that have persisted through
various fluctuations of taste owe their preservation to the fact that
they have been proved by experience to be necessary; and it will be
found that none of them precludes the exercise of individual taste,
any more than the acceptance of the syllogism or of the laws of rhythm
prevents new thinkers and new poets from saying what has never been
said before. Once this is clearly understood, it will be seen that the
supposed conflict between originality and tradition is no conflict at
all.[5]
In citing logic and poetry, those arts have been purposely chosen of
which the laws will perhaps best help to explain and illustrate the
character of architectural limitations. A building, for whatever
purpose erected, must be built in strict accordance with the
requirements of that purpose; in other words, it must have a reason
for being as it is and must be as it is for that reason. Its
decoration must harmonize with the structural limitations (which is by
no means the same thing as saying that all decoration must be
structural), and from this harmony of the general scheme of decoration
with the building, and of the details of the decoration with each
other, springs the rhythm that distinguishes architecture from mere
construction. Thus all good architecture and good decoration (which,
it must never be forgotten, _is only interior architecture_) must be
based on rhythm and logic. A house, or room, must be planned as it is
because it could not, in reason, be otherwise; must be decorated as it
is because no other decoration would harmonize as well with the plan.
[Illustration: _PLATE III._
FRENCH ARMOIRE, XVI CENTURY.]
Many of the most popular features in modern house-planning and
decoration will not be found to stand this double test. Often (as will
be shown further on) they are merely survivals of earlier social
conditions, and have been preserved in obedience to that instinct that
makes people cling to so many customs the meaning of which is lost.
In other cases they have been revived by the archæologizing spirit
which is so characteristic of the present time, and which so often
leads its possessors to think that a thing must be beautiful because
it is old and appropriate because it is beautiful.
But since the beauty of all such features depends on their
appropriateness, they may in every case be replaced by a more suitable
form of treatment without loss to the general effect of house or room.
It is this which makes it important that each room (or, better still,
all the rooms) in a house should receive the same style of decoration.
To some people this may seem as meaningless a piece of archaism as the
habit of using obsolete fragments of planning or decoration; but such
is not the case. It must not be forgotten, in discussing the question
of reproducing certain styles, that the essence of a style lies not in
its use of ornament, but in its handling of proportion. Structure
conditions ornament, not ornament structure. That is, a room with
unsuitably proportioned openings, wall-spaces and cornice might
receive a surface application of Louis XV or Louis XVI ornament and
not represent either of those styles of decoration; whereas a room
constructed according to the laws of proportion accepted in one or the
other of those periods, in spite of a surface application of
decorative detail widely different in character,--say Romanesque or
Gothic,--would yet maintain its distinctive style, because the detail,
in conforming with the laws of proportion governing the structure of
the room, must necessarily conform with its style. In other words,
decoration is always subservient to proportion; and a room, whatever
its decoration may be, must represent the style to which its
proportions belong. The less cannot include the greater. Unfortunately
it is usually by ornamental details, rather than by proportion, that
people distinguish one style from another. To many persons, garlands,
bow-knots, quivers, and a great deal of gilding represent 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 or similar characteristics; and he often deprecates their
use as representing the cheaper and more trivial effects of the
period, and those that have most helped to vulgarize it. In fact, 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
were these details left out.[6]
Another thing which has perhaps contributed to make people distrustful
of "styles" is the garbled form in which they are presented by some
architects. After a period of eclecticism that has lasted long enough
to make architects and decorators lose their traditional habits of
design, there has arisen a sudden demand for "style." It necessarily
follows that only the most competent are ready to respond to this
unexpected summons. Much has to be relearned, still more to be
unlearned. The essence of the great styles lay in proportion and the
science of proportion is not to be acquired in a day. In fact, in such
matters the cultivated layman, whether or not he has any special
familiarity with the different schools of architecture, is often a
better judge than the half-educated architect. It is no wonder that
people of taste are disconcerted by the so-called "colonial" houses
where stair-rails are used as roof-balustrades and mantel-friezes
as exterior entablatures, or by Louis XV rooms where the wavy movement
which, in the best rococo, was always an ornamental incident and never
broke up the main lines of the design, is suffered to run riot through
the whole treatment of the walls, so that the bewildered eye seeks in
vain for a straight line amid the whirl of incoherent curves.
[Illustration: _PLATE IV._
FRENCH SOFA AND ARMCHAIR, LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
FROM THE CHÂTEAU DE BERCY.]
To conform to a style, then, is to accept those rules of proportion
which the artistic experience of centuries has established as the
best, while within those limits allowing free scope to the individual
requirements which must inevitably modify every house or room adapted
to the use and convenience of its occupants.
There is one thing more to be said in defence of conformity to style;
and that is, the difficulty of getting rid of style. Strive as we may
for originality, we are hampered at every turn by an artistic
tradition of over two thousand years. Does any but the most
inexperienced architect really think that he can ever rid himself of
such an inheritance? He may mutilate or misapply the component parts
of his design, but he cannot originate a whole new architectural
alphabet. The chances are that he will not find it easy to invent one
wholly new moulding.
The styles especially suited to modern life have already been roughly
indicated as those prevailing in Italy since 1500, in France from the
time of Louis XIV, and in England since the introduction of the
Italian manner by Inigo Jones; and as the French and English styles
are perhaps more familiar to the general reader, the examples given
will usually be drawn from these. Supposing the argument in favor of
these styles to have been accepted, at least as a working hypothesis,
it must be explained why, in each room, the decoration and furniture
should harmonize. Most people will admit the necessity of harmonizing
the colors in a room, because a feeling for color is more general than
a feeling for form; but in reality the latter is the more important in
decoration, and it is the feeling for form, and not any archæological
affectation, which makes the best decorators insist upon the necessity
of keeping to the same style of furniture and decoration. Thus the
massive dimensions and heavy panelling of a seventeenth-century room
would dwarf a set of eighteenth-century furniture; and the wavy,
capricious movement of Louis XV decoration would make the austere yet
delicate lines of Adam furniture look stiff and mean.
Many persons object not only to any attempt at uniformity of style,
but to the use of any recognized style in the decoration of a room.
They characterize it, according to their individual views, as
"servile," "formal," or "pretentious."
It has already been suggested that to conform within rational limits
to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or to
write according to the rules of grammar. As to the accusations of
formality and pretentiousness (which are more often made in America
than elsewhere), they may probably be explained by the fact that most
Americans necessarily form their idea of the great European styles
from public buildings and palaces. Certainly, if an architect were to
propose to his client to decorate a room in a moderate-sized house in
the Louis XIV style, and if the client had formed his idea of that
style from the state apartments in the palace at Versailles, he would
be justified in rejecting the proposed treatment as absolutely
unsuitable to modern private life; whereas the architect who had gone
somewhat more deeply into the subject might have singled out the style
as eminently suitable, having in mind one of the simple panelled
rooms, with tall windows, a dignified fireplace, large tables and
comfortable arm-chairs, which were to be found in the private houses
of the same period (see Plate V). It is the old story of the two
knights fighting about the color of the shield. Both architect and
client would be right, but they would be looking at the different
sides of the question. As a matter of fact, the bed-rooms,
sitting-rooms, libraries and other private apartments in the smaller
dwelling-houses built in Europe between 1650 and 1800 were far
simpler, less pretentious and more practical in treatment than those
in the average modern house.
[Illustration: _PLATE V._
ROOM IN THE GRAND TRIANON, VERSAILLES.
(EXAMPLE OF SIMPLE LOUIS XIV DECORATION.)]
It is therefore hoped that the antagonists of "style," when they are
shown that to follow a certain style is not to sacrifice either
convenience or imagination, but to give more latitude to both, will
withdraw an opposition which seems to be based on a misapprehension of
facts.
Hitherto architecture and decoration have been spoken of as one, as in
any well-designed house they ought to be. Indeed, it is one of the
numerous disadvantages of the present use of styles, that unless the
architect who has built the house also decorates it, the most hopeless
discord is apt to result. This was otherwise before our present desire
for variety had thrown architects, decorators, and workmen out of the
regular routine of their business. Before 1800 the decorator called
upon to treat the interior of a house invariably found a suitable
background prepared for his work, while much in the way of detail was
intrusted to the workmen, who were trained in certain traditions
instead of being called upon to carry out in each new house the
vagaries of a different designer.
But it is with the decorator's work alone that these pages are
concerned, and the above digression is intended to explain why his
task is now so difficult, and why his results are so often
unsatisfactory to himself as well as to his clients. The decorator of
the present day may be compared to a person who is called upon to
write a letter in the English language, but is ordered, in so doing,
to conform to the Chinese or Egyptian rules of grammar, or possibly to
both together.
By the use of a little common sense and a reasonable conformity to
those traditions of design which have been tested by generations of
architects, it is possible to produce great variety in the decoration
of rooms without losing sight of the purpose for which they are
intended. Indeed, the more closely this purpose is kept in view, and
the more clearly it is expressed in all the details of each room, the
more pleasing that room will be, so that it is easy to make a room
with tinted walls, deal furniture and dimity curtains more beautiful,
because more logical and more harmonious, than a ball-room lined with
gold and marbles, in which the laws of rhythm and logic have been
ignored.
[Illustration: _PLATE VI._
FRENCH ARMCHAIR, LOUIS XV PERIOD.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Charming as the Italian villa is, it can hardly be used in our
Northern States without certain modifications, unless it is merely
occupied for a few weeks in mid-summer; whereas the average French or
English country house built after 1600 is perfectly suited to our
climate and habits. The chief features of the Italian villa are the
open central _cortile_ and the large saloon two stories high. An
adaptation of these better suited to a cold climate is to be found in
the English country houses built in the Palladian manner after its
introduction by Inigo Jones. See Campbell's _Vitruvius Britannicus_
for numerous examples.
[2] The plan of the Hôtel Voguë has been greatly modified.
[3] Cabinets retained this shape after the transporting of furniture
had ceased to be a necessity (see Plate III).
[4] It must be remembered that in describing the decoration of any
given period, we refer to the private houses, not the royal palaces,
of that period. Versailles was more splendid than any previous palace;
but private houses at that date were less splendid, though far more
luxurious, than during the Renaissance.
[5] "Si l'on dispose un édifice d'une manière convenable à l'usage
auquel on le destine, ne différera-t-il pas sensiblement d'un autre
édifice destiné à un autre usage? N'aura-t-il pas naturellement un
caractère, et, qui plus est, son caractère propre?" J. L. N. Durand.
_Précis des Leçons d'Architecture données à l'École Royale
Polytechnique._ Paris, 1823.
[6] It must not be forgotten that the so-called "styles" of Louis XIV,
Louis XV and Louis XVI were, in fact, only the gradual development of
one organic style, and hence differed only in the superficial use of
ornament.
II
ROOMS IN GENERAL
Before beginning to decorate a room it is essential to consider for
what purpose the room is to be used. It is not enough to ticket it
with some such general designation as "library," "drawing-room," or
"den." The individual tastes and habits of the people who are to
occupy it must be taken into account; it must be not "a library," or
"a drawing-room," but the library or the drawing-room best suited to
the master or mistress of the house which is being decorated.
Individuality in house-furnishing has seldom been more harped upon
than at the present time. That cheap originality which finds
expression in putting things to uses for which they were not intended
is often confounded with individuality; whereas the latter consists
not in an attempt to be different from other people at the cost of
comfort, but in the desire to be comfortable in one's own way, even
though it be the way of a monotonously large majority. It seems easier
to most people to arrange a room like some one else's than to analyze
and express their own needs. Men, in these matters, are less exacting
than women, because their demands, besides being simpler, are
uncomplicated by the feminine tendency to want things because other
people have them, rather than to have things because they are wanted.
But it must never be forgotten that every one is unconsciously
tyrannized over by the wants of others,--the wants of dead and gone
predecessors, who have an inconvenient way of thrusting their
different habits and tastes across the current of later existences.
The unsatisfactory relations of some people with their rooms are often
to be explained in this way. They have still in their blood the
traditional uses to which these rooms were put in times quite
different from the present. It is only an unconscious extension of the
conscious habit which old-fashioned people have of clinging to their
parents' way of living. The difficulty of reconciling these instincts
with our own comfort and convenience, and the various compromises to
which they lead in the arrangement of our rooms, will be more fully
dealt with in the following chapters. To go to the opposite extreme
and discard things because they are old-fashioned is equally
unreasonable. The golden mean lies in trying to arrange our houses
with a view to our own comfort and convenience; and it will be found
that the more closely we follow this rule the easier our rooms will be
to furnish and the pleasanter to live in.
People whose attention has never been specially called to the _raison
d'être_ of house-furnishing sometimes conclude that because a thing is
unusual it is artistic, or rather that through some occult process the
most ordinary things become artistic by being used in an unusual
manner; while others, warned by the visible results of this theory of
furnishing, infer that everything artistic is unpractical. In the
Anglo-Saxon mind beauty is not spontaneously born of material wants,
as it is with the Latin races. We have to _make_ things beautiful;
they do not grow so of themselves. The necessity of making this effort
has caused many people to put aside the whole problem of beauty and
fitness in household decoration as something mysterious and
incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The architect and decorator are
often aware that they are regarded by their clients as the possessors
of some strange craft like black magic or astrology.
This fatalistic attitude has complicated the simple and intelligible
process of house-furnishing, and has produced much of the discomfort
which causes so many rooms to be shunned by everybody in the house, in
spite (or rather because) of all the money and ingenuity expended on
their arrangement. Yet to penetrate the mystery of house-furnishing it
is only necessary to analyze one satisfactory room and to notice
wherein its charm lies. To the fastidious eye it will, of course, be
found in fitness of proportion, in the proper use of each moulding and
in the harmony of all the decorative processes; and even to those who
think themselves indifferent to such detail, much of the sense of
restfulness and comfort produced by certain rooms depends on the due
adjustment of their fundamental parts. Different rooms minister to
different wants and while a room may be made very livable without
satisfying any but the material requirements of its inmates it is
evident that the perfect room should combine these qualities with what
corresponds to them in a higher order of needs. At present, however,
the subject deals only with the material livableness of a room, and
this will generally be found to consist in the position of the doors
and fireplace, the accessibility of the windows, the arrangement of
the furniture, the privacy of the room and the absence of the
superfluous.
The position of doors and fireplace, though the subject comes properly
under the head of house-planning, may be included in this summary,
because in rearranging a room it is often possible to change its
openings, or at any rate, in the case of doors, to modify their
dimensions.
The fireplace must be the focus of every rational scheme of
arrangement. Nothing is so dreary, so hopeless to deal with, as a room
in which the fireplace occupies a narrow space between two doors, so
that it is impossible to sit about the hearth.[7] Next in importance
come the windows. In town houses especially, where there is so little
light that every ray is precious to the reader or worker, window-space
is invaluable. Yet in few rooms are the windows easy of approach, free
from useless draperies and provided with easy-chairs so placed that
the light falls properly on the occupant's work.
It is no exaggeration to say that many houses are deserted by the men
of the family for lack of those simple comforts which they find at
their clubs: windows unobscured by layers of muslin, a fireplace
surrounded by easy-chairs and protected from draughts, well-appointed
writing-tables and files of papers and magazines. Who cannot call to
mind the dreary drawing-room, in small town houses the only possible
point of reunion for the family, but too often, in consequence of its
exquisite discomfort, of no more use as a meeting-place than the
vestibule or the cellar? The windows in this kind of room are
invariably supplied with two sets of muslin curtains, one hanging
against the panes, the other fulfilling the supererogatory duty of
hanging against the former; then come the heavy stuff curtains, so
draped as to cut off the upper light of the windows by day, while it
is impossible to drop them at night: curtains that have thus ceased to
serve the purpose for which they exist. Close to the curtains
stands the inevitable lamp or jardinière, and the wall-space
between the two windows, where a writing-table might be put, is
generally taken up by a cabinet or console, surmounted by a picture
made invisible by the dark shadow of the hangings. The writing-table
might find place against the side-wall near either window; but these
spaces are usually sacred to the piano and to that modern futility,
the silver-table. Thus of necessity the writing-table is either
banished or put in some dark corner, where it is little wonder that
the ink dries unused and a vase of flowers grows in the middle of the
blotting-pad.
