Damasked cloths, where the design is shown by the direction of woven threads, are particularly effective and satisfactory as wall-coverings. The soft surface is luxurious to the imagination, and the play of light and shadow upon the warp and woof interests the eye, although there is no actual change of colour.

Too much stress can hardly be laid upon the variation of tone in wall-surfaces, since the four walls stand for the atmosphere of a room. Tone means quality of colour. It may be light or dark, or of any tint, or variations of tint, but the quality of it must be soft and charitable, instead of harsh and uncompromising.

Almost the best of modern inventions for inexpensive wall-coverings are found in what are called the ingrain papers. These have a variable surface, without reflections, and make not only a soft and impalpable colour effect, but, on account of their want of reflection, are good backgrounds for pictures.

In these papers the colour is produced by a mixture in the mass of paper pulp of atoms of varying tint, which are combined in the substance and make one general tint resulting from the mixture of several. In canvases and textiles, which are a more expensive method of producing almost the same mixed effect, the minute points of brilliance of threads in light and darkness of threads in shadow, combine to produce softness of tone, impossible to pigment because it has but one plain surface, unrelieved by breaking up into light and shadow.

Variation, produced by minute differences, which affect each other and which the eye blends into a general tone, produce quality. It is at the same time soft and brilliant, and is really a popular adaptation of the philosophy of impressionist painters, whose small dabs of pure colour placed in close juxtaposition and fused into one tone by the eye, give the purity and vibration of colour which distinguishes work of that school.

Some skilful painters can stipple one tone upon another so as to produce the same brilliant softness of effect, and when this can be done, oil-colour upon plaster is the best of all treatment for bedrooms since it fulfils all the sanitary and other conditions so necessary in sleeping-rooms. The same effect may be produced if the walls are of rough instead of smooth plaster, so that the small inequalities of surface give light and shadow as in textiles; upon such surfaces a pleasant tint in flat colour is always good. Painted burlaps and certain Japanese papers prepared with what may be called a textile or canvas surface give the same effect, and indeed quality of tint and tone is far more easily obtained in wall-coverings or applied materials than in paint, because in most wall-coverings there are variations of tint produced in the very substance of the material.

This matter of variation without contrast in wall-surface, is one of the most important in house decoration, and has led to the increased use of textiles in houses where artistic effects have been carefully studied and are considered of importance.

Of course wall-paper must continue to be the chief means of wall-covering, on account of its cheapness, and because it is the readiest means of sheathing a plaster surface; and a continuous demand for papers of good and nearly uniform colour, and the sort of inconspicuous design which fits them for modest interiors will have the effect of increasing the manufacture of desirable and artistic things.

In the meantime one should carefully avoid the violently coloured papers which are made only to sell; materials which catch the eye of the inexperienced and tempt them into the buying of things which are productive of lasting unrest. It is in the nature of positive masses and strongly contrasting colours to produce this effect.

If one is unfortunate enough to occupy a room of which the walls are covered with one of these glaring designs, and circumstances prevent a radical change, the simplest expedient is to cover the whole surface with a kalsomine or chalk-wash, of some agreeable tint. This will dry in an hour or two and present a nearly uniform surface, in which the printed design of the paper, if it appears at all, will be a mere suggestion. Papers where the design is carried in colour only a few shades darker than the background, are also safe, and—if the design is a good one—often very desirable for halls and dining-rooms. In skilfully printed papers of the sort the design often has the effect of a mere shadow-play of form.

Of course in the infinite varieties of use and the numberless variations of personal taste, there are, and should be, innumerable differences in application of both colour and materials to interiors. There are differences in the use of rooms which may make a sense of perfect seclusion desirable, as, for instance, in libraries, or rooms used exclusively for evening gatherings of the family. In such semi-private rooms the treatment should give a sense of close family life rather than space, while in drawing-rooms it should be exactly the reverse, and this effect is easily secured by competent use of colour.