[Illustration: _PLATE VII._
FRENCH BERGÈRE, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.]
The hearth should be the place about which people gather; but the
mantelpiece in the average American house, being ugly, is usually
covered with inflammable draperies; the fire is, in consequence,
rarely lit, and no one cares to sit about a fireless hearth. Besides,
on the opposite side of the room is a gap in the wall eight or ten
feet wide, opening directly upon the hall, and exposing what should be
the most private part of the room to the scrutiny of messengers,
servants and visitors. This opening is sometimes provided with doors;
but these, as a rule, are either slid into the wall or are unhung and
replaced by a curtain through which every word spoken in the room must
necessarily pass. In such a room it matters very little how the rest
of the furniture is arranged, since it is certain that no one will
ever sit in it except the luckless visitor who has no other refuge.
Even the visitor might be thought entitled to the solace of a few
books; but as all the tables in the room are littered with
knick-knacks, it is difficult for the most philanthropic hostess to
provide even this slight alleviation.
When the town-house is built on the basement plan, and the
drawing-room or parlor is up-stairs, the family, to escape from its
discomforts, habitually take refuge in the small room opening off the
hall on the ground floor; so that instead of sitting in a room twenty
or twenty-five feet wide, they are packed into one less than half that
size and exposed to the frequent intrusions from which, in basement
houses, the drawing-room is free. But too often even the "little room
down-stairs" is arranged less like a sitting-room in a private house
than a waiting-room at a fashionable doctor's or dentist's. It has the
inevitable yawning gap in the wall, giving on the hall close to the
front door, and is either the refuge of the ugliest and most
uncomfortable furniture in the house, or, even if furnished with
taste, is arranged with so little regard to comfort that one might as
well make it part of the hall, as is often done in rearranging old
houses. This habit of sacrificing a useful room to the useless
widening of the hall is indeed the natural outcome of furnishing rooms
of this kind in so unpractical a way that their real usefulness has
ceased to be apparent. The science of restoring wasted rooms to their
proper uses is one of the most important and least understood branches
of house-furnishing.
Privacy would seem to be one of the first requisites of civilized
life, yet it is only necessary to observe the planning and arrangement
of the average house to see how little this need is recognized. Each
room in a house has its individual uses: some are made to sleep in,
others are for dressing, eating, study, or conversation; but whatever
the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not
preserved as a small world by itself. If the drawing-room be a part of
the hall and the library a part of the drawing-room, all three will be
equally unfitted to serve their special purpose. The indifference to
privacy which has sprung up in modern times, and which in France, for
instance, has given rise to the grotesque conceit of putting sheets
of plate-glass between two rooms, and of replacing doorways by
openings fifteen feet wide, is of complex origin. It is probably due
in part to the fact that many houses are built and decorated by people
unfamiliar with the habits of those for whom they are building. It may
be that architect and decorator live in a simpler manner than their
clients, and are therefore ready to sacrifice a kind of comfort of
which they do not feel the need to the "effects" obtainable by vast
openings and extended "vistas." To the untrained observer size often
appeals more than proportion and costliness than suitability. In a
handsome house such an observer is attracted rather by the ornamental
detail than by the underlying purpose of planning and decoration. He
sees the beauty of the detail, but not its relation to the whole. He
therefore regards it as elegant but useless; and his next step is to
infer that there is an inherent elegance in what is useless.
Before beginning to decorate a house it is necessary to make a
prolonged and careful study of its plan and elevations, both as a
whole and in detail. The component parts of an undecorated room are
its floor, ceiling, wall-spaces and openings. The openings consist of
the doors, windows and fireplace; and of these, as has already been
pointed out, the fireplace is the most important in the general scheme
of decoration.
No room can be satisfactory unless its openings are properly placed
and proportioned, and the decorator's task is much easier if he has
also been the architect of the house he is employed to decorate; but
as this seldom happens his ingenuity is frequently taxed to produce a
good design upon the background of a faulty and illogical structure.
Much may be done to overcome this difficulty by making slight changes
in the proportions of the openings; and the skilful decorator, before
applying his scheme of decoration, will do all that he can to correct
the fundamental lines of the room. But the result is seldom so
successful as if he had built the room, and those who employ different
people to build and decorate their houses should at least try to
select an architect and a decorator trained in the same school of
composition, so that they may come to some understanding with regard
to the general harmony of their work.
In deciding upon a scheme of decoration, it is necessary to keep in
mind the relation of furniture to ornament, and of the room as a whole
to other rooms in the house. As in a small house a very large room
dwarfs all the others, so a room decorated in a very rich manner will
make the simplicity of those about it look mean. Every house should be
decorated according to a carefully graduated scale of ornamentation
culminating in the most important room of the house; but this plan
must be carried out with such due sense of the relation of the rooms
to each other that there shall be no violent break in the continuity
of treatment. If a white-and-gold drawing-room opens on a hall with a
Brussels carpet and papered walls, the drawing-room will look too fine
and the hall mean.
In the furnishing of each room the same rule should be as carefully
observed. The simplest and most cheaply furnished room (provided the
furniture be good of its kind, and the walls and carpet
unobjectionable in color) will be more pleasing to the fastidious eye
than one in which gilded consoles and cabinets of buhl stand side by
side with cheap machine-made furniture, and delicate old marquetry
tables are covered with trashy china ornaments.
[Illustration: _PLATE VIII._
FRENCH BERGÈRE, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.]
It is, of course, not always possible to refurnish a room when it is
redecorated. Many people must content themselves with using their
old furniture, no matter how ugly and ill-assorted it may be; and it
is the decorator's business to see that his background helps the
furniture to look its best. It is a mistake to think that because the
furniture of a room is inappropriate or ugly a good background will
bring out these defects. It will, on the contrary, be a relief to the
eye to escape from the bad lines of the furniture to the good lines of
the walls; and should the opportunity to purchase new furniture ever
come, there will be a suitable background ready to show it to the best
advantage.
Most rooms contain a mixture of good, bad, and indifferent furniture.
It is best to adapt the decorative treatment to the best pieces and to
discard those which are in bad taste, replacing them, if necessary, by
willow chairs and stained deal tables until it is possible to buy
something better. When the room is to be refurnished as well as
redecorated the client often makes his purchases without regard to the
decoration. Besides being an injustice to the decorator, inasmuch as
it makes it impossible for him to harmonize his decoration with the
furniture, this generally produces a result unsatisfactory to the
owner of the house. Neither decoration nor furniture, however good of
its kind, can look its best unless each is chosen with reference to
the other. It is therefore necessary that the decorator, before
planning his treatment of a room, should be told what it is to
contain. If a gilt set is put in a room the walls of which are treated
in low relief and painted white, the high lights of the gilding will
destroy the delicate values of the mouldings, and the walls, at a
little distance, will look like flat expanses of whitewashed plaster.
When a room is to be furnished and decorated at the smallest possible
cost, it must be remembered that the comfort of its occupants depends
more on the nature of the furniture than of the wall-decorations or
carpet. In a living-room of this kind it is best to tint the walls and
put a cheerful drugget on the floor, keeping as much money as possible
for the purchase of comfortable chairs and sofas and substantial
tables. If little can be spent in buying furniture, willow
arm-chairs[8] with denim cushions and solid tables with stained legs
and covers of denim or corduroy will be more satisfactory than the
"parlor suit" turned out in thousands by the manufacturer of cheap
furniture, or the pseudo-Georgian or pseudo-Empire of the dealer in
"high-grade goods." Plain bookcases may be made of deal, painted or
stained; and a room treated in this way, with a uniform color on the
wall, and plenty of lamps and books, is sure to be comfortable and can
never be vulgar.
It is to be regretted that, in this country and in England, it should
be almost impossible to buy plain but well-designed and substantial
furniture. Nothing can exceed the ugliness of the current designs: the
bedsteads with towering head-boards fretted by the versatile jig-saw;
the "bedroom suits" of "mahoganized" cherry, bird's-eye maple, or some
other crude-colored wood; the tables with meaninglessly turned legs;
the "Empire" chairs and consoles stuck over with ornaments of cast
bronze washed in liquid gilding; and, worst of all, the supposed
"Colonial" furniture, that unworthy travesty of a plain and dignified
style. All this showy stuff has been produced in answer to the
increasing demand for cheap "effects" in place of unobtrusive merit in
material and design; but now that an appreciation of better things in
architecture is becoming more general, it is to be hoped that the
"artistic" furniture disfiguring so many of our shop-windows will no
longer find a market.
There is no lack of models for manufacturers to copy, if their
customers will but demand what is good. France and England, in the
eighteenth century, excelled in the making of plain, inexpensive
furniture of walnut, mahogany, or painted beechwood (see Plates
VII-X). Simple in shape and substantial in construction, this kind of
furniture was never tricked out with moulded bronzes and machine-made
carving, or covered with liquid gilding, but depended for its effect
upon the solid qualities of good material, good design and good
workmanship. The eighteenth-century cabinet-maker did not attempt
cheap copies of costly furniture; the common sense of his patrons
would have resented such a perversion of taste. Were the modern public
as fastidious, it would soon be easy to buy good furniture for a
moderate price; but until people recognize the essential vulgarity of
the pinchbeck article flooding our shops and overflowing upon our
sidewalks, manufacturers will continue to offer such wares in
preference to better but less showy designs.
The worst defects of the furniture now made in America are due to an
Athenian thirst for novelty, not always regulated by an Athenian sense
of fitness. No sooner is it known that beautiful furniture was made in
the time of Marie-Antoinette than an epidemic of supposed
"Marie-Antoinette" rooms breaks out over the whole country. Neither
purchaser nor manufacturer has stopped to inquire wherein the
essentials of the style consist. They know that the rooms of the
period were usually painted in light colors, and that the furniture
(in palaces) was often gilt and covered with brocade; and it is taken
for granted that plenty of white paint, a pale wall-paper with
bow-knots, and fragile chairs dipped in liquid gilding and covered
with a flowered silk-and-cotton material, must inevitably produce a
"Marie-Antoinette" room. According to the creed of the modern
manufacturer, you have only to combine certain "goods" to obtain a
certain style.
This quest of artistic novelties would be encouraging were it based on
the desire for something better, rather than for something merely
different. The tendency to dash from one style to another, without
stopping to analyze the intrinsic qualities of any, has defeated the
efforts of those who have tried to teach the true principles of
furniture-designing by a return to the best models. If people will buy
the stuff now offered them as Empire, Sheraton or Louis XVI, the
manufacturer is not to blame for making it. It is not the maker but
the purchaser who sets the standard; and there will never be any
general supply of better furniture until people take time to study the
subject, and find out wherein lies the radical unfitness of what now
contents them.
Until this golden age arrives the householder who cannot afford to buy
old pieces, or to have old models copied by a skilled cabinet-maker,
had better restrict himself to the plainest of furniture, relying for
the embellishment of his room upon good bookbindings and one or two
old porcelain vases for his lamps.
Concerning the difficult question of color, it is safe to say that the
fewer the colors used in a room, the more pleasing and restful the
result will be. A multiplicity of colors produces the same effect as a
number of voices talking at the same time. The voices may not be
discordant, but continuous chatter is fatiguing in the long run. Each
room should speak with but one voice: it should contain one color,
which at once and unmistakably asserts its predominance, in obedience
to the rule that where there is a division of parts one part shall
visibly prevail over all the others.
[Illustration: _PLATE IX._
FRENCH SOFA, LOUIS XV PERIOD.
TAPESTRY DESIGNED BY BOUCHER.]
To attain this result, it is best to use the same color and, if
possible, the same material, for curtains and chair-coverings. This
produces an impression of unity and gives an air of spaciousness to
the room. When the walls are simply panelled in oak or walnut, or are
painted in some neutral tones, such as gray and white, the carpet may
contrast in color with the curtains and chair-coverings. For instance,
in an oak-panelled room crimson curtains and chair-coverings may be
used with a dull green carpet, or with one of dark blue patterned in
subdued tints; or the color-scheme may be reversed, and green hangings
and chair-coverings combined with a plain crimson carpet.
Where the walls are covered with tapestry, or hung with a large number
of pictures, or, in short, are so treated that they present a variety
of colors, it is best that curtains, chair-coverings and carpet should
all be of one color and without pattern. Graduated shades of the same
color should almost always be avoided; theoretically they seem
harmonious, but in reality the light shades look faded in proximity
with the darker ones. Though it is well, as a rule, that carpet and
hangings should match, exception must always be made in favor of a
really fine old Eastern rug. The tints of such rugs are too subdued,
too subtly harmonized by time, to clash with any colors the room may
contain; but those who cannot cover their floors in this way will do
well to use carpets of uniform tint, rather than the gaudy rugs now
made in the East. The modern red and green Smyrna or Turkey carpet is
an exception. Where the furniture is dark and substantial, and the
predominating color is a strong green or crimson, such a carpet is
always suitable. These Smyrna carpets are usually well designed; and
if their colors be restricted to red and green, with small admixture
of dark blue, they harmonize with almost any style of decoration. It
is well, as a rule, to shun the decorative schemes concocted by the
writers who supply our newspapers with hints for "artistic interiors."
The use of such poetic adjectives as jonquil-yellow, willow-green,
shell-pink, or ashes-of-roses, gives to these descriptions of the
"unique boudoir" or "ideal summer room" a charm which the reality
would probably not possess. The arrangements suggested are usually
cheap devices based upon the mistaken idea that defects in structure
or design may be remedied by an overlaying of color or ornament. This
theory often leads to the spending of much more money than would have
been required to make one or two changes in the plan of the room, and
the result is never satisfactory to the fastidious.
There are but two ways of dealing with a room which is fundamentally
ugly: one is to accept it, and the other is courageously to correct
its ugliness. Half-way remedies are a waste of money and serve rather
to call attention to the defects of the room than to conceal them.
[Illustration: _PLATE X._
FRENCH MARQUETRY TABLE, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] There is no objection to putting a fireplace between two doors,
provided both doors be at least six feet from the chimney.
[8] Not rattan, as the models are too bad.
III
WALLS
Proportion is the good breeding of architecture. It is that something,
indefinable to the unprofessional eye, which gives repose and
distinction to a room: in its origin a matter of nice mathematical
calculation, of scientific adjustment of voids and masses, but in its
effects as intangible as that all-pervading essence which the ancients
called the soul.
It is not proposed to enter here into a technical discussion of the
delicate problem of proportion. The decorator, with whom this book is
chiefly concerned, is generally not consulted until the house that he
is to decorate has been built--and built, in all probability, quite
without reference to the interior treatment it is destined to receive.
All he can hope to do is, by slight modifications here and there in
the dimensions or position of the openings, to re-establish that
harmony of parts so frequently disregarded in modern house-planning.
It often happens, however, that the decorator's desire to make these
slight changes, upon which the success of his whole scheme depends, is
a source of perplexity and distress to his bewildered client, who sees
in it merely the inclination to find fault with another's work.
Nothing can be more natural than this attitude on the part of the
client. How is he to decide between the architect, who has possibly
disregarded in some measure the claims of symmetry and proportion in
planning the interior of the house, and the decorator who insists upon
those claims without being able to justify his demands by any
explanation comprehensible to the unprofessional? It is inevitable
that the decorator, who comes last, should fare worse, especially as
he makes his appearance at a time when contractors' bills are pouring
in, and the proposition to move a mantelpiece or change the dimensions
of a door opens fresh vistas of expense to the client's terrified
imagination.
Undoubtedly these difficulties have diminished in the last few years.
Architects are turning anew to the lost tradition of symmetry and to a
scientific study of the relation between voids and masses, and the
decorator's task has become correspondingly easier. Still, there are
many cases where his work is complicated by some trifling obstacle,
the removal of which the client opposes only because he cannot in
imagination foresee the improvement which would follow. If the client
permits the change to be made, he has no difficulty in appreciating
the result: he cannot see it in advance.
A few words from Isaac Ware's admirable chapter on "The Origin of
Proportions in the Orders"[9] may serve to show the importance of
proportion in all schemes of decoration, and the necessity of
conforming to certain rules that may at first appear both arbitrary
and incomprehensible.
"An architect of genius," Ware writes (alluding to the latitude which
the ancients allowed themselves in using the orders), "will think
himself happy, in designing a building that is to be enriched with the
Doric order, that he has all the latitude between two and a half and
seventeen for the projecture of its capital; that he can proportion
this projecture to the general idea of his building anywhere between
these extremes and show his authority. This is an happiness to the
person of real genius;... but as all architects are not, nor can be
expected to be, of this stamp, it is needful some standard should be
established, founded upon what a good taste shall most admire in the
antique, and fixed as a model from which to work, or as a test to
which we may have recourse in disputes and controversies."
If to these words be added his happy definition of the sense of
proportion as "fancy under the restraint and conduct of judgment," and
his closing caution that "it is mean in the undertaker of a great work
to copy strictly, and it is dangerous to give a loose to fancy
_without a perfect knowledge how far a variation may be justified_,"
the unprofessional reader may form some idea of the importance of
proportion and of the necessity for observing its rules.
If proportion is the good breeding of architecture, symmetry, or the
answering of one part to another, may be defined as the sanity of
decoration. The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm in form
as well as in sound, is one of the most inveterate of human instincts.
Yet for years Anglo-Saxons have been taught that to pay any regard to
symmetry in architecture or decoration is to truckle to one of the
meanest forms of artistic hypocrisy. The master who has taught this
strange creed, in words magical enough to win acceptance for any
doctrine, has also revealed to his generation so many of the forgotten
beauties of early art that it is hard to dispute his principles of
æsthetics. As a guide through the byways of art, Mr. Ruskin is
entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all; but as a logical
exponent of the causes and effects of the beauty he discovers, his
authority is certainly open to question. For years he has spent the
full force of his unmatched prose in denouncing the enormity of
putting a door or a window in a certain place in order that it may
correspond to another; nor has he scrupled to declare to the victims
of this practice that it leads to abysses of moral as well as of
artistic degradation.
Time has taken the terror from these threats and architects are
beginning to see that a regard for external symmetry, far from
interfering with the requirements of house-planning, tends to produce
a better, because a more carefully studied, plan, as well as a more
convenient distribution of wall-space; but in the lay mind there still
lingers not only a vague association between outward symmetry and
interior discomfort, between a well-balanced facade and badly
distributed rooms, but a still vaguer notion that regard for symmetry
indicates poverty of invention, lack of ingenuity and weak
subservience to a meaningless form.
What the instinct for symmetry means, philosophers may be left to
explain; but that it does exist, that it means something, and that it
is most strongly developed in those races which have reached the
highest artistic civilization, must be acknowledged by all students of
sociology. It is, therefore, not superfluous to point out that, in
interior decoration as well as in architecture, a regard for symmetry,
besides satisfying a legitimate artistic requirement, tends to make
the average room not only easier to furnish, but more comfortable to
live in.
[Illustration _PLATE XI._
DRAWING-ROOM IN BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON. XVIII CENTURY.]
As the effect produced by a room depends chiefly upon the distribution
of its openings, it will be well to begin by considering the treatment
of the walls. It has already been said that the decorator can often
improve a room, not only from the artistic point of view, but as
regards the comfort of its inmates, by making some slight change in
the position of its openings. Take, for instance, a library in which
it is necessary to put the two principal bookcases one on each side of
a door or fireplace. If this opening is in the _centre_ of one side of
the room, the wall-decorations may be made to balance, and the
bookcases may be of the same width,--an arrangement which will give to
the room an air of spaciousness and repose. Should the wall-spaces on
either side of the opening be of unequal extent, both decorations and
bookcases must be modified in size and design; and not only does the
problem become more difficult, but the result, because necessarily
less simple, is certain to be less satisfactory. Sometimes, on the
other hand, convenience is sacrificed to symmetry; and in such cases
it is the decorator's business to remedy this defect, while preserving
to the eye the aspect of symmetry. A long narrow room may be taken as
an example. If the fireplace is in the centre of one of the long sides
of the room, with a door directly opposite, the hearth will be without
privacy and the room virtually divided into two parts, since, in a
narrow room, no one cares to sit in a line with the doorway. This
division of the room makes it more difficult to furnish and less
comfortable to live in, besides wasting all the floor-space between
the chimney and the door. One way of overcoming the difficulty is to
move the door some distance down the long side of the room, so that
the space about the fireplace is no longer a thoroughfare, and the
privacy of the greater part of the room is preserved, even if the door
be left open. The removal of the door from the centre of one side of
the room having disturbed the equilibrium of the openings, this
equilibrium may be restored by placing in a line with the door, at the
other end of the same side-wall, a piece of furniture corresponding as
nearly as possible in height and width to the door. This will satisfy
the eye, which in matters of symmetry demands, not absolute similarity
of detail, but merely correspondence of outline and dimensions.
It is idle to multiply examples of the various ways in which such
readjustments of the openings may increase the comfort and beauty of a
room. Every problem in house decoration demands a slightly different
application of the same general principles, and the foregoing
instances are intended only to show how much depends upon the placing
of openings and how reasonable is the decorator's claim to have a
share in planning the background upon which his effects are to be
produced.
It may surprise those whose attention has not been turned to such
matters to be told that in all but the most cheaply constructed houses
the interior walls are invariably treated as an order. In all houses,
even of the poorest kind, the walls of the rooms are finished by a
plain projecting board adjoining the floor, surmounted by one or more
mouldings. This base, as it is called, is nothing more nor less than
the part of an order between shaft and floor, or shaft and pedestal,
as the case may be. If it be next remarked that the upper part of the
wall, adjoining the ceiling, is invariably finished by a moulded
projection corresponding with the crowning member of an order, it will
be clear that the shaft, with its capital, has simply been omitted, or
that the uniform wall-space between the base and cornice has been
regarded as replacing it. In rooms of a certain height and importance
the column or pilaster is frequently restored to its proper place
between base and cornice; but where such treatment is too monumental
for the dimensions of the room, the main lines of the wall-space
should none the less be regarded as distinctly architectural, and the
decoration applied should be subordinate to the implied existence of
an order. (For the application of an order to walls, see Plates XLII
and L.)
Where the shafts are omitted, the eye undoubtedly feels a lack of
continuity in the treatment: the cornice seems to hang in air and the
effect produced is unsatisfactory. This is obviated by the use of
panelling, the vertical lines carried up at intervals from base to
cornice satisfying the need for some visible connection between the
upper and lower members of the order. Moreover, if the lines of the
openings are carried up to the cornice (as they are in all
well-designed schemes of decoration), the openings may be considered
as intercolumniations and the intermediate wall-spaces as the shafts
or piers supporting the cornice.
In well-finished rooms the order is usually imagined as resting, not
on the floor, but on pedestals, or rather on a continuous pedestal.
This continuous pedestal, or "dado" as it is usually called, is
represented by a plinth surmounted by mouldings, by an intermediate
member often decorated with tablets or sunk panels with moulded
margins, and by a cornice. The use of the dado raises the chief
wall-decoration of the room to a level with the eye and prevents its
being interrupted or concealed by the furniture which may be placed
against the walls. This fact makes it clear that in all well-designed
rooms there should be a dado about two and a half feet high. If lower
than this, it does not serve its purpose of raising the
wall-decoration to a line above the furniture; while the high dado
often seen in modern American rooms throws all the rest of the
panelling out of scale and loses its own significance as the pedestal
supporting an order.
In rooms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when little
furniture was used, the dado was often richly ornamented, being
sometimes painted with delicate arabesques corresponding with those on
the doors and inside shutters. As rooms grew smaller and the quantity
of furniture increased so much that the dado was almost concealed, the
treatment of the latter was wisely simplified, being reduced, as a
rule, to sunk panels and a few strongly marked mouldings. The
decorator cannot do better than plan the ornamentation of his dado
according to the amount of furniture to be placed against the walls.
In corridor or antechamber, or in a ball-room, the dado may receive a
more elaborate treatment than is necessary in a library or
drawing-room, where probably much less of it will be seen. It was not
unusual, in the decoration of lobbies and corridors in old French and
Italian houses, to omit the dado entirely if an order was used, thus
bringing the wall-decoration down to the base-board; but this was done
only in rooms or passage-ways not meant to contain any furniture.
The three noblest forms of wall-decoration are fresco-painting,
panelling, and tapestry hangings. In the best period of decoration all
three were regarded as subordinate to the architectural lines of the
room. The Italian fresco-painters, from Giotto to Tiepolo, never lost
sight of the interrelation between painting and architecture. It
matters not if the connection between base and cornice be maintained
by actual pilasters or mouldings, or by their painted or woven
imitations. The line, and not the substance, is what the eye demands.
It is a curious perversion of artistic laws that has led certain
critics to denounce painted architecture or woven mouldings. As in
imaginative literature the author may present to his reader as
possible anything that he has the talent to make the reader accept, so
in decorative art the artist is justified in presenting to the eye
whatever his skill can devise to satisfy its requirements; nor is
there any insincerity in this proceeding. Decorative art is not an
exact science. The decorator is not a chemist or a physiologist; it is
part of his mission, not to explain illusions, but to produce them.
Subject only to laws established by the limitations of the eye, he is
master of the domain of fancy, of that _pays bleu_ of the impossible
that it is his privilege to throw open to the charmed imagination.
[Illustration: _PLATE XII._
ROOM IN THE VILLA VERTEMATI, NEAR CHIAVENNA.
XVI OR EARLY XVII CENTURY.
(EXAMPLE OF FRESCOED CEILING.)]
Of the means of wall-decoration already named, fresco-painting and
stucco-panelling were generally preferred by Italian decorators, and
wood-panelling and tapestries by those of northern Europe. The use of
arras naturally commended itself to the northern noble, shivering in
his draughty castles and obliged to carry from one to another the
furniture and hangings that the unsettled state of the country made it
impossible to leave behind him. Italy, however, long supplied the
finest designs to the tapestry-looms of northern Europe, as the
Italian painters provided ready-made backgrounds of peaked hills,
winding torrents and pinnacled cities to the German engravers and the
Flemish painters of their day.
Tapestry, in the best periods of house-decoration, was always
subordinated to the architectural lines of the room (see Plate XI).
Where it was not specially woven for the panels it was intended to
fill, the subdivisions of the wall-spaces were adapted to its
dimensions. It was carefully fitted into the panelling of the room,
and never made to turn an angle, as wall-paper does in modern rooms,
nor combined with other odds and ends of decoration. If a room was
tapestried, it was tapestried, not decorated in some other way, with
bits of tapestry hung here and there at random over the fundamental
lines of the decoration. Nothing can be more beautiful than tapestry
properly used; but hung up without regard to the composition of the
room, here turning an angle, there covering a part of the dado or
overlapping a pilaster, it not only loses its own value, but destroys
the whole scheme of decoration with which it is thus unmeaningly
combined.
Italian panelling was of stone, marble or stucco, while in northern
Europe it was so generally of wood that (in England especially) the
term _panelling_ has become almost synonymous with _wood-panelling_,
and in some minds there is a curious impression that any panelling not
of wood is a sham. As a matter of fact, wood-panelling was used in
northern Europe simply because it kept the cold out more successfully
than a _revêtement_ of stone or plaster; while south of the Alps its
use was avoided for the equally good reason that in hot climates it
attracts vermin.
If priority of use be held as establishing a standard in decoration,
wood-panelling should be regarded as a sham and plaster-panelling as
its lawful prototype; for the use of stucco in the panelling of walls
and ceilings is highly characteristic of Roman interior decoration,
and wood-panelling as at present used is certainly of later origin.
But nothing can be more idle than such comparisons, nor more
misleading than the idea that stucco is a sham because it seeks to
imitate wood. It does not seek to imitate wood. It is a recognized
substance, of incalculable value for decorative effect, and no more
owes its place in decoration to a fancied resemblance to some other
material than the nave of a cathedral owes its place in architecture
to the fancied resemblance to a ship.
In the hands of a great race of artistic _virtuosi_ like the Italians,
stucco has produced effects of beauty which in any other substance
would have lost something of their freshness, their plastic
spontaneity. From the delicate traceries of the Roman baths and the
loveliness of Agostino da Duccio's chapel-front at Perugia, to the
improvised bravura treatment of the Farnese theatre at Parma, it has
served, through every phase of Italian art, to embody the most refined
and studied, as well as the most audacious and ephemeral, of
decorative conceptions.
It must not be supposed that because painting, panelling and tapestry
are the noblest forms of wall-decoration, they are necessarily the
most unattainable. Good tapestry is, of course, very expensive, and
even that which is only mediocre is beyond the reach of the average
purchaser; while stuff hangings and wall-papers, its modern
successors, have less to recommend them than other forms of
wall-decoration. With painting and panelling the case is different.
When painted walls were in fashion, there existed, below the great
creative artists, schools of decorative designers skilled in the art
of fresco-decoration, from the simplest kind to the most ornate. The
demand for such decoration would now call forth the same order of
talent, and many artists who are wasting their energies on the
production of indifferent landscapes and unsuccessful portraits might,
in the quite different field of decorative painting, find the true
expression of their talent.
To many minds the mention of a frescoed room suggests the image of a
grandiose saloon, with gods and goddesses of heroic size crowding the
domed ceiling and lofty walls; but the heroic style of fresco-painting
is only one of its many phases. To see how well this form of
decoration may be adapted to small modern rooms and to our present way
of living, it is only necessary to study the walls of the little
Pompeian houses, with their delicate arabesques and slender, fanciful
figures, or to note the manner in which the Italian painters treated
the small rooms of the casino or garden-pavilion which formed part of
every Italian country-seat. Examples of this light style of decoration
may be found in the Casino del grotto in the grounds of the Palazzo
del T at Mantua, in some of the smaller rooms of the hunting-lodge of
Stupinigi near Turin, and in the casino of the Villa Valmarana near
Vicenza, where the frescoes are by Tiepolo; while in France a pleasing
instance of the same style of treatment is seen in the small octagonal
pavilion called the Belvédère, frescoed by Le Riche, in the gardens of
the Petit Trianon at Versailles.
As regards panelling, it has already been said that if the effect
produced be satisfactory to the eye, the substance used is a matter of
indifference. Stone-panelling has the merit of solidity, and the
outlines of massive stone mouldings are strong and dignified; but the
same effect may be produced in stucco, a material as well suited to
the purpose as stone, save for its greater fragility. Wood-panelling
is adapted to the most delicate carving, greater sharpness of edge and
clearness of undercutting being obtainable than in stucco: though this
qualification applies only to the moulded stucco ornaments used from
economy, not to those modelled by hand. Used in the latter way, stucco
may be made to produce the same effects as carved wood, and for
delicacy of modelling in low relief it is superior to any other
material. There is, in short, little to choose between the different
substances, except in so far as one or the other may commend itself to
the artist as more peculiarly suited to the special requirements of
his design, or to the practical conditions regulating his work.
[Illustration: _PLATE XIII._
DRAWING-ROOM AT EASTON NESTON HALL, ENGLAND.
BUILT BY NICHOLAS HAWKESMOOR, 1702.
(EXAMPLE OF STUCCO DECORATION.)]
It is to this regard for practical conditions, and not to any fancied
superiority over other materials, that the use of wood-panelling in
northern Europe may most reasonably be attributed. Not only was wood
easy to obtain, but it had the additional merit of keeping out the
cold: two qualities sufficient to recommend it to the common sense of
French and English architects. From the decorative point of view it
has, when unpainted, one undeniable advantage over stucco--that is,
beauty of color and veining. As a background for the dull gilding of
old picture-frames, or as a setting for tapestry, nothing can surpass
the soft rich tones of oak or walnut panelling, undefaced by the
application of a shiny varnish.
With the introduction of the orders into domestic architecture and the
treatment of interior walls with dado and cornice, the panelling of
the wall-space between those two members began to assume definite
proportions. In England and France, before that time, wall-panels were
often divided into small equal-sized rectangles which, from lack of
any central motive, produced a most inadequate impression. Frequently,
too, in the houses of the Renaissance the panelling, instead of being
carried up to the ceiling, was terminated two or three feet below it a
form of treatment that reduced the height of the room and broke the
connection between walls and ceiling. This awkward device of stunted
panelling, or, as it might be called, of an unduly heightened dado,
has been revived by modern decorators; and it is not unusual to see
the walls of a room treated, as regards their base-board and cornice,
as part of an order, and then panelled up to within a foot or two of
the cornice, without apparent regard to the true _raison d'être_ of
the dado (see Plate XII).