CHAPTER IX

LOCATION OF THE HOUSE

Besides the difference in treatment demanded by different use of rooms—the character of the decoration of the whole house will be influenced by its situation. A house in the country or a house in town; a house by the sea-shore or a house situated in woods and fields require stronger or less strong colour, and even different tints, according to situation. The decoration itself may be much less conventional in one place than in another, and in country houses much and lasting charm is derived from design and colour in perfect harmony with nature's surroundings. Whatever decorative design is used in wall-coverings or in curtains or hangings will be far more effective if it bears some relation to the surroundings and position of the house.

If the house is by the sea the walls should repeat with many variations the tones of sea and sand and sky; the gray-greens of sand-grasses; the blues which change from blue to green with every cloud-shadow; the pearl tints which become rose in the morning or evening light, and the browns and olives of sea mosses and lichens. This treatment of colour will make the interior of the house a part of the great out-of-doors and create a harmony between the artificial shelter and nature.

There is philosophy in following, as far as the limitations of simple colour will allow, the changeableness and fluidity of natural effects along the shore, and allowing the mood of the brief summer life to fall into entire harmony with the dominant expression of the sea. Blues and greens and pinks and browns should all be kept on a level with out-of-door colour, that is, they should not be too deep and strong for harmony with the sea and sky, and if, when harmonious colour is once secured, most of the materials used in the furnishing of the house are chosen because their design is based upon, or suggested by, sea-forms, an impression is produced of having entered into complete and perfect harmony with the elements and aspects of nature. The artificialities of life fall more and more into the background, and one is refreshed with a sense of having established entirely harmonious and satisfactory relations with the surroundings of nature. I remember a doorway of a cottage by the sea, where the moulding which made a part of the frame was an orderly line of carved cockle-shells, used as a border, and this little touch of recognition of its sea-neighbours was not only decorative in itself, but gave even the chance visitor a sort of interpretation of the spirit of the interior life.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the summer house is placed in the neighbourhood of fields and trees and mountains; it will be found that strong and positive treatment of the interior is more in harmony with the outside landscape. Even heavier furniture looks fitting where the house is surrounded with massive tree-growths; and deeper and purer colours can be used in hangings and draperies. This is due to the more positive colouring of a landscape than of a sea-view. The masses of strong and slightly varying green in foliage, the red, brown, or vivid greens of fields and crops, the dark lines of tree-trunks and branches, as well as the unchanging forms of rock and hillside, call for a corresponding strength of interior effect.

It is a curious fact, also, that where a house is surrounded by myriads of small natural forms of leaves and flowers and grasses, plain spaces of colour in interiors, or spaces where form is greatly subordinated to colour, are more grateful to the eye than prominently decorated surface. A repetition of small natural forms like the shells and sea-mosses, which are for the most part hidden under lengths of liquid blue, is pleasing and suggestive by the sea; but in the country, where form is prominent and positive and prints itself constantly upon both mental and bodily vision, unbroken colour surfaces are found to be far more agreeable.

It will be seen that the principles of appropriate furnishing and adornment in house interiors depend upon circumstances and natural surroundings as well as upon the character and pursuits of the family who are to be lodged, and that the final charm of the home is attained by a perfect adaptation of principles to existing conditions both of nature and humanity.

In cottages of the character we are considering, furniture should be simpler and lighter than in houses intended for constant family living. Chairs and sofas should be without elaborate upholstery and hangings, and cushions can be appropriately made of some well-coloured cotton or linen material which wind, and sun, and dampness cannot spoil, and of which the freshness can always be restored by laundering. These are general rules, appropriate to all summer cottages, and to these it may be added, that a house which is to be closed for six or eight months in the year should really, to be consistent, be inexpensively furnished. These general rules are intended only to emphasise the fact that in houses which are to become in the truest sense homes—that is, places of habitation which represent the inhabitants, directions or rules for beautiful colour and arrangement of interiors, must always follow the guiding incidents of class and locality.



CHAPTER X

CEILINGS

As ceilings are in reality a part of the wall, they must always be considered in connection with room interiors, but their influence upon the beauty of the average house is so small, that their treatment is a comparatively easy problem.