If, then, the design of the wall-panelling is good, it matters little
whether stone, stucco, or wood be used. In all three it is possible to
obtain effects ranging from the grandeur of the great loggia of the
Villa Madama to the simplicity of any wood-panelled parlor in a New
England country-house, and from the greatest costliness to an outlay
little larger than that required for the purchase of a good
wall-paper.
It was well for the future of house-decoration when medical science
declared itself against the use of wall-papers. These hangings have,
in fact, little to recommend them. Besides being objectionable on
sanitary grounds, they are inferior as a wall-decoration to any form
of treatment, however simple, that maintains, instead of effacing, the
architectural lines of a room. It was the use of wall-paper that led
to the obliteration of the over-door and over-mantel, and to the
gradual submerging under a flood of pattern of all the main lines of
the wall-spaces. Its merits are that it is cheap, easy to put on and
easy to remove. On the other hand, it is readily damaged, soon fades,
and cannot be cleaned; while from the decorative point of view there
can be no comparison between the flat meanderings of wall-paper
pattern and the strong architectural lines of any scheme of panelling,
however simple. Sometimes, of course, the use of wall-paper is a
matter of convenience, since it saves both time and trouble; but a
papered room can never, decoratively or otherwise, be as satisfactory
as one in which the walls are treated in some other manner.
The hanging of walls with chintz or any other material is even more
objectionable than the use of wall-paper, since it has not the saving
merit of cheapness. The custom is probably a survival of the time when
wall-decorations had to be made in movable shape; and this facility of
removal points to the one good reason for using stuff hangings. In a
hired house, if the wall-decorations are ugly, and it is necessary to
hide them, the rooms may be hung with stuff which the departing tenant
can take away. In other words, stuff hangings are serviceable if used
as a tent; as a permanent mode of decoration they are both unhealthy
and inappropriate. There is something unpleasant in the idea of a
dust-collecting fabric fixed to the wall, so that it cannot be shaken
out at will like a curtain. Textile fabrics are meant to be moved,
folded, shaken: they have none of the qualities of permanence and
solidity which we associate with the walls of a room. The much-derided
marble curtains of the Jesuit church in Venice are no more illogical
than stuff wall-hangings.
In decorating the walls of a room, the first point to be considered is
whether they are to form a background for its contents, or to be in
themselves its chief decoration. In many cases the disappointing
effects of wall-decoration are due to the fact that this important
distinction has been overlooked. In rooms that are to be hung with
prints or pictures, the panelling or other treatment of the walls
should be carefully designed with a view to the size and number of the
pictures. Pictures should never be hung against a background of
pattern. Nothing is more distressing than the sight of a large
oil-painting in a ponderous frame seemingly suspended from a spray of
wild roses or any of the other naturalistic vegetation of the modern
wall-paper. The overlaying of pattern is always a mistake. It produces
a confusion of line in which the finest forms lose their individuality
and significance.
It is also important to avoid hanging pictures or prints too close to
each other. Not only do the colors clash, but the different designs of
the frames, some of which may be heavy, with deeply recessed
mouldings, while others are flat and carved in low relief, produce an
equally discordant impression. Every one recognizes the necessity of
selecting the mouldings and other ornamental details of a room with a
view to their position in the scheme of decoration; but few stop to
consider that in a room hung with pictures, the frames take the place
of wall-mouldings, and consequently must be chosen and placed as
though they were part of a definite decorative composition.
Pictures and prints should be fastened to the wall, not hung by a cord
or wire, nor allowed to tilt forward at an angle. The latter
arrangement is specially disturbing since it throws the picture-frames
out of the line of the wall. It must never be forgotten that pictures
on a wall, whether set in panels or merely framed and hung, inevitably
become a part of the wall-decoration. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, in rooms of any importance, pictures were always
treated as a part of the decoration, and frequently as panels sunk in
the wall in a setting of carved wood or stucco mouldings (see
paintings in Plates V and XIX). Even when not set in panels, they were
always fixed to the wall, and their frames, whether of wood or stucco,
were made to correspond with the ornamental detail of the rest of the
room. Beautiful examples of this mode of treatment are seen in many
English interiors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,[10] and
some of the finest carvings of Grinling Gibbons were designed for this
purpose.
Even where the walls are not to be hung with pictures, it is necessary
to consider what kind of background the furniture and objects of art
require. If the room is to be crowded with cabinets, bookcases and
other tall pieces, and these, as well as the tables and mantel-shelf,
are to be covered with porcelain vases, bronze statuettes, ivories,
Chinese monsters and Chelsea groups, a plain background should be
provided for this many-colored medley. Should the room contain only a
few important pieces of furniture, and one or two vases or busts, the
walls against which these strongly marked objects are to be placed may
receive a more decorative treatment. It is only in rooms used for
entertaining, dining, or some special purpose for which little
furniture is required, that the walls should receive a more elaborate
scheme of decoration.
Where the walls are treated in an architectural manner, with a
well-designed dado and cornice, and an over-mantel and over-doors
connecting the openings with the cornice, it will be found that in a
room of average size the intervening wall-spaces may be tinted in a
uniform color and left unornamented. If the fundamental lines are
right, very little decorative detail is needed to complete the effect;
whereas, when the lines are wrong, no overlaying of ornamental odds
and ends, in the way of pictures, bric-à-brac and other improvised
expedients, will conceal the structural deficiencies.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] _A Complete Body of Architecture_, Book II, chap. iii.
[10] See the saloon at Easton Neston, built by Nicholas Hawkesmoor
(Plate XIII), and various examples given in Pyne's _Royal Residences_.
IV
DOORS
The fate of the door in America has been a curious one, and had the
other chief features of the house--such as windows, fireplaces, and
stairs--been pursued with the same relentless animosity by architects
and decorators, we should no longer be living in houses at all. First,
the door was slid into the wall; then even its concealed presence was
resented, and it was unhung and replaced by a portière; while of late
it has actually ceased to form a part of house-building, and many
recently built houses contain doorways _without doors_. Even the front
door, which might seem to have too valid a reason for existence to be
disturbed by the variations of fashion, has lately had to yield its
place, in the more pretentious kind of house, to a wrought-iron
gateway lined with plate-glass, against which, as a climax of
inconsequence, a thick curtain is usually hung.
It is not difficult to explain such architectural vagaries. In
general, their origin is to be found in the misapplication of some
serviceable feature and its consequent rejection by those who did not
understand that it had ceased to be useful only because it was not
properly used.
[Illustration: _PLATE XIV._
DOORWAY WITH MARBLE ARCHITRAVE,
DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA. XVI CENTURY.]
In the matter of doors, such an explanation at once presents itself.
During the latter half of the eighteenth century it occurred to
some ingenious person that when two adjoining rooms were used for
entertaining, and it was necessary to open the doors between them,
these doors might be in the way; and to avoid this possibility, a
recess was formed in the thickness of the wall, and the door was made
to slide into it.
This idea apparently originated in England, for sliding doors, even in
the present day, are virtually unknown on the continent; and Isaac
Ware, in the book already quoted, speaks of the sliding door as having
been used "at the house, late Mr. de Pestre's, near Hanover Square,"
and adds that "the manner of it there may serve as an example to other
builders," showing it to have been a novelty which he thought worthy
of imitation.
English taste has never been so sure as that of the Latin races; and
it has, moreover, been perpetually modified by a passion for
contriving all kinds of supposed "conveniences," which instead of
simplifying life not unfrequently tend to complicate it. Americans
have inherited this trait, and in both countries the architect or
upholsterer who can present a new and more intricate way of planning a
house or of making a piece of furniture, is more sure of a hearing
than he who follows the accepted lines.
It is doubtful if the devices to which so much is sacrificed in
English and American house-planning always offer the practical
advantages attributed to them. In the case of the sliding door these
advantages are certainly open to question, since there is no reason
why a door should not open into a room. Under ordinary circumstances,
doors should always be kept shut; it is only, as Ware points out, when
two adjoining rooms are used for entertaining that it is necessary to
leave the door between them open. Now, between two rooms destined for
entertaining, a double door (_à deux battants_) is always preferable
to a single one; and as an opening four feet six inches wide is
sufficient in such cases, each of the doors will be only two feet
three inches wide, and therefore cannot encroach to any serious extent
on the floor-space of the room. On the other hand, much has been
sacrificed to the supposed "convenience" of the sliding door: first,
the decorative effect of a well-panelled door, with hinges, box-locks
and handle of finely chiselled bronze; secondly, the privacy of both
rooms, since the difficulty of closing a heavy sliding door always
leads to its being left open, with the result that two rooms are
necessarily used as one. In fact, the absence of privacy in modern
houses is doubtless in part due to the difficulty of closing the doors
between the rooms.
The sliding door has led to another abuse in house-planning: the
exaggerated widening of the doorway. While doors were hung on hinges,
doorways were of necessity restricted to their proper dimensions; but
with the introduction of the sliding door, openings eight or ten feet
wide became possible. The planning of a house is often modified by a
vague idea on the part of its owners that they may wish to give
entertainments on a large scale. As a matter of fact, general
entertainments are seldom given in a house of average size; and those
who plan their houses with a view to such possibilities sacrifice
their daily comfort to an event occurring perhaps once a year. But
even where many entertainments are to be given large doorways are of
little use. Any architect of experience knows that ease of circulation
depends far more on the planning of the house and on the position of
the openings than on the actual dimensions of the latter. Indeed, two
moderate-sized doorways leading from one room to another are of much
more use in facilitating the movements of a crowd than one opening ten
feet wide.
Sliding doors have been recommended on the ground that their use
preserves a greater amount of wall-space; but two doorways of moderate
dimensions, properly placed, will preserve as much wall-space as one
very large opening and will probably permit a better distribution of
panelling and furniture. There was far more wall-space in seventeenth
and eighteenth-century rooms than there is in rooms of the same
dimensions in the average modern American house; and even where this
space was not greater in actual measurement, more furniture could be
used, since the openings were always placed with a view to the proper
arrangement of what the room was to contain.
According to the best authorities, the height of a well-proportioned
doorway should be twice its width; and as the height is necessarily
regulated by the stud of the room, it follows that the width varies;
but it is obvious that no doorway should be less than six feet high
nor less than three feet wide.
When a doorway is over three feet six inches wide, a pair of doors
should always be used; while a single door is preferable in a narrow
opening.
In rooms twelve feet or less in height, doorways should not be more
than nine feet high. The width of openings in such rooms is therefore
restricted to four feet six inches; indeed, it is permissible to make
the opening lower and thus reduce its width to four feet; six inches
of additional wall-space are not to be despised in a room of average
dimensions.
The treatment of the door forms one of the most interesting chapters
in the history of house-decoration. In feudal castles the interior
doorway, for purposes of defense, was made so small and narrow that
only one person could pass through at a time, and was set in a plain
lintel or architrave of stone, the door itself being fortified by
bands of steel or iron, and by heavy bolts and bars. Even at this
early period it seems probable that in the chief apartments the lines
of the doorway were carried up to the ceiling by means of an over-door
of carved wood, or of some painted decorative composition.[11] This
connection between the doorway and the ceiling, maintained through all
the subsequent phases of house-decoration, was in fact never
disregarded until the beginning of the present century.
It was in Italy that the door, in common with the other features of
private dwellings, first received a distinctly architectural
treatment. In Italian palaces of the fifteenth century the doorways
were usually framed by architraves of marble, enriched with
arabesques, medallions and processional friezes in low relief,
combined with disks of colored marble. Interesting examples of this
treatment are seen in the apartments of Isabella of Este in the ducal
palace at Mantua (see Plate XIV), in the ducal palace at Urbino, and
in the Certosa of Pavia--some of the smaller doorways in this
monastery being decorated with medallion portraits of the Sforzas, and
with other low reliefs of extraordinary beauty.
The doors in Italian palaces were usually of inlaid wood, elaborate in
composition and affording in many cases beautiful instances of that
sense of material limitation that preserves one art from infringing
upon another. The intarsia doors of the palace at Urbino are among the
most famous examples of this form of decoration. It should be noted
that many of the woods used in Italian marquetry were of a light
shade, so that the blending of colors in Renaissance doors produces a
sunny golden-brown tint in perfect harmony with the marble architrave
of the doorway. The Italian decorator would never have permitted so
harsh a contrast as that between the white trim and the mahogany doors
of English eighteenth-century houses. This juxtaposition of colors was
disapproved by French decorators also, and was seldom seen except in
England and in the American houses built under English influence. It
should be observed, too, that the polish given to hard-grained wood in
England, and imitated in the wood-varnish of the present day, was
never in favor in Italy and France. Shiny surfaces were always
disliked by the best decorators.
The classic revival in Italy necessarily modified the treatment of the
doorway. Flat arabesques and delicately chiselled medallions gave way
to a plain architrave, frequently masked by an order; while the
over-door took the form of a pediment, or, in the absence of shafts,
of a cornice or entablature resting on brackets. The use of a pediment
over interior doorways was characteristic of Italian decoration.
In studying Italian interiors of this period from photographs or
modern prints, or even in visiting the partly dilapidated palaces
themselves, it may at first appear that the lines of the doorway were
not always carried up to the cornice. Several causes have combined to
produce this impression. In the first place, the architectural
treatment of the over-door was frequently painted on the wall, and has
consequently disappeared with the rest of the wall-decoration (see
Plate XV). Then, again, Italian rooms were often painted with
landscapes and out-of-door architectural effects, and when this was
done the doorways were combined with these architectural compositions,
and were not treated as part of the room, but as part of what the room
_pretended to be_. In the suppressed Scuola della Carità (now the
Academy of Fine Arts) at Venice, one may see a famous example of this
treatment in the doorway under the stairs leading up to the temple, in
Titian's great painting of the "Presentation of the Virgin."[12]
Again, in the high-studded Italian saloons containing a musician's
gallery, or a clerestory, a cornice was frequently carried around the
walls at suitable height above the lower range of openings, and the
decorative treatment above the doors, windows and fireplace extended
only to this cornice, not to the actual ceiling of the room.
Thus it will be seen that the relation between the openings and
cornice in Italian decoration was in reality always maintained except
where the decorator chose to regard them as forming a part, not of the
room, but of some other architectural composition.
In the sixteenth century the excessive use of marquetry was abandoned,
doors being panelled, and either left undecorated or painted with
those light animated combinations of figure and arabesque which
Raphael borrowed from the Roman fresco-painters, and which since his
day have been peculiarly characteristic of Italian decorative
painting.[13]
Wood-carving in Italy was little used in house-decoration, and, as a
rule, the panelling of doors was severely architectural in character,
with little of the delicate ornamentation marking the French work of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[14]
[Illustration: _PLATE XV._
SALA DEI CAVALLI, PALAZZO DEL T, MANTUA. XVI CENTURY.
(EXAMPLE OF PAINTED ARCHITECTURAL DECORATION.)]
In France the application of the orders to interior doorways was never
very popular, though it figures in French architectural works of
the eighteenth century. The architrave, except in houses of great
magnificence, was usually of wood, sometimes very richly carved. It
was often surmounted by an entablature with a cornice resting on
carved brackets; while the panel between this and the ceiling-cornice
was occupied by an over-door consisting either of a painting, of a
carved panel or of a stucco or marble bas-relief. These over-doors
usually corresponded with the design of the over-mantel.
Great taste and skill were displayed in the decoration of door-panels
and embrasure. In the earlier part of the seventeenth century, doors
and embrasures were usually painted, and nothing in the way of
decorative painting can exceed in beauty and fitness the French
compositions of this period.[15]
During the reign of Louis XIV, doors were either carved or painted,
and their treatment ranged from the most elaborate decoration to the
simplest panelling set in a plain wooden architrave. In some French
doors of this period painting and carving were admirably combined; and
they were further ornamented by the chiselled locks and hinges for
which French locksmiths were famous. So important a part did these
locks and hinges play in French decoration that Lebrun himself is said
to have designed those in the Galerie d'Apollon, in the Louvre, when
he composed the decoration of the room. Even in the simplest private
houses, where chiselled bronze was too expensive a luxury, and
wrought-iron locks and hinges, with plain knobs of brass or iron, were
used instead, such attention was paid to both design and execution
that it is almost impossible to find in France an old lock or hinge,
however plain, that is not well designed and well made (see Plate
XVII). The miserable commercial article that disgraces our modern
doors would not have been tolerated in the most unpretentious
dwelling.