In simple houses with plaster ceilings the tints to be used are easily decided. The rule of gradation of colour from floor to ceiling prescribes for the latter the lightest tone of the gradation, and as the ceiling stands for light, and should actually reflect light into the room, the philosophy of this arrangement of colours is obvious. It is not, however, an invariable rule that the ceiling should carry the same tint as the wall, even in a much lighter tone, although greater harmony and restfulness of effect is produced in this way. A ceiling of cream white will harmonise well with almost any tint upon the walls, and at the same time give an effect of air and light in the room. It is also a good ground for ornament in elaborately decorated ones.

If the walls are covered with a light wall-paper which carries a floral design, it is a safe rule to make the ceiling of the same colour but a lighter shade of the background of the paper, but it is not by any means good art to carry a flower design over the ceiling. One sometimes sees instances of this in the bedrooms of fairly good houses, and the effect is naturally that of bringing the ceiling apparently almost to one's head, or at all events, of producing a very unrestful effect.

A wood ceiling in natural colour is always a good feature in a room of defined or serious purpose, like a hall, dining-room, or library, because in such rooms the colour of the side walls is apt to be strong enough to balance it. Indeed a wooden ceiling has always the merit of being secure in its place, and even where the walls are light can be painted so as to be in harmony with them. Plaster as a ceiling for bedrooms is open to the objection of a possibility of its detaching itself from the lath, especially in old houses, and in these it is well to have them strengthened with flat mouldings of wood put on in regular squares, or even in some geometrical design, and painted with the ceiling. This gives security as well as a certain elaborateness of effect not without its value.

For the ordinary, or comparatively inexpensive home, we need not consider the ceiling an object for serious study, because it is so constantly out of the line of sight, and because its natural colourless condition is no bar to the general colour-effect.

In large rooms this condition is changed, for in a long perspective the ceiling comes into sight and consciousness. There would be a sense of barrenness and poverty in a long stretch of plain surface or unbroken colour over a vista of decorated wall, and accordingly the ceilings of large and important rooms are generally broken by plaster mouldings or architectural ornament.

In rooms of this kind, whether in public or private buildings, decorative painting has its proper and appropriate place. A painted ceiling, no matter how beautiful, is quite superfluous and indeed absolutely lost in a room where size prevents its being brought into the field of the eye by the lowering of long perspective lines, but when the size of the room gives unusual length of ceiling, no effect of decoration is so valuable and precious. Colour and gilding upon a ceiling, when well sustained by fine composition or treatment, is undoubtedly the highest and best achievement of the decorative painter's art.

Such a ceiling in a large and stately drawing-room, where the walls are hung with silk which gives broken indications of graceful design in play of light upon the texture, is one of the most successful of both modern as well as antique methods of decoration. It has come down in direct succession of practice to the school of French decoration of to-day, and has been adopted into American fashion in its full and complete practice without sufficient adaptation to American circumstances. If it were modified by these, it is capable of absorbing other and better qualities than those of mere fashion and brilliance, as we see in occasional instances in some beautiful American houses, where the ceilings have been painted, and the textiles woven with an almost imaginative appropriateness of subject. Such ceilings as this belong, of course, to the efforts of the mural or decorative painter, who, in conjunction with the decorator, or architect, has studied the subject as connected with its surroundings.



CHAPTER XI

FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS

Although in ordinary sequence the colouring of floors comes after that of walls, the fact that—in important houses—costly and elaborate floors of mosaic or of inlaid wood form part of the architect's plan, makes it necessary to consider the effect of inherent or natural colours of such floors, in connection with applied colour-schemes in rooms.

Mosaic floors, being as a rule confined to halls in private houses, need hardly be considered in this relation, and costly wood floors are almost necessarily confined to the yellows of the natural woods. These yellows range from pale buff to olive, and are not as a rule inharmonious with any other tint, although they often lack sufficient strength or intensity to hold their own with stronger tints of walls and furniture.

As it is one of the principles of colour in a house that the floor is the foundation of the room, this weakness of colour in hard-wood floors must be acknowledged as a disadvantage. The floors should certainly be able to support the room in colour as well as in construction. It must be the strongest tint in the room, and yet it must have the unobtrusiveness of strength. This makes floor treatment a more difficult problem, or one requiring more thought than is generally supposed, and explains why light rooms are more successful with hard-wood floors than medium or very dark ones.

There are many reasons, sanitary as well as economic, why hard-wood floors should not be covered in ordinary dwelling-houses; and when the pores of the wood are properly filled, and the surface kept well polished, it is not only good as a fact, but as an effect, as it reflects surrounding tints, and does much to make up for lack of sympathetic or related colour. Yet it will be found that in almost every case of successful colour-treatment in a room, something must be added in the way of floor-covering to give it the sense of completeness and satisfaction which is the result of a successful scheme of decoration.

The simplest way of doing this is to cover enough of the space with rugs to attract the eye, and restore the balance lost by want of strength of colour in the wood. Sometimes one or two small rugs will do this, and these may be of almost any tint which includes the general one of the room, even if the general tint is not prominent in the rug. If the use or luxury of the room requires more covered space, it is better to use one rug of a larger size than several small and perhaps conflicting ones. Of course in this the general tone of the rug must be chosen for its affinity to the tone of the room, but that affinity secured, any variations of colour occurring in the design are apt to add to the general effect.



A certain amount of contrast to prevailing colour is an advantage, and the general value of rugs in a scheme of decoration is that they furnish this contrast in small masses or divisions, so well worked in with other tints and tones that it makes its effect without opposition to the general plan.

Thus, in a room where the walls are of a pale shade of copper, the rugs should bring in a variety of reds which would be natural parts of the same scale, like lower notes in the octave; and yet should add patches of relative blues and harmonising greens; possibly also, deep gold, and black and white;—the latter in minute forms and lines which only accent or enrich the general effect.

It is really an interesting problem, why the strong colours generally used in Oriental rugs should harmonise so much better with weaker tints in walls and furniture than even the most judiciously selected carpets can possibly do. It is true there are bad Oriental rugs, very bad ones, just as there may be a villain in any congregation of the righteous, but certainly the long centuries of Eastern manufacture, reaching back to the infancy of the world, have given Eastern nations secrets not to be easily mastered by the people of later days.

But if we cannot tell with certainty why good rugs fit all places and circumstances, while any other thing of mortal manufacture must have its place carefully prepared for it, we may perhaps assume to know why the most beautiful of modern carpets are not as easily managed and as successful.

In the first place having explained that some contrast, some fillip of opposing colour, something which the artist calls snap, is absolutely required in every successful colour scheme, we shall see that if we are to get this by simple means of a carpet, we must choose one which carries more than one colour in its composition, and colour introduced as design must come under the laws of mechanical manufacture; that is, it must come in as repeating design, and here comes in the real difficulty. The same forms and the same colours must come in in the same way in every yard, or every half or three-quarter yard of the carpet. It follows, then, that it must be evenly sprinkled or it must regularly meander over every yard or half yard of the surface; and this regularity resolves itself into spots, and spots are unendurable in a scheme of colour. So broad a space as the floor of a room cannot be covered by sections of constantly repeated design without producing a spotty effect, although it can be somewhat modified by the efforts of the good designer. Nevertheless, in spite of his best knowledge and intention, the difficulty remains. There is no one patch of colour larger than another, or more irregular in form. There is nothing which has not its exact counterpart at an exact distance—north, south, east and west, or northeast, southeast, northwest and southwest—and this is why a carpet with good design and excellent colour becomes unbearable in a room of large size. In a small room where there are not so many repeats, the effect is not as bad, but in a large room the monotonous repetition is almost without remedy.

Of course there are certain laws of optics and ingenuities of composition which may palliate this effect, but the fact remains that the floor should be covered in a way which will leave the mind tranquil and the eye satisfied, and this is hard to accomplish with what is commonly known as a figured carpet.