The mortise-lock now in use in England and America first made its
appearance toward the end of the eighteenth century in England, where
it displaced the brass or iron box-lock; but on the Continent it has
never been adopted. It is a poor substitute for the box-lock, since it
not only weakens but disfigures the door, while a well-designed
box-lock is both substantial and ornamental (see Plate XVII).
In many minds the Louis XV period is associated with a general
waviness of line and excess of carving. It has already been pointed
out that even when the rocaille manner was at its height the main
lines of a room were seldom allowed to follow the capricious movement
of the ornamental accessories. Openings being the leading features of
a room, their main lines were almost invariably respected; and while
considerable play of movement was allowed in some of the accessory
mouldings of the over-doors and over-mantels, the plan of the panel,
in general symmetrical, was in many cases a plain rectangle.[16]
During the Louis XV period the panelling of doors was frequently
enriched with elaborate carving; but such doors are to be found only
in palaces, or in princely houses like the Hôtels de Soubise, de
Rohan, or de Toulouse (see Plate XVIII). In the most magnificent
apartments, moreover, plain panelled doors were as common as those
adorned with carving; while in the average private hôtel, even where
much ornament was lavished on the panelling of the walls, the doors
were left plain.
Towards the close of this reign, when the influence of Gabriel began
to simplify and restrain the ornamental details of house-decoration,
the panelled door was often made without carving and was sometimes
painted with attenuated arabesques and grisaille medallions, relieved
against a gold ground. Gabriel gave the key-note of what is known as
Louis XVI decoration, and the treatment of the door in France followed
the same general lines until the end of the eighteenth century. As the
classic influence became more marked, paintings in the over-door and
over-mantel were replaced by low or high reliefs in stucco: and
towards the end of the Louis XVI period a processional frieze in the
classic manner often filled the entablature above the architrave of
the door (see Plate XVI).
Doors opening upon a terrace, or leading from an antechamber into a
summer-parlor, or _salon frais_, were frequently made of glass; while
in gala rooms, doors so situated as to correspond with the windows of
the room were sometimes made of looking-glass. In both these instances
the glass was divided into small panes, with such strongly marked
mouldings that there could not be a moment's doubt of the apparent, as
well as the actual, solidity of the door. In good decorative art first
impressions are always taken into account, and the immediate
satisfaction of the eye is provided for.
In England the treatment of doorway and door followed in a general way
the Italian precedent. The architrave, as a rule, was severely
architectural, and in the eighteenth century the application of an
order was regarded as almost essential in rooms of a certain
importance. The door itself was sometimes inlaid,[17] but oftener
simply panelled (see Plate XI).
In the panelling of doors, English taste, except when it closely
followed Italian precedents, was not always good. The use of a pair of
doors in one opening was confined to grand houses, and in the average
dwelling single doors were almost invariably used, even in openings
over three feet wide. The great width of some of these single doors
led to a curious treatment of the panels, the door being divided by a
central stile, which was sometimes beaded, as though, instead of a
single door, it were really a pair held together by some invisible
agency. This central stile is almost invariably seen in the doors of
modern American houses.
Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the use of highly
polished mahogany doors became general in England. It has already been
pointed out that the juxtaposition of a dark-colored door and a white
architrave was not approved by French and Italian architects. Blondel,
in fact, expressly states that such contrasts are to be avoided, and
that where walls are pale in tint the door should never be dark: thus
in vestibules and antechambers panelled with Caen stone he recommends
painting the doors a pale shade of gray.
In Italy, when doors were left unpainted they were usually made of
walnut, a wood of which the soft, dull tone harmonizes well with
almost any color, whether light or dark; while in France it would not
be easy to find an unpainted door, except in rooms where the
wall-panelling is also of natural wood.
[Illustration: _PLATE XVI._
DOOR IN THE SALA DELLO ZODIACO,
DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA. XVIII CENTURY.]
In the better type of house lately built in America there is seen a
tendency to return to the use of doors hung on hinges. These, however,
have been so long out of favor that the rules regulating their
dimensions have been lost sight of, and the modern door and architrave
are seldom satisfactory in these respects. The principles of
proportion have been further disturbed by a return to the confused
and hesitating system of panelling prevalent in England during the
Tudor and Elizabethan periods.
The old French and Italian architects never failed to respect that
rule of decorative composition which prescribes that where there is
any division of parts, one part shall unmistakably predominate. In
conformity with this rule, the principal panel in doors of French or
Italian design is so much higher than the others that these are at
once seen to be merely accessory; whereas many of our modern doors are
cut up into so many small panels, and the central one so little
exceeds the others in height, that they do not "compose."
The architrave of the modern door has been neglected for the same
reasons as the window-architrave. The use of the heavy sliding door,
which could not be opened or shut without an effort, led to the
adoption of the portière; and the architrave, being thus concealed,
was no longer regarded as a feature of any importance in the
decoration of the room.
The portière has always been used, as old prints and pictures show;
but, like the curtain, in earlier days it was simply intended to keep
out currents of air, and was consequently seldom seen in well-built
houses, where double sets of doors served far better to protect the
room from draughts. In less luxurious rooms, where there were no
double doors, and portières had to be used, these were made as scant
and unobtrusive as possible. The device of draping stuffs about the
doorway, thus substituting a textile architrave for one of wood or
stone, originated with the modern upholsterer; and it is now not
unusual to see a wide opening with no door in it, enclosed in yards
and yards of draperies which cannot even be lowered at will.
The portière, besides causing a break in architectural lines, has
become one of the chief expenses in the decoration of the modern room;
indeed, the amount spent in buying yards of plush or damask, with the
addition of silk cord, tassels, gimp and fringe, often makes it
necessary to slight the essential features of the room; so that an
ugly mantelpiece or ceiling is preserved because the money required to
replace it has been used in the purchase of portières. These
superfluous draperies are, in fact, more expensive than a well-made
door with hinges and box-lock of chiselled bronze.
The general use of the portière has also caused the disappearance of
the over-door. The lines of the opening being hidden under a mass of
drapery, the need of connecting them with the cornice was no longer
felt, and one more feature of the room passed out of the architect's
hands into those of the upholsterer, or, as he might more fitly be
called, the house-dressmaker.
The return to better principles of design will do more than anything
else to restore the architectural lines of the room. Those who use
portières generally do so from an instinctive feeling that a door is
an ugly thing that ought to be hidden, and modern doors are in fact
ugly; but when architects give to the treatment of openings the same
attention they formerly received, it will soon be seen that this
ugliness is not a necessity, and portières will disappear with the
return of well-designed doors.
Some general hints concerning the distribution of openings have been
given in the chapter on walls. It may be noted in addition that while
all doorways in a room should, as a rule, be of one height, there are
cases where certain clearly subordinate openings may be lower than
those which contain doors _à deux battants_. In such cases the
panelling of the door must be carefully modified in accordance with
the dimensions of the opening, and the treatment of the over-doors
in their relation to each other must be studied with equal attention.
Examples of such adaptations are to be found in many old French and
Italian rooms.[18]
[Illustration: _PLATE XVII._
EXAMPLES OF MODERN FRENCH LOCKSMITHS' WORK.]
Doors should always swing _into_ a room. This facilitates entrance and
gives the hospitable impression that everything is made easy to those
who are coming in. Doors should furthermore be so hung that they
screen that part of the room in which the occupants usually sit. In
small rooms, especially those in town houses, this detail cannot be
too carefully considered. The fact that so many doors open in the
wrong way is another excuse for the existence of portières.
A word must also be said concerning the actual making of the door.
There is a general impression that veneered doors or furniture are
cheap substitutes for articles made of solid blocks of wood. As a
matter of fact, owing to the high temperature of American houses, all
well-made wood-work used in this country is of necessity composed of
at least three, and often of five, layers of wood. This method of
veneering, in which the layers are so placed that the grain runs in
different directions, is the only way of counteracting the shrinking
and swelling of the wood under artificial heat.
To some minds the concealed door represents one of those architectural
deceptions which no necessity can excuse. It is certain that the
concealed door is an expedient, and that in a well-planned house there
should be no need for expedients, unless the architect is hampered by
limitations of space, as is the case in designing the average American
town house. Architects all know how many principles of beauty and
fitness must be sacrificed to the restrictions of a plot of ground
twenty-five feet wide by seventy-five or a hundred in length. Under
such conditions, every device is permissible that helps to produce an
effect of spaciousness and symmetry without interfering with
convenience: chief among these contrivances being the concealed door.
Such doors are often useful in altering or adding to a badly planned
house. It is sometimes desirable to give increased facilities of
communication without adding to the visible number of openings in any
one room; while in other cases the limited amount of wall-space may
make it difficult to find place for a doorway corresponding in
dimensions with the others; or, again, where it is necessary to make a
closet under the stairs, the architrave of a visible door may clash
awkwardly with the stringboard.
Under such conditions the concealed door naturally suggests itself. To
those who regard its use as an offense against artistic integrity, it
must once more be pointed out that architecture addresses itself not
to the moral sense, but to the eye. The existing confusion on this
point is partly due to the strange analogy drawn by modern critics
between artistic sincerity and moral law. Analogies are the most
dangerous form of reasoning: they connect resemblances, but disguise
facts; and in this instance nothing can be more fallacious than to
measure the architect's action by an ethical standard.
[Illustration: _PLATE XVIII._
CARVED DOOR, PALACE OF VERSAILLES.
LOUIS XV PERIOD.
(SHOWING PAINTED OVER-DOOR.)]
"Sincerity," in many minds, is chiefly associated with speaking the
truth; but architectural sincerity is simply obedience to certain
visual requirements, one of which demands that what are at once seen
to be the main lines of a room or house shall be acknowledged as such
in the application of ornament. The same architectural principles
demand that the main lines of a room shall not be unnecessarily
interrupted; and in certain cases it would be bad taste to disturb the
equilibrium of wall-spaces and decoration by introducing a visible
door leading to some unimportant closet or passageway, of which the
existence need not be known to any but the inmates of the house. It is
in such cases that the concealed door is a useful expedient. It can
hardly be necessary to point out that it would be a great mistake to
place a concealed door in a main opening. These openings should always
be recognized as one of the chief features of the room, and so treated
by the decorator; but this point has already been so strongly insisted
upon that it is reverted to here only in order to show how different
are the requirements which justify concealment.
The concealed door has until recently been used so little by American
architects that its construction is not well understood, and it is
often hung on ordinary visible hinges, instead of being swung on a
pivot. There is no reason why, with proper care, a door of this kind
should not be so nicely adjusted to the wall-panelling as to be
practically invisible; and to fulfil this condition is the first
necessity of its construction (see concealed door in Plate XLV).
FOOTNOTES:
[11] See Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire raisonné de l'Architecture
française_, under _Porte_.
[12] This painting has now been restored to its proper position in the
Scuola della Carità, and the door which had been _painted in_ under
the stairs has been removed to make way for the actual doorway around
which the picture was originally painted.
[13] See the doors of the Sala dello Zodiaco in the ducal palace at
Mantua (Plate XVI).
[14] Some rooms of the rocaille period, however, contain doors as
elaborately carved as those seen in France (see the doors in the royal
palace at Genoa, Plate XXXIV).
[15] See the doors at Vaux-le-Vicomte and in the Palais de Justice at
Rennes.
[16] Only in the most exaggerated German baroque were the vertical
lines of the door-panels sometimes irregular.
[17] The inlaid doors of Houghton Hall, the seat of Sir Robert
Walpole, were noted for their beauty and costliness. The price of each
was £200.
[18] See a room in the Ministère de la Marine at Paris, where a
subordinate door is cleverly treated in connection with one of more
importance.
V
WINDOWS
In the decorative treatment of a room the importance of openings can
hardly be overestimated. Not only do they represent the three chief
essentials of its comfort,--light, heat and means of access,--but they
are the leading features in that combination of voids and masses that
forms the basis of architectural harmony. In fact, it is chiefly
because the decorative value of openings has ceased to be recognized
that modern rooms so seldom produce a satisfactory and harmonious
impression. It used to be thought that the effect of a room depended
on the treatment of its wall-spaces and openings; now it is supposed
to depend on its curtains and furniture. Accessory details have
crowded out the main decorative features; and, as invariably happens
when the relation of parts is disturbed, everything in the modern room
has been thrown out of balance by this confusion between the essential
and the incidental in decoration.[19]
The return to a more architectural treatment of rooms and to a
recognition of the decorative value of openings, besides producing
much better results, would undoubtedly reduce the expense of
house-decoration. A small quantity of ornament, properly applied, will
produce far more effect than ten times its amount used in the wrong
way; and it will be found that when decorators rely for their effects
on the treatment of openings, the rest of the room will require little
ornamentation. The crowding of rooms with furniture and bric-à-brac is
doubtless partly due to an unconscious desire to fill up the blanks
caused by the lack of architectural composition in the treatment of
the walls.
The importance of connecting the main lines of the openings with the
cornice having been explained in the previous chapter, it is now
necessary to study the different openings in turn, and to see in how
many ways they serve to increase the dignity and beauty of their
surroundings.
As light-giving is the main purpose for which windows are made, the
top of the window should be as near the ceiling as the cornice will
allow. Ventilation, the secondary purpose of the window, is also
better served by its being so placed, since an opening a foot wide
near the ceiling will do more towards airing a room than a space twice
as large near the floor. In our northern States, where the dark winter
days and the need of artificial heat make light and ventilation so
necessary, these considerations are especially important. In Italian
palaces the windows are generally lower than in more northern
countries, since the greater intensity of the sunshine makes a much
smaller opening sufficient; moreover, in Italy, during the summer,
houses are not kept cool by letting in the air, but by shutting it
out.
Windows should not exceed five feet in width, while in small rooms
openings three feet wide will be found sufficient. There are
practical as well as artistic reasons for observing this rule, since a
sash-window containing a sheet of glass more than five feet wide
cannot be so hung that it may be raised without effort; while a
casement, or French window, though it may be made somewhat wider, is
not easy to open if its width exceeds six feet.
The next point to consider is the distance between the bottom of the
window and the floor. This must be decided by circumstances, such as
the nature of the view, the existence of a balcony or veranda, or the
wish to have a window-seat. The outlook must also be considered, and
the window treated in one way if it looks upon the street, and in
another if it gives on the garden or informal side of the house. In
the country nothing is more charming than the French window opening to
the floor. On the more public side of the house, unless the latter
gives on an enclosed court, it is best that the windows should be
placed about three feet from the floor, so that persons approaching
the house may not be able to look in. Windows placed at this height
should be provided with a fixed seat, or with one of the little
settees with arms, but without a back, formerly used for this purpose.
Although for practical reasons it may be necessary that the same room
should contain some windows opening to the floor and others raised
several feet above it, the tops of all the windows should be on a
level. To place them at different heights serves no useful end, and
interferes with any general scheme of decoration and more specially
with the arrangement of curtains.
Mullions dividing a window in the centre should be avoided whenever
possible, since they are an unnecessary obstruction to the view. The
chief drawback to a casement window is that its sashes join in the
middle; but as this is a structural necessity, it is less
objectionable. If mullions are required, they should be so placed as
to divide the window into three parts, thus preserving an unobstructed
central pane. The window called Palladian illustrates this point.
Now that large plate-glass windows have ceased to be a novelty, it
will perhaps be recognized that the old window with subdivided panes
had certain artistic and practical merits that have of late been
disregarded.
Where there is a fine prospect, windows made of a single plate of
glass are often preferred; but it must be remembered that the
subdivisions of a sash, while obstructing the view, serve to establish
a relation between the inside of the house and the landscape, making
the latter what, _as seen from a room_, it logically ought to be: a
part of the wall-decoration, in the sense of being subordinated to the
same general lines. A large unbroken sheet of plate-glass interrupts
the decorative scheme of the room, just as in verse, if the distances
between the rhymes are so great that the ear cannot connect them, the
continuity of sound is interrupted. Decoration must rhyme to the eye,
and to do so must be subject to the limitations of the eye, as verse
is subject to the limitations of the ear. Success in any art depends
on a due regard for the limitations of the sense to which it appeals.