If carpet is to be used, it seems, then, that the simplest way is to select a good monochrome in the prevailing tint of the room, but several shades darker. Not an absolutely plain surface, but one broken with some unobtrusive design or pattern in still darker darks and lighter lights than the general tone. In this case we shall have the room harmonious, it is true, but lacking the element which provokes admiration—the enlivening effect of contrast. This may be secured by making the centre or main part of the carpet comparatively small, and using a very wide and important border of contrasting colour—a border so wide as to make itself an important part of the carpet. In large rooms this plan does not entirely obviate the difficulty, as it leaves the central space still too large and impressive to remain unbroken; but the remedy may be found in the use of hearth-rugs or skin-rugs, so placed as to seem necessities of use.

As I have said before, contrast on a broad scale can be secured by choosing carpets of an entirely different tone from the wall, and this is sometimes expedient. For instance, as contrast to a copper-coloured wall, a softly toned green carpet is nearly always successful. This one colour, green, is always safe and satisfactory in a floor-covering, provided the walls are not too strong in tone, and provided that the green in the carpet is not too green. Certain brownish greens possess the quality of being in harmony with every other colour. They are the most peaceable shades in the colour-world—the only ones without positive antipathies. Green in all the paler tones can claim the title of peace-maker among colours, since all the other tints will fight with something else, but never with green of a corresponding or even of a much greater strength. Of course this valuable quality, combined with a natural restfulness of effect, makes it the safest of ordinary floor-coverings.

In bedrooms with polished floors and light walls good colour-effects can be secured without carpets, but if the floors are of pine and need covering, no better general effect can be secured than that of plain or mixed ingrain filling, using with it Oriental hearth and bedside rugs.

The entire second floor of a house can in that case be covered with carpet in the accommodating tint of green mentioned, leaving the various colour-connections to be made with differently tinted rugs. Good pine floors well fitted and finished can be stained to harmonise with almost any tint used in furniture or upon the wall.

I remember a sea-side chamber in a house where the mistress had great natural decorative ability, and so much cultivation as to prevent its running away with her, where the floor was stained a transparent olive, like depths of sea-water, and here and there a floating sea-weed, or a form of sea-life faintly outlined within the colour. In this room, which seemed wide open to the sea and air, even when the windows were closed, the walls were of a faint greenish blue, like what is called dead turquoise, and the relation between floor and walls was so perfect that it remained with me to this day as a crowning instance of satisfaction in colour.

It is perhaps more difficult to convey an idea of happy choice or selection of floor-colour than of walls, because it is relative to walls. It must relate to what has already been done. But in recapitulation it is safe to say, first, that in choosing colour for a room, soft and medium tints are better than positively dark or bright ones, and that walls should be unobtrusive in design as well as colour; secondly, that floors, if of the same tint as walls, should be much darker; and that they should be made apparent by means of this strength of colour, or by the addition of rugs or borders, although the relation between walls and floor must be carefully preserved and perfectly unmistakable, for it is the perfection of this relation of one colour to another which makes home decoration an art.

There is still a word to be said as to floor-coverings, which relates to healthful housekeeping instead of art, and that is, that in all cases where carpets or mattings are used, they should be in rug form, not fitted in to irregular floor-spaces; so as to be frequently and easily lifted and cleaned. The great, and indeed the only, objection to the use of mattings in country or summer houses, is the difficulty of frequent lifting, and removal of accumulated dust, which has sifted through to the floor—but if fine hemp-warp mattings are used, and sewn into squares which cover the floor sufficiently, it is an ideal summer floor-covering, as it can be rolled and removed even more easily than a carpet, and there is a dust-shedding quality in it which commends itself to the housekeeper.



CHAPTER XII

DRAPERIES

Draperies are not always considered as a part of furnishings, yet in truth—as far as decorative necessities are concerned—they should come immediately after wall and floor coverings. The householder who is in haste to complete the arrangement of the home naturally thinks first of chairs, sofas, and tables, because they come into immediate personal use, but if draperies are recognised as a necessary part of the beauty of the house it is worth while to study their appropriate character from the first. They have in truth much more to do with the effect of the room than chairs or sofas, since these are speedily sat upon and pass out of notice, while draperies or portieres are in the nature of pictures—hanging in everybody's sight. As far as the element of beauty is concerned, a room having good colour, attractive and interesting pictures, and beautiful draperies, is already furnished. Whatever else goes to the making of it may be also beautiful, but it must be convenient and useful, while in the selection of draperies, beauty, both relative and positive, is quite untrammelled.

As in all other furnishings, from the aesthetic point of view colour is the first thing to be considered. As a rule it should follow that of the walls, a continuous effect of colour with variation of form and surface being a valuable and beautiful thing to secure. To give the full value of variation—where the walls are plain one should choose a figured stuff for curtains; where the wall is papered, or covered with figures, a plain material should be used.

There is one exception to this rule and this is in the case of walls hung with damask. Here it is best to use the same material for curtains, as the effect is obtained by the difference between the damask hung in folds, with the design indistinguishable, or stretched flat upon a wall-surface, where it is plainly to be seen and felt. Even where damask is used upon the walls, if exactly the same shade of colour can be found in satin or velvet, the plain material in drapery will enhance the value of design on the walls.

This choice or selection of colour applies to curtains and portieres as simple adjuncts of furnishing, and not to such pieces of drapery as are in themselves works of art. When a textile becomes a work of art it is in a measure a law unto itself, and has as much right to select its own colour as if it were a picture instead of a portiere, in fact if it is sufficiently important, the room must follow instead of leading. This may happen in the case of some priceless old embroidery, some relic of that peaceful past, when hours and days flowed contentedly into a scheme of art and beauty, without a thought of competitive manufacture. It might be difficult to subdue the spirit of a modern drawing-room into harmony with such a work of art, but if it were done, it would be a very shrine of restfulness to the spirit.

Fortunately many ancient marvels of needlework were done upon white satin, and this makes them easily adaptable to any light scheme of colour, where they may appear indeed as guests of honour—invited from the past to be courted by the present. It is not often that such pieces are offered as parts of a scheme of modern decoration, and the fingers of to-day are too busy or too idle for their creation, yet it sometimes happens that a valuable piece of drapery of exceptional colour belongs by inheritance or purchase to the fortunate householder, and in this case it should be used as a picture would be, for an independent bit of decoration.

To return to simple things, the rule of contrast as applied to papered walls, covered with design, ordains that the curtains should undoubtedly be plain and of the most pronounced tint used in the paper. If the walls of a room are simply tinted or painted, figured stuffs of the same general tone, or printed silks, velvets, or cottons in which the predominant tint corresponds with that of the wall should be used. These relieve the simplicity of the walls, and give the desirable variation.

Transparent silk curtains are of great value in colouring the light which enters the room, and these should be used in direct reference to the light. If the room is dark or cold in its exposure, to hang the windows with sun-coloured silk or muslin will cheat the eye and imagination into the idea that it is a sunny room. If, on the contrary, there is actual sunshine in the room, a pervading tint of rose-colour or delicate green may be given by inner curtains of either of those colours. These are effects, however, for which rules can hardly be given, since the possible variations must be carefully studied, unless, indeed, they are the colour-strokes of some one who has that genius for combination or contrast of tints which we call "colour sense."

After colour in draperies come texture and quality, and these need hardly be discussed in the case of silken fabrics, because silk fibre has inherent qualities of tenacity of tint and flexibility of substance. Pure silk, that is silk unstiffened with gums, no matter how thickly and heavily it is woven, is soft and yielding and will fall into folds without sharp angles. This quality of softness is in its very substance. Even a single unwoven thread of silk will drop gracefully into loops, where a cotton or linen or even a woollen thread will show stiffness.