The effect of a perpetually open window, produced by a large sheet of
plate-glass, while it gives a sense of coolness and the impression of
being out of doors, becomes for these very reasons a disadvantage in
cold weather.
It is sometimes said that the architects of the eighteenth century
would have used large plates of glass in their windows had they been
able to obtain them; but as such plates were frequently used for
mirrors, it is evident that they were not difficult to get, and that
there must have been other reasons for not employing them in windows;
while the additional expense could hardly have been an obstacle in an
age when princes and nobles built with such royal disregard of cost.
The French, always logical in such matters, having tried the effect of
plate-glass, are now returning to the old fashion of smaller panes;
and in many of the new houses in Paris, where the windows at first
contained large plates of glass, the latter have since been subdivided
by a network of narrow mouldings applied to the glass.
As to the comparative merits of French, or casement, and sash windows,
both arrangements have certain advantages. In houses built in the
French or Italian style, casement windows are best adapted to the
general treatment; while the sash-window is more in keeping in English
houses. Perhaps the best way of deciding the question is to remember
that "les fenêtres sont intimement liées aux grandes lignes de
l'architecture," and to conform to the rule suggested by this axiom.
The two common objections to French windows--that they are less
convenient for ventilation, and that they cannot be opened without
letting in cold air near the floor--are both unfounded. All properly
made French windows have at the top an impost or stationary part
containing small panes, one of which is made to open, thus affording
perfect ventilation without draught. Another expedient, seen in one of
the rooms of Mesdames de France at Versailles, is a small pane in the
main part of the window, opening on hinges of its own. (For examples
of well-designed French windows, see Plates XXX and XXXI.)
[Illustration: _PLATE XIX._
SALON DES MALACHITES, GRAND TRIANON, VERSAILLES.
LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
(SHOWING WELL-DESIGNED WINDOW WITH SOLID INSIDE SHUTTER, AND
PICTURES FORMING PART OF WALL-DECORATION.)]
Sash-windows have the disadvantage of not opening more than half-way,
a serious drawback in our hot summer climate. It is often said that
French windows cannot be opened wide without interfering with the
curtains; but this difficulty is easily met by the use of curtains
made with cords and pulleys, in the sensible old-fashioned manner. The
real purpose of the window-curtain is to regulate the amount of light
admitted to the room, and a curtain so arranged that it cannot be
drawn backward and forward at will is but a meaningless accessory. It
was not until the beginning of the present century that curtains were
used without regard to their practical purpose. The window-hangings of
the middle ages and of the Renaissance were simply straight pieces of
cloth or tapestry hung across the window without any attempt at
drapery, and regarded not as part of the decoration of the room, but
as a necessary protection against draughts. It is probably for this
reason that in old prints and pictures representing the rooms of
wealthy people, curtains are so seldom seen. The better the house, the
less need there was for curtains. In the engravings of Abraham Bosse,
which so faithfully represent the interior decoration of every class
of French house during the reign of Louis XIII, it will be noticed
that in the richest apartments there are no window-curtains. In all
the finest rooms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the
inside shutters and embrasures of the windows were decorated with a
care which proves that they were not meant to be concealed by curtains
(see the painted embrasures of the saloon in the Villa Vertemati,
Plate XLIV). The shutters in the state apartments of Fouquet's château
of Vaux-le-Vicomte, near Melun, are painted on both sides with
exquisite arabesques; while those in the apartments of Mesdames de
France, on the ground floor of the palace of Versailles, are examples
of the most beautiful carving. In fact, it would be more difficult to
cite a room of any importance in which the windows were not so
treated, than to go on enumerating examples of what was really a
universal custom until the beginning of the present century. It is
known, of course, that curtains were used in former times: prints,
pictures and inventories alike prove this fact; but the care expended
on the decorative treatment of windows makes it plain that the
curtain, like the portière, was regarded as a necessary evil rather
than as part of the general scheme of decoration. The meagreness and
simplicity of the curtains in old pictures prove that they were used
merely as window shades or sun-blinds. The scant straight folds pushed
back from the tall windows of the Prince de Conti's salon, in
Olivier's charming picture of "Le Thé à l'Anglaise chez le Prince de
Conti," are as obviously utilitarian as the strip of green woollen
stuff hanging against the leaded casement of the mediæval bed-chamber
in Carpaccio's "Dream of St. Ursula."
Another way of hanging window-curtains in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries was to place them inside the architrave, so that
they did not conceal it. The architectural treatment of the trim, and
the practice prevalent at that period of carrying the windows up to
the cornice, made this a satisfactory way of arranging the curtain;
but in the modern American house, where the trim is usually bad, and
where there is often a dreary waste of wall-paper between the window
and the ceiling, it is better to hang the curtains close under the
cornice.
It was not until the eighteenth century that the window-curtain was
divided in the middle; and this change was intended only to facilitate
the drawing of the hangings, which, owing to the increased size of the
windows, were necessarily wider and heavier. The curtain continued to
hang down in straight folds, pulled back at will to permit the opening
of the window, and drawn at night. Fixed window-draperies, with
festoons and folds so arranged that they cannot be lowered or raised,
are an invention of the modern upholsterer. Not only have these fixed
draperies done away with the true purpose of the curtain, but they
have made architects and decorators careless in their treatment of
openings. The architrave and embrasure of a window are now regarded as
of no more importance in the decorative treatment of a room than the
inside of the chimney.
The modern use of the lambrequin as an ornamental finish to
window-curtains is another instance of misapplied decoration. Its
history is easy to trace. The mediæval bed was always enclosed in
curtains hanging from a wooden framework, and the lambrequin was used
as a kind of cornice to conceal it. When the use of gathered
window-shades became general in Italy, the lambrequin was transferred
from the bed to the window, in order to hide the clumsy bunches of
folds formed by these shades when drawn up. In old prints, lambrequins
over windows are almost always seen in connection with Italian shades,
and this is the only logical way of using them; though they are often
of service in concealing the defects of badly-shaped windows and
unarchitectural trim.
Those who criticize the architects and decorators of the past are
sometimes disposed to think that they worked in a certain way because
they were too ignorant to devise a better method; whereas they were
usually controlled by practical and artistic considerations which
their critics are prone to disregard, not only in judging the work of
the past, but in the attempt to make good its deficiencies. Thus the
cabinet-makers of the Renaissance did not make straight-backed wooden
chairs because they were incapable of imagining anything more
comfortable, but because the former were better adapted than cushioned
arm-chairs to the _déplacements_ so frequent at that period. In like
manner, the decorator who regarded curtains as a necessity rather than
as part of the decoration of the room knew (what the modern
upholsterer fails to understand) that, the beauty of a room depending
chiefly on its openings, to conceal these under draperies is to hide
the key of the whole decorative scheme.
The muslin window-curtain is a recent innovation. Its only purpose is
to protect the interior of the room from public view: a need not felt
before the use of large sheets of glass, since it is difficult to look
through a subdivided sash from the outside. Under such circumstances
muslin curtains are, of course, useful; but where they may be
dispensed with, owing to the situation of the room or the subdivision
of panes, they are no loss. Lingerie effects do not combine well with
architecture, and the more architecturally a window is treated, the
less it need be dressed up in ruffles. To put such curtains in a
window, and then loop them back so that they form a mere frame to the
pane, is to do away with their real purpose, and to substitute a
textile for an architectural effect. Where muslin curtains are
necessary, they should be a mere transparent screen hung against the
glass. In town houses especially all outward show of richness should
be avoided; the use of elaborate lace-figured curtains, besides
obstructing the view, seems an attempt to protrude the luxury of the
interior upon the street. It is needless to point out the futility of
the second layer of muslin which, in some houses, hangs inside the
sash-curtains.
The solid inside shutter, now so generally discarded, save in France,
formerly served the purposes for which curtains and shades are used,
and, combined with outside blinds, afforded all the protection that a
window really requires (see Plate XIX). These shutters should be made
with solid panels, not with slats, their purpose being to darken the
room and keep out the cold, while the light is regulated by the
outside blinds. The best of these is the old-fashioned hand-made
blind, with wide fixed slats, still to be seen on old New England
houses and always used in France and Italy: the frail machine-made
substitute now in general use has nothing to recommend it.
FOOTNOTE:
[19] As an example of the extent to which openings have come to be
ignored as factors in the decorative composition of a room, it is
curious to note that in Eastlake's well-known _Hints on Household
Taste_ no mention is made of doors, windows or fireplaces. Compare
this point of view with that of the earlier decorators, from Vignola
to Roubo and Ware.
VI
FIREPLACES
The fireplace was formerly always regarded as the chief feature of the
room, and so treated in every well-thought-out scheme of decoration.
The practical reasons which make it important that the windows in a
room should be carried up to the cornice have already been given, and
it has been shown that the lines of the other openings should be
extended to the same height. This applies to fireplaces as well as to
doors, and, indeed, as an architectural principle concerning all kinds
of openings, it has never been questioned until the present day. The
hood of the vast Gothic fireplace always descended from the springing
of the vaulted roof, and the monumental chimney-pieces of the
Renaissance followed the same lines (see Plate XX). The importance of
giving an architectural character to the chimney-piece is insisted on
by Blondel, whose remark, "Je voudrais n'appliquer à une cheminée que
des ornements convenables à l'architecture," is a valuable axiom for
the decorator. It is a mistake to think that this treatment
necessitates a large mantel-piece and a monumental style of panelling.
The smallest mantel, surmounted by a picture or a mirror set in simple
mouldings, may be as architectural as the great chimney-pieces at
Urbino or Cheverny: all depends on the spirit of the treatment and
on the proper relation of the different members used. Pajou's monument
to Madame du Barry's canary-bird is far more architectural than the
Albert Memorial.
[Illustration: _PLATE XX._
MANTELPIECE IN DUCAL PALACE, URBINO.
XV CENTURY.
(TRANSITION BETWEEN GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE.)]
When, in the middle ages, the hearth in the centre of the room was
replaced by the wall-chimney, the fireplace was invariably constructed
with a projecting hood of brick or stone, generally semicircular in
shape, designed to carry off the smoke which in earlier times had
escaped through a hole in the roof. The opening of the fireplace, at
first of moderate dimensions, was gradually enlarged to an enormous
size, from the erroneous idea that the larger the fire the greater
would be the warmth of the room. By degrees it was discovered that the
effect of the volume of heat projected into the room was counteracted
by the strong draught and by the mass of cold air admitted through the
huge chimney; and to obviate this difficulty iron doors were placed in
the opening and kept closed when the fire was not burning (see Plate
XXI). But this was only a partial remedy, and in time it was found
expedient to reduce the size of both chimney and fireplace.
In Italy the strong feeling for architectural lines and the invariable
exercise of common sense in construction soon caused the fireplace to
be sunk into the wall, thus ridding the room of the Gothic hood, while
the wall-space above the opening received a treatment of panelling,
sometimes enclosed in pilasters, and usually crowned by an entablature
and pediment. When the chimney was not sunk in the wall, the latter
was brought forward around the opening, thus forming a flat
chimney-breast to which the same style of decoration could be applied.
This projection was seldom permitted in Italy, where the thickness of
the walls made it easy to sink the fireplace, while an unerring
feeling for form rejected the advancing chimney-breast as a needless
break in the wall-surface of the room. In France, where Gothic
methods of construction persisted so long after the introduction of
classic ornament, the habit of building out the chimney-breast
continued until the seventeenth century, and even a hundred years
later French decorators described the plan of sinking the fireplace
into the thickness of the wall as the "Italian manner." The thinness
of modern walls has made the projecting chimney-breast a structural
necessity; but the composition of the room is improved by "furring
out" the wall on each side of the fireplace in such a way as to
conceal the projection and obviate a break in the wall-space. Where
the room is so small that every foot of space is valuable, a niche may
be formed in either angle of the chimney-breast, thus preserving the
floor-space which would be sacrificed by advancing the wall, and yet
avoiding the necessity of a break in the cornice. The Italian plan of
panelling the space between mantel and cornice continued in favor,
with various modifications, until the beginning of the present
century. In early Italian Renaissance over-mantels the central panel
was usually filled by a bas-relief; but in the sixteenth century this
was frequently replaced by a picture, not hung on the panelling, but
forming a part of it.[20] In France the sculptured over-mantel
followed the same general lines of development, though the treatment,
until the time of Louis XIII, showed traces of the Gothic tendency to
overload with ornament without regard to unity of design, so that the
main lines of the composition were often lost under a mass of
ill-combined detail.
In Italy the early Renaissance mantels were usually of marble. French
mantels of the same period were of stone; but this material was so
unsuited to the elaborate sculpture then in fashion that wood was
sometimes used instead. For a season richly carved wooden
chimney-pieces, covered with paint and gilding, were in favor; but
when the first marble mantels were brought from Italy, that sense of
fitness in the use of material for which the French have always been
distinguished, led them to recognize the superiority of marble, and
the wooden mantel-piece was discarded: nor has it since been used in
France.
With the seventeenth century, French mantel-pieces became more
architectural in design and less florid in ornament, and the ponderous
hood laden with pinnacles, escutcheons, fortified castles and statues
of saints and warriors, was replaced by a more severe decoration.
Thackeray's gibe at Louis XIV and his age has so long been accepted by
the English-speaking races as a serious estimate of the period, that
few now appreciate the artistic preponderance of France in the
seventeenth century. As a matter of fact, it is to the schools of art
founded by Louis XIV and to his magnificent patronage of the
architects and decorators trained in these schools that we owe the
preservation, in northern Europe, of that sense of form and spirit of
moderation which mark the great classic tradition. To disparage the
work of men like Levau, Mansart, de Cotte and Lebrun, shows an
insufficient understanding, not only of what they did, but of the
inheritance of confused and turgid ornament from which they freed
French art.[21] Whether our individual tastes incline us to the Gothic
or to the classic style, it is easy to see that a school which tried
to combine the structure of the one with the ornament of the other was
likely to fall into incoherent modes of expression; and this was
precisely what happened to French domestic architecture at the end of
the Renaissance period. It has been the fashion to describe the art of
the Louis XIV period as florid and bombastic; but a comparison of the
designs of Philibert de Lorme and Androuet Ducerceau with those of
such men as Levau and Robert de Cotte will show that what the latter
did was not to introduce a florid and bombastic manner, but to discard
it for what Viollet-le-Duc, who will certainly not be suspected of
undue partiality for this school of architects, calls "une grandeur
solide, sans faux ornements." No better illustration of this can be
obtained than by comparing the mantel-pieces of the respective
periods.[22] The Louis XIV mantel-pieces are much simpler and more
coherent in design. The caryatides supporting the entablature above
the opening of the earlier mantels, and the full-length statues
flanking the central panel of the over-mantel, are replaced by massive
and severe mouldings of the kind which the French call _mâle_ (see
mantels in Plates V and XXXVI). Above the entablature there is usually
a kind of attic or high concave member of marble, often fluted, and
forming a ledge or shelf just wide enough to carry the row of
porcelain vases with which it had become the fashion to adorn the
mantel. These vases, and the bas-relief or picture occupying the
central panel above, form the chief ornament of the chimney-piece,
though occasionally the crowning member of the over-mantel is treated
with a decoration of garlands, masks, trophies or other strictly
architectural ornament, while in Italy and England the broken
pediment is frequently employed. The use of a mirror over the
fireplace is said to have originated with Mansart; but according to
Blondel it was Robert de Cotte who brought about this innovation, thus
producing an immediate change in the general scheme of composition.
The French were far too logical not to see the absurdity of placing a
mirror too high to be looked into; and the concave Louis XIV member,
which had raised the mantel-shelf six feet from the floor, was
removed[23] and the shelf placed directly over the entablature.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXI._
MANTELPIECE IN THE VILLA GIACOMELLI,
AT MASER, NEAR TREVISO. XVI CENTURY.
(SHOWING IRON DOORS IN OPENING.)]
Somewhat later the introduction of clocks and candelabra as mantel
ornaments made it necessary to widen the shelf, and this further
modified the general design; while the suites of small rooms which had
come into favor under the Regent led to a reduction in the size of
mantel-pieces, and to the use of less massive and perhaps less
architectural ornament.
In the eighteenth century, mantel-pieces in Italy and France were
almost always composed of a marble or stone architrave surmounted by a
shelf of the same material, while the over-mantel consisted of a
mirror, framed in mouldings varying in design from the simplest style
to the most ornate. This over-mantel, which was either of the exact
width of the mantel-shelf or some few inches narrower, ended under the
cornice, and its upper part was usually decorated in the same way as
the over-doors in the room. If these contained paintings, a picture
carrying out the same scheme of decoration was often placed in the
upper part of the over-mantel; or the ornaments of carved wood or
stucco filling the panels over the doors were repeated in the upper
part of the mirror-frame.
In France, mirrors had by this time replaced pictures in the central
panel of the over-mantel; but in Italian decoration of the same period
oval pictures were often applied to the centre of the mirror, with
delicate lines of ornament connecting the picture and mirror
frames.[24]
The earliest fireplaces were lined with stone or brick, but in the
sixteenth century the more practical custom of using iron fire-backs
was introduced. At first this fire-back consisted of a small plaque of
iron, shaped like a headstone, and fixed at the back of the fireplace,
where the brick or stone was most likely to be calcined by the fire.
When chimney-building became more scientific, the size of the
fireplace was reduced, and the sides of the opening were brought much
nearer the flame, thus making it necessary to extend the fire-back
into a lining for the whole fireplace.
It was soon seen that besides resisting the heat better than any other
substance, the iron lining served to radiate it into the room. The
iron back consequently held its own through every subsequent change in
the treatment of the fireplace; and the recent return, in England and
America, to brick or stone is probably due to the fact that the modern
iron lining is seldom well designed. Iron backs were adopted because
they served their purpose better than any others; and as no new
substance offering greater advantages has since been discovered, there
is no reason for discarding them, especially as they are not only more
practical but more decorative than any other lining. The old
fire-backs (of which reproductions are readily obtained) were
decorated with charming bas-reliefs, and their dark bosses, in the
play of the firelight, form a more expressive background than the
dead and unresponsive surface of brick or stone.
It was not uncommon in England to treat the mantel as an order crowned
by its entablature. Where this was done, an intermediate space was
left between mantel and over-mantel, an arrangement which somewhat
weakened the architectural effect. A better plan was that of
surmounting the entablature with an attic, and making the over-mantel
spring directly from the latter. Fine examples of this are seen at
Holkham, built by Brettingham for the Earl of Leicester about the
middle of the eighteenth century.
The English fireplace was modified at the end of the seventeenth
century, when coal began to replace wood. Chippendale gives many
designs for beautiful basket-grates, such as were set in the large
fireplaces originally intended for wood; for it was not until later
that chimneys with smaller openings were specially constructed to
receive the fixed grate and the hob-grate.
It was in England that the architectural treatment of the over-mantel
was first abandoned. The use of a mirror framed in a panel over the
fireplace had never become general in England, and toward the end of
the eighteenth century the mantel-piece was frequently surmounted by a
blank wall-space, on which a picture or a small round mirror was hung
high above the shelf (see Plate XLVII). Examples are seen in
Moreland's pictures, and in prints of simple eighteenth-century
English interiors; but this treatment is seldom found in rooms of any
architectural pretensions.
The early American fireplace was merely a cheap provincial copy of
English models of the same period. The application of the word
"Colonial" to pre-Revolutionary architecture and decoration has
created a vague impression that there existed at that time an American
architectural style. As a matter of fact, "Colonial" architecture is
simply a modest copy of Georgian models; and "Colonial" mantel-pieces
were either imported from England by those who could afford it, or
were reproduced in wood from current English designs. Wooden mantels
were, indeed, not unknown in England, where the use of a wooden
architrave led to the practice of facing the fireplace with Dutch
tiles; but wood was used, both in England and America, only from
motives of cheapness, and the architrave was set back from the opening
only because it was unsafe to put an inflammable material so near the
fire.
After 1800 all the best American houses contained imported marble
mantel-pieces. These usually consisted of an entablature resting on
columns or caryatides, with a frieze in low relief representing some
classic episode, or simply ornamented with bucranes and garlands. In
the general decline of taste which marked the middle of the present
century, these dignified and well-designed mantel-pieces were replaced
by marble arches containing a fixed grate. The hideousness of this
arched opening soon produced a distaste for marble mantels in the
minds of a generation unacquainted with the early designs. This
distaste led to a reaction in favor of wood, resulting in the
displacement of the architrave and the facing of the space between
architrave and opening with tiles, iron or marble.
People are beginning to see that the ugliness of the marble
mantel-pieces of 1840-60 does not prove that wood is the more suitable
material to employ. There is indeed something of unfitness in the use
of an inflammable material surrounding a fireplace. Everything about
the hearth should not only be, but _look_, fire-proof. The chief
objection to wood is that its use necessitates the displacement of the
architrave, thus leaving a flat intermediate space to be faced with
some fire-proof material. This is an architectural fault. A door of
which the architrave should be set back eighteen inches or more to
admit of a facing of tiles or marble would be pronounced
unarchitectural; and it is usually admitted that all classes of
openings should be subject to the same general treatment.
Where the mantel-piece is of wood, the setting back of the architrave
is a necessity; but, curiously enough, the practice has become so
common in England and America that even where the mantel is made of
marble or stone it is set back in the same way; so that it is unusual
to see a modern fireplace in which the architrave defines the opening.
In France, also, the use of an inner facing (called a _retrécissement_)
has become common, probably because such a device makes it possible to
use less fuel, while not disturbing the proportions of the mantel as
related to the room.
The reaction from the bare stiff rooms of the first quarter of the
present century--the era of mahogany and horsehair--resulted, some
twenty years since, in a general craving for knick-knacks; and the
latter soon spread from the tables to the mantel, especially in
England and America, where the absence of the architectural
over-mantel left a bare expanse of wall above the chimney-piece.
The use of the mantel as a bric-à-brac shelf led in time to the
lengthening and widening of this shelf, and in consequence to the
enlargement of the whole chimney-piece.
Mantels which in the eighteenth century would have been thought in
scale with rooms of certain dimensions would now be considered too
small and insignificant. The use of large mantel-pieces, besides
throwing everything in the room out of scale, is a structural mistake,
since the excessive projection of the mantel has a tendency to make
the fire smoke; indeed, the proportions of the old mantels, far from
being arbitrary, were based as much on practical as on artistic
considerations. Moreover, the use of long, wide shelves has brought
about the accumulation of superfluous knick-knacks, whereas a smaller
mantel, if architecturally designed, would demand only its
conventional _garniture_ of clock and candlesticks.
The device of concealing an ugly mantel-piece by folds of drapery
brings an inflammable substance so close to the fire that there is a
suggestion of danger even where there is no actual risk. The lines of
a mantel, however bad, represent some kind of solid architrave,--a
more suitable setting for an architectural opening than flimsy
festoons of brocade or plush. Any one who can afford to replace an
ugly chimney-piece by one of good design will find that this change
does more than any other to improve the appearance of a room. Where a
badly designed mantel cannot be removed, the best plan is to leave it
unfurbelowed, simply placing above it a mirror or panel to connect the
lines of the opening with the cornice.
The effect of a fireplace depends much upon the good taste and
appropriateness of its accessories. Little attention is paid at
present to the design and workmanship of these and like necessary
appliances; yet if good of their kind they add more to the adornment
of a room than a multiplicity of useless knick-knacks.
Andirons should be of wrought-iron, bronze or ormolu. Substances which
require constant polishing, such as steel or brass, are unfitted to a
fireplace. It is no longer easy to buy the old bronze andirons of
French or Italian design, with pedestals surmounted by statuettes of
nymph or faun, to which time has given the iridescence that modern
bronze-workers vainly try to reproduce with varnish. These bronzes,
and the old ormolu andirons, are now almost _introuvables_; but the
French artisan still copies the old models with fair success (see
Plates V and XXXVI). Andirons should not only harmonize with the
design of the mantel but also be in scale with its dimensions. In the
fireplace of a large drawing-room, boudoir andirons would look
insignificant; while the monumental Renaissance fire-dogs would dwarf
a small mantel and make its ornamentation trivial.
If andirons are gilt, they should be of ormolu. The cheaper kinds of
gilding are neither durable nor good in tone, and plain iron is
preferable to anything but bronze or fire-gilding. The design of
shovel and tongs should accord with that of the andirons: in France
such details are never disregarded. The shovel and tongs should be
placed upright against the mantel-piece, or rest upon hooks inserted
in the architrave: the brass or gilt stands now in use are seldom well
designed. Fenders, being merely meant to protect the floor from
sparks, should be as light and easy to handle as possible: the folding
fender of wire-netting is for this reason preferable to any other,
since it may be shut and put away when not in use. The low guards of
solid brass in favor in England and America not only fail to protect
the floor, but form a permanent barrier between the fire and those who
wish to approach it; and the latter objection applies also to the
massive folding fender that is too heavy to be removed.
Coal-scuttles, like andirons, should be made of bronze, ormolu or
iron. The unnecessary use of substances which require constant
polishing is one of the mysteries of English and American
housekeeping: it is difficult to see why a housemaid should spend
hours in polishing brass or steel fenders, andirons, coal-scuttles and
door-knobs, when all these articles might be made of some substance
that does not need daily cleaning.
Where wood is burned, no better wood-box can be found than an old
carved chest, either one of the Italian _cassoni_, with their painted
panels and gilded volutes, or a plain box of oak or walnut with
well-designed panels and old iron hasps. The best substitute for such
a chest is a plain wicker basket, without ornamentation, enamel paint
or gilding. If an article of this kind is not really beautiful, it had
better be as obviously utilitarian as possible in design and
construction.
A separate chapter might be devoted to the fire-screen, with its
carved frame and its panel of tapestry, needlework, or painted
arabesques. Of all the furniture of the hearth, it is that upon which
most taste and variety of invention have been spent; and any of the
numerous French works on furniture and house-decoration will supply
designs which the modern decorator might successfully reproduce (see
Plate XXII). So large is the field from which he may select his
models, that it is perhaps more to the purpose to touch upon the
styles of fire-screens to be avoided: such as the colossal brass or
ormolu fan, the stained-glass screen, the embroidered or painted
banner suspended on a gilt rod, or the stuffed bird spread out in a
broiled attitude against a plush background.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXII._
FRENCH FIRE-SCREEN, LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
FROM THE CHÂTEAU OF ANET.]
In connection with the movable fire-screen, a word may be said of the
fire-boards which, until thirty or forty years ago, were used to close
the opening of the fireplace in summer. These fire-boards are now
associated with old-fashioned boarding-house parlors, where they are
still sometimes seen, covered with a paper like that on the walls, and
looking ugly enough to justify their disuse. The old fire-boards
were very different: in rooms of any importance they were beautifully
decorated, and in Italian interiors, where the dado was often painted,
the same decoration was continued on the fire-boards. Sometimes the
latter were papered; but the paper used was designed expressly for the
purpose, with a decorative composition of flowers, landscapes, or the
ever-amusing _chinoiseries_ on which the eighteenth-century designer
played such endless variations.
Whether the fireplace in summer should be closed by a board, or left
open, with the logs laid on the irons, is a question for individual
taste; but it is certain that if the painted fire-board were revived,
it might form a very pleasing feature in the decoration of modern
rooms. The only possible objection to its use is that it interferes
with ventilation by closing the chimney-opening; but as fire-boards
are used only at a season when all the windows are open, this drawback
is hardly worth considering.
In spite of the fancied advancement in refinement and luxury of
living, the development of the modern heating apparatus seems likely,
especially in America, to do away with the open fire. The temperature
maintained in most American houses by means of hot-air or hot-water
pipes is so high that even the slight additional warmth of a wood fire
would be unendurable. Still there are a few exceptions to this rule,
and in some houses the healthy glow of open fires is preferred to the
parching atmosphere of steam. Indeed, it might almost be said that the
good taste and _savoir-vivre_ of the inmates of a house may be guessed
from the means used for heating it. Old pictures, old furniture and
fine bindings cannot live in a furnace-baked atmosphere; and those who
possess such treasures and know their value have an additional motive
for keeping their houses cool and well ventilated.
No house can be properly aired in winter without the draughts produced
by open fires. Fortunately, doctors are beginning to call attention to
this neglected detail of sanitation; and as dry artificial heat is the
main source of throat and lung diseases, it is to be hoped that the
growing taste for open-air life and out-door sports will bring about a
desire for better ventilation, and a dislike for air-tight stoves,
gas-fires and steam-heat.
Aside from the question of health and personal comfort, nothing can be
more cheerless and depressing than a room without fire on a winter
day. The more torrid the room, the more abnormal is the contrast
between the cold hearth and the incandescent temperature. Without a
fire, the best-appointed drawing-room is as comfortless as the shut-up
"best parlor" of a New England farm-house. The empty fireplace shows
that the room is not really lived in and that its appearance of luxury
and comfort is but a costly sham prepared for the edification of
visitors.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] In Italy, where the walls were frescoed, the architectural
composition over the mantel was also frequently painted. Examples of
this are to be seen at the Villa Vertemati, near Chiavenna, and at the
Villa Giacomelli, at Maser, near Treviso. This practice accounts for
the fact that in many old architectural drawings of Italian interiors
a blank wall-space is seen over the mantel.
[21] It is to be hoped that the recently published English translation
of M. Émile Bourgeois's book on Louis XIV will do much to remove this
prejudice.
[22] It is curious that those who criticize the ornateness of the
Louis XIV style are often the warmest admirers of the French
Renaissance, the style of all others most remarkable for its excessive
use of ornament, exquisite in itself, but quite unrelated to structure
and independent of general design.
[23] It is said to have been put at this height in order that the
porcelain vases should be out of reach. See Daviler, "Cours
d'Architecture."
[24] Examples are to be seen in several rooms of the hunting-lodge of
the kings of Savoy, at Stupinigi, near Turin.
VII
CEILINGS AND FLOORS
To attempt even an outline of the history of ceilings in domestic
architecture would exceed the scope of this book; nor would it serve
any practical purpose to trace the early forms of vaulting and
timbering which preceded the general adoption of the modern plastered
ceiling. To understand the development of the modern ceiling, however,
one must trace the two very different influences by which it has been
shaped: that of the timber roof of the North and that of the brick or
stone vault of the Latin builders. This twofold tradition has
curiously affected the details of the modern ceiling. During the
Renaissance, flat plaster ceilings were not infrequently coffered with
stucco panels exactly reproducing the lines of timber framing; and in
the Villa Vertemati, near Chiavenna, there is a curious and
interesting ceiling of carved wood made in imitation of stucco (see
Plate XXIII); while one of the rooms in the Palais de Justice at
Rennes contains an elaborate vaulted ceiling constructed entirely of
wood, with mouldings nailed on (see Plate XXIV).
In northern countries, where the ceiling was simply the under side of
the wooden floor,[25] it was natural that its decoration should
follow the rectangular subdivisions formed by open timber-framing. In
the South, however, where the floors were generally of stone, resting
on stone vaults, the structural conditions were so different that
although the use of caissons based on the divisions of timber-framing
was popular both in the Roman and Renaissance periods, the architect
always felt himself free to treat the ceiling as a flat, undivided
surface prepared for the application of ornament.
The idea that there is anything unarchitectural in this method comes
from an imperfect understanding of the construction of Roman ceilings.
The vault was the typical Roman ceiling, and the vault presents a
smooth surface, without any structural projections to modify the
ornament applied to it. The panelling of a vaulted or flat ceiling was
as likely to be agreeable to the eye as a similar treatment of the
walls; but the Roman coffered ceiling and its Renaissance successors
were the result of a strong sense of decorative fitness rather than of
any desire to adhere to structural limitations.