Woollen fibre seems to acquire softness as it is gathered into yarns and woven, and will hang in folds with almost the same grace as silk; but unfortunately they are favourite pasture grounds as well as burying-places for moths, and although these co-inhabitants of our houses come to a speedy resurrection, they devour their very graves, and leave our woollen draperies irremediably damaged. It is a pity that woollen fabrics should in this way be made undesirable for household use, for they possess in a great degree the two most valuable qualities of silk: colour-tenacity and flexibility. If one adopts woollen curtains and portieres, constant "vigilance is the price of safety," and considering that vigilance is required everywhere and at all times in the household, it is best to reduce the quantity whenever it is possible.

This throws us back upon cottons and linens for inexpensive hangings, and in all the thousand forms in which these two fibres are manufactured it would seem easy to choose those which are beautiful, durable, and appropriate. But here we are met at the very threshold of choice with the two undesirable qualities of fugitive colour, and stiffness of texture. Something in the nature of cotton makes it inhospitable to dyes. If it receives them it is with a protest, and an evident intention of casting them out at the earliest opportunity—it makes, it is true, one or two exceptions. It welcomes indigo dye and will never quite relinquish its companionship; once received, it will carry its colours through all its serviceable life, and when it is finally ready to fall into dust, it is still loyally coloured by its influence. If it is cheated, as we ourselves are apt to be, into accepting spurious indigo, made up of chemical preparations, it speedily discovers the cheat and refuses its colouring. Perhaps this sympathy is due to a vegetable kinship and likeness of experience, for where cotton will grow, indigo will also flourish.

In printed cottons or chintzes, there is a reasonable amount of fidelity to colour, and if chintz curtains are well chosen, and lined to protect them from the sun, their attractiveness bears a fair proportion to their durability.

An interlining of some strong and tried colour will give a very soft and subtle daylight effect in a room, but this is, of course, lost in the evening. The expedient of an under colour in curtain linings will sometimes give delightful results in plain or unprinted goods, and sometimes a lining with a strong and bold design will produce a charming shadow effect upon a tinted surface—of course each new experiment must be tried before one can be certain of its effect, and, in fact, there is rather an exciting uncertainty as to results. Yet there are infinite possibilities to the householder who has what is called the artistic instinct and the leisure and willingness to experiment, and experiments need not be limited to prints or to cottons, for wonderful combinations of colour are possible in silks where light is called in as an influence in the composition. One must, however, expect to forego these effects except in daylight, but as artificial light has its own subtleties of effect, the one can be balanced against the other. In my own country-house I have used the two strongest colours—red and blue—in this doubled way, with delightful effect. The blue, which is the face colour, presenting long, pure folds of blue, with warmed reddish shadows between, while at sunset, when the rays of light are level, the variations are like a sunset sky.

It will be seen by these suggestions that careful selection, and some knowledge of the qualities of different dyes, will go far toward modifying the want of permanence of colour and lack of reflection in cottons; the other quality of stiffness, or want of flexibility, is occasionally overcome by methods of weaving. Indeed, if the manufacturer or weaver had a clear idea of excellence in this respect, undoubtedly the natural inflexibility of fibre could be greatly overcome.

There is a place waiting in the world of art and decoration for what in my own mind I call "the missing textile." This is by no means a fabric of cost, for among its other virtues it must possess that of cheapness. To meet an almost universal want it should combine inexpensiveness, durability, softness, and absolute fidelity of colour, and these four qualities are not to be found in any existing textile. Three of them—cheapness, strength, and colour—were possessed by the old-fashioned true indigo-blue denim—the delightful blue which faded into something as near the colour of the flower of grass, as dead vegetable material can approach that which is full of living juices—the possession of these three qualities doubled and trebled the amount of its manufacture until it lost one of them by masquerading in aniline indigo.