Examples of the timbered ceiling are, indeed, to be found in Italy as
well as in France and England; and in Venice the flat wooden ceiling,
panelled upon structural lines, persisted throughout the Renaissance
period; but in Rome, where the classic influences were always much
stronger, and where the discovery of the stucco ceilings of ancient
baths and palaces produced such lasting effects upon the architecture
of the early Renaissance, the decorative treatment of the stone vault
was transferred to the flat or coved Renaissance ceiling without a
thought of its being inapplicable or "insincere." The fear of
insincerity, in the sense of concealing the anatomy of any part of a
building, troubled the Renaissance architect no more than it did his
Gothic predecessor, who had never hesitated to stretch a "ciel" of
cloth or tapestry over the naked timbers of the mediæval ceiling. The
duty of exposing structural forms--an obligation that weighs so
heavily upon the conscience of the modern architect--is of very recent
origin. Mediæval as well as Renaissance architects thought first of
adapting their buildings to the uses for which they were intended and
then of decorating them in such a way as to give pleasure to the eye;
and the maintenance of that relation which the eye exacts between main
structural lines and their ornamentation was the only form of
sincerity which they knew or cared about.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIII._
CARVED WOODEN CEILING, VILLA VERTEMATI.
XVI CENTURY.
(SHOWING INFLUENCE OF STUCCO DECORATION.)]
If a flat ceiling rested on a well-designed cornice, or if a vaulted
or coved ceiling sprang obviously from walls capable of supporting it,
the Italian architect did not allow himself to be hampered by any
pedantic conformity to structural details. The eye once satisfied that
the ceiling had adequate support, the fit proportioning of its
decoration was considered far more important than mere technical
fidelity to the outline of floor-beams and joists. If the Italian
decorator wished to adorn a ceiling with carved or painted panels he
used the lines of the timbering to frame his panels, because they
naturally accorded with his decorative scheme; while, were a large
central painting to be employed, or the ceiling to be covered with
reliefs in stucco, he felt no more hesitation in deviating from the
lines of the timbering than he would have felt in planning the pattern
of a mosaic or a marble floor without reference to the floor-beams
beneath it.
In France and England it was natural that timber-construction should
long continue to regulate the design of the ceiling. The Roman vault
lined with stone caissons, or with a delicate tracery of stucco-work,
was not an ever-present precedent in northern Europe. Tradition
pointed to the open-timbered roof; and as Italy furnished numerous and
brilliant examples of decorative treatment adapted to this form of
ceiling, it was to be expected that both in France and England the
national form should be preserved long after Italian influences had
established themselves in both countries. In fact, it is interesting
to note that in France, where the artistic feeling was much finer, and
the sense of fitness and power of adaptation were more fully
developed, than in England, the lines of the timbered ceiling
persisted throughout the Renaissance and Louis XIII periods; whereas
in England the Elizabethan architects, lost in the mazes of Italian
detail, without a guiding perception of its proper application,
abandoned the timbered ceiling, with its eminently architectural
subdivisions, for a flat plaster surface over which geometrical
flowers in stucco meandered in endless sinuosities, unbroken by a
single moulding, and repeating themselves with the maddening
persistency of wall-paper pattern. This style of ornamentation was
done away with by Inigo Jones and his successors, who restored the
architectural character of the ceiling, whether flat or vaulted; and
thereafter panelling persisted in England until the French Revolution
brought about the general downfall of taste.[26]
In France, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the liking for
_petits appartements_ led to greater lightness in all kinds of
decorative treatment; and the ceilings of the Louis XV period, while
pleasing in detail, are open to the criticism of being somewhat weak
in form. Still, they are always _compositions_, and their light
traceries, though perhaps too dainty and fragile in themselves, are so
disposed as to form a clearly marked design, instead of being allowed
to wander in a monotonous network over the whole surface of the
ceiling, like the ubiquitous Tudor rose. Isaac Ware, trained in the
principles of form which the teachings of Inigo Jones had so deeply
impressed upon English architects, ridicules the "petty wildnesses" of
the French style; but if the Louis XV ceiling lost for a time its
architectural character, this was soon to be restored by Gabriel and
his followers, while at the same period in England the forcible
mouldings of Inigo Jones's school were fading into the ineffectual
grace of Adam's laurel-wreaths and velaria.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIV._
CEILING IN THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE, RENNES.
LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
(WOODEN CEILING IMITATING MASONRY VAULTING AND STUCCO
ORNAMENTATION.)]
In the general effect of the room, the form of the ceiling is of more
importance than its decoration. In rooms of a certain size and height,
a flat surface overhead looks monotonous, and the ceiling should be
vaulted or coved.[27] Endless modifications of this form of treatment
are to be found in the architectural treatises of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, as well as in the buildings of that period.
A coved ceiling greatly increases the apparent height of a low-studded
room; but rooms of this kind should not be treated with an order,
since the projection of the cornice below the springing of the cove
will lower the walls so much as to defeat the purpose for which the
cove has been used. In such rooms the cove should rise directly from
the walls; and this treatment suggests the important rule that where
the cove is not supported by a cornice the ceiling decoration should
be of very light character. A heavy panelled ceiling should not rest
on the walls without the intervention of a strongly profiled cornice.
The French Louis XV decoration, with its fanciful embroidery of stucco
ornament, is well suited to coved ceilings springing directly from
the walls in a room of low stud; while a ceiling divided into panels
with heavy architectural mouldings, whether it be flat or vaulted,
looks best when the walls are treated with a complete order.
Durand, in his lectures on architecture, in speaking of cornices lays
down the following excellent rules: "Interior cornices must
necessarily differ more or less from those belonging to the orders as
used externally, though in rooms of reasonable height these
differences need be but slight; but if the stud be low, as sometimes
is inevitable, the cornice must be correspondingly narrowed, and given
an excessive projection, in order to increase the apparent height of
the room. Moreover, as in the interior of the house the light is much
less bright than outside, the cornice should be so profiled that the
juncture of the mouldings shall form not right angles, but acute
angles, with spaces between the mouldings serving to detach the latter
still more clearly from each other."
The choice of the substance out of which a ceiling is to be made
depends somewhat upon the dimensions of the room, the height of the
stud and the decoration of the walls. A heavily panelled wooden
ceiling resting upon walls either frescoed or hung with stuff is
likely to seem oppressive; but, as in all other kinds of decoration,
the effect produced depends far more upon the form and the choice of
ornamental detail than upon the material used. Wooden ceilings,
however, both from the nature of the construction and the kind of
ornament which may most suitably be applied to them, are of necessity
rather heavy in appearance, and should therefore be used only in large
and high-studded rooms the walls of which are panelled in wood.[28]
Stucco and fresco-painting are adapted to every variety of decoration,
from the light traceries of a boudoir ceiling to the dome of the
_salon à l'Italienne_; but the design must be chosen with strict
regard to the size and height of the room and to the proposed
treatment of its walls. The cornice forms the connecting link between
walls and ceiling and it is essential to the harmony of any scheme of
decoration that this important member should be carefully designed. It
is useless to lavish money on the adornment of walls and ceiling
connected by an ugly cornice.
The same objections extend to the clumsy plaster mouldings which in
many houses disfigure the ceiling. To paint or gild a ceiling of this
kind only attracts attention to its ugliness. When the expense of
removing the mouldings and filling up the holes in the plaster is
considered too great, it is better to cover the bulbous rosettes and
pendentives with kalsomine than to attempt their embellishment by
means of any polychrome decoration. The cost of removing plaster
ornaments is not great, however, and a small outlay will replace an
ugly cornice by one of architectural design; so that a little economy
in buying window-hangings or chair-coverings often makes up for the
additional expense of these changes. One need only look at the
ceilings in the average modern house to see what a thing of horror
plaster may become in the hands of an untrained "designer."
The same general principles of composition suggested for the treatment
of walls may be applied to ceiling-decoration. Thus it is essential
that where there is a division of parts, one part shall perceptibly
predominate; and this, in a ceiling, should be the central division.
The chief defect of the coffered Renaissance ceiling is the lack of
this predominating part. Great as may have been the decorative skill
expended on the treatment of beams and panels, the coffered ceiling
of equal-sized divisions seems to press down upon the spectator's
head; whereas the large central panel gives an idea of height that the
great ceiling-painters were quick to enhance by glimpses of cloud and
sky, or some aerial effect, as in Mantegna's incomparable ceiling of
the Sala degli Sposi in the ducal palace of Mantua.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXV._
CEILING OF THE SALA DEGLI SPOSI, DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA.
BY ANDREA MANTEGNA, 1474.]
Ceiling-decoration should never be a literal reproduction of
wall-decoration. The different angle and greater distance at which
ceilings are viewed demand a quite different treatment and it is to
the disregard of this fact that most badly designed ceilings owe their
origin. Even in the high days of art there was a tendency on the part
of some decorators to confound the two plane surfaces of wall and
ceiling, and one might cite many wall-designs which have been
transferred to the ceiling without being rearranged to fit their new
position. Instances of this kind have never been so general as in the
present day. The reaction from the badly designed mouldings and
fungoid growths that characterized the ceilings of forty years ago has
led to the use of attenuated laurel-wreaths combined with other puny
attributes taken from Sheraton cabinets and Adam mantel-pieces. These
so-called ornaments, always somewhat lacking in character, become
absolutely futile when viewed from below.
This pressed-flower ornamentation is a direct precedent to the modern
ceiling covered with wall-paper. One would think that the
inappropriateness of this treatment was obvious; but since it has
become popular enough to warrant the manufacture of specially designed
ceiling-papers, some protest should be made. The necessity for hiding
cracks in the plaster is the reason most often given for papering
ceilings; but the cost of mending cracks is small and a plaster
ceiling lasts much longer than is generally thought. It need never
be taken down unless it is actually falling; and as well-made repairs
strengthen and improve the entire surface, a much-mended ceiling is
stronger than one that is just beginning to crack. If the cost of
repairing must be avoided, a smooth white lining-paper should be
chosen in place of one of the showy and vulgar papers which serve only
to attract attention.
Of all forms of ceiling adornment painting is the most beautiful.
Italy, which contains the three perfect ceilings of the world--those
of Mantegna in the ducal palace of Mantua (see Plate XXV), of Perugino
in the Sala del Cambio at Perugia and of Araldi in the Convent of St.
Paul at Parma--is the best field for the study of this branch of art.
From the semi-classical vaults of the fifteenth century, with their
Roman arabesques and fruit-garlands framing human figures detached as
mere ornament against a background of solid color, to the massive
goddesses and broad Virgilian landscapes of the Carracci and to the
piled-up perspectives of Giordano's school of prestidigitators,
culminating in the great Tiepolo, Italian art affords examples of
every temperament applied to the solution of one of the most
interesting problems in decoration.
Such ceilings as those on which Raphael and Giovanni da Udine worked
together, combining painted arabesques and medallions with stucco
reliefs, are admirably suited to small low-studded rooms and might
well be imitated by painters incapable of higher things.
There is but one danger in adapting this decoration to modern
use--that is, the temptation to sacrifice scale and general
composition to the search after refinement of detail. It cannot be
denied that some of the decorations of the school of Giovanni da Udine
are open to this criticism. The ornamentation of the great loggia of
the Villa Madama is unquestionably out of scale with the dimensions
of the structure. Much exquisite detail is lost in looking up past the
great piers and the springing of the massive arches to the lace-work
that adorns the vaulting. In this case the composition is less at
fault than the scale: the decorations of the semi-domes at the Villa
Madama, if transferred to a small mezzanin room, would be found to
"compose" perfectly. Charming examples of the use of this style in
small apartments may be studied in the rooms of the Casino del Grotto,
near Mantua.
The tendency of many modern decorators to sacrifice composition to
detail, and to neglect the observance of proportion between ornament
and structure, makes the adaptation of Renaissance stucco designs a
somewhat hazardous undertaking; but the very care required to preserve
the scale and to accentuate the general lines of the design affords
good training in the true principles of composition.
Equally well suited to modern use are the designs in arabesque with
which, in France, Bérain and his followers painted the ceilings of
small rooms during the Louis XIV period (see Plate XXVI). With the
opening of the eighteenth century the Bérain arabesques, animated by
the touch of Watteau, Huet and J.-B. Leprince, blossomed into
trellis-like designs alive with birds and monkeys, Chinese mandarins
balancing umbrellas, and nymphs and shepherdesses under slender
classical ruins. Side by side with the monumental work of such artists
as Lebrun and Lesueur, Coypel, Vouet and Natoire, this light style of
composition was always in favor for the decoration of _petits
appartements_: the most famous painters of the day did not think it
beneath them to furnish designs for such purposes (see Plate XXVII).
In moderate-sized rooms which are to be decorated in a simple and
inexpensive manner, a plain plaster ceiling with well-designed
cornice is preferable to any device for producing showy effects at
small cost. It may be laid down as a general rule in house-decoration
that what must be done cheaply should be done simply. It is better to
pay for the best plastering than to use a cheaper quality and then to
cover the cracks with lincrusta or ceiling-paper. This is true of all
such expedients: let the fundamental work be good in design and
quality and the want of ornament will not be felt.
In America the return to a more substantial way of building and the
tendency to discard wood for brick or stone whenever possible will
doubtless lead in time to the use of brick, stone or marble floors.
These floors, associated in the minds of most Americans with shivering
expeditions through damp Italian palaces, are in reality perfectly
suited to the dry American climate, and even the most anæmic person
could hardly object to brick or marble covered by heavy rugs.
The inlaid marble floors of the Italian palaces, whether composed of
square or diamond-shaped blocks, or decorated with a large design in
different colors, are unsurpassed in beauty; while in high-studded
rooms where there is little pattern on the walls and a small amount of
furniture, elaborately designed mosaic floors with sweeping arabesques
and geometrical figures are of great decorative value.
Floors of these substances have the merit of being not only more
architectural in character, more solid and durable, but also easier to
keep clean. This should especially commend them to the
hygienically-minded American housekeeper, since floors that may be
washed are better suited to our climate than those which must be
covered with a nailed-down carpet.
Next in merit to brick or marble comes the parquet of oak or other
hard wood; but even this looks inadequate in rooms of great
architectural importance. In ball-rooms a hard-wood floor is generally
regarded as a necessity; but in vestibule, staircase, dining-room or
saloon, marble is superior to anything else. The design of the parquet
floor should be simple and unobtrusive. The French, who brought this
branch of floor-laying to perfection, would never have tolerated the
crudely contrasted woods that make the modern parquet so aggressive.
Like the walls of a room, the floor is a background: it should not
furnish pattern, but set off whatever is placed upon it. The
perspective effects dear to the modern floor-designer are the climax
of extravagance. A floor should not only be, but appear to be, a
perfectly level surface, without simulated bosses or concavities.
In choosing rugs and carpets the subject of design should be carefully
studied. The Oriental carpet-designers have always surpassed their
European rivals. The patterns of Eastern rugs are invariably well
composed, with skilfully conventionalized figures in flat unshaded
colors. Even the Oriental rug of the present day is well drawn; but
the colors used by Eastern manufacturers since the introduction of
aniline dyes are so discordant that these rugs are inferior to most
modern European carpets.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVI._
CEILING IN THE STYLE OF BÉRAIN.
LOUIS XIV PERIOD.]
In houses with deal floors, nailed-down carpets are usually considered
a necessity, and the designing of such carpets has improved so much in
the last ten or fifteen years that a sufficient choice of unobtrusive
geometrical patterns may now be found. The composition of European
carpets woven in one piece, like rugs, has never been satisfactory.
Even the splendid _tapis de Savonnerie_ made in France at the royal
manufactory during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not
so true to the best principles of design as the old Oriental rugs. In
Europe there was always a tendency to transfer wall or ceiling-decoration
to floor-coverings. Such incongruities as architectural mouldings,
highly modelled trophies and human masks appear in most of the
European carpets from the time of Louis XIV to the present day; and
except when copying Eastern models the European designers were subject
to strange lapses from taste. There is no reason why a painter should
not simulate loggia and sky on a flat plaster ceiling, since no one
will try to use this sham opening as a means of exit; but the
carpet-designer who puts picture-frames and human faces under foot,
though he does not actually deceive, produces on the eye a momentary
startling sense of obstruction. Any _trompe-l'oeil_ is permissible in
decorative art if it gives an impression of pleasure; but the inherent
sense of fitness is shocked by the act of walking upon upturned faces.
Recent carpet-designs, though usually free from such obvious
incongruities, have seldom more than a negative merit. The
unconventionalized flower still shows itself, and even when banished
from the centre of the carpet lingers in the border
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