Many of our ordinary cotton manufactures are strong and inexpensive, and a few of them have the flexibility which denim lacks. It was possessed in an almost perfect degree by the Canton, or fleeced, flannels, manufactured so largely a few years ago, and called art-drapery. It lacked colour, however, for the various dyes given to it during its brief period of favouritism were not colour; they were merely tint. That strong, good word, colour, could not be applied to the mixed and evanescent dyes with which this soft and estimable material clothed itself withal. It was, so to speak, invertebrate—it had no backbone. Besides this lack of colour stanchness, it had another fault which helped to overbalance its many virtues. It was fatally attractive to fire. Its soft, fluffy surface seemed to reach out toward flame, and the contact once made, there ensued one flash of instantaneous blaze, and the whole surface, no matter if it were a table-cover, a hanging, or the wall covering a room, was totally destroyed. Yet as one must have had or heard of such a disastrous experience to fear and avoid it, this proclivity alone would not have ended its popularity. It was probably the evanescent character of what was called its "art-colour" which ended the career of an estimable material, and if the manufacturers had known how to eliminate its faults and adapt its virtues, it might still have been a flourishing textile.

In truth, we do not often stop to analyse the reasons of prolonged popular favour; yet nothing is more certain than that there is reason, and good reason, for fidelity in public taste. Popular liking, if continued, is always founded upon certain incontrovertible virtues. If a manufacture cannot hold its own for ever in public favour, it is because it fails in some important particular to be what it should be. Products of the loom must have lasting virtues if they would secure lasting esteem. Blue denim had its hold upon public use principally for the reason that it possessed a colour superior to all the chances and accidents of its varied life. It is true it was a colour which commended itself to general liking, yet if as stanch and steadfast a green or red could be imparted to an equally cheap and durable fabric, it would find as lasting a place in public favour.

It is quite possible that in the near future domestic weavings may come to the aid of the critical house-furnisher, so that the qualities of strength and pliability may be united with colour which is both water-fast and sun-fast, and that we shall be able to order not only the kind of material, but the exact shade of colour necessary to the perfection of our houses.

To be washable as well as durable is also a great point in favour of cotton textiles. The English chintzes with which the high post bedsteads of our foremothers were hung had a yearly baptism of family soap-suds, and came from it with their designs of gaily-crested, almost life-size pheasants, sitting upon inadequate branches, very little subdued by the process. Those were not days of colour-study; and harmony, applied to things of sight instead of conduct, was not looked for; but when we copy the beautiful old furniture of that day, we may as well demand with it the quality of washableness and cleanableness which went with all its belongings.

It is always a wonder to the masculine, that the feminine mind has such an ineradicable love of draperies. The man despises them, but to the woman they are the perfecting touch of the home, hiding or disguising all the sharp angles of windows and doors, and making of them opportunities of beauty. It is the same instinct with which she tries to cover the hard angles and facts of daily life and make of them virtuous incitements. As long as the woman rules, house-curtains will be a joy and delight to her. Something in their soft protection, grace of line, and possible beauty of colour appeals to her as no other household belonging has the power to do. The long folds of the straight hanging curtain are far more beautiful than the looped and festooned creations which were held in vogue by some previous generations, and indeed are still dear to the hearts of professional upholsterers. The simpler the treatment, the better the effect, since natural rather than distorted line is more restful and enjoyable. Quality, colour, and simple graceful lines are quite sufficient elements of value in these important adjuncts of house furnishing and decoration.



CHAPTER XIII

FURNITURE

Although the forms and varieties of furniture are infinite, they can easily be classified first into the two great divisions of good and bad, and after that into kinds and styles; but no matter how good the different specimens may be, or to what style they may belong, each one is subject again to the ruling of fitness. Detached things may be both thoroughly pleasing and thoroughly good in themselves, but unless they are appropriate to the place where, and purpose for which they are used, they will not be beautiful.



It is well to reiterate that the use to which a room is put must always govern its furnishing and in a measure its colour, and that whatever we put in it must be placed there because it is appropriate to that use, and because it is needed for completeness. It is misapplication which makes much of what is called "artistic furnishing" ridiculous. An old-fashioned brass preserving-kettle and a linen or wool spinning-wheel are in place and appropriate pieces of furnishing for a studio; the one for colour, and the other for form, and because also they may serve as models; but they are sadly out of place in a modern city house, or even in the parlour of a country cottage.

We all recognise the fact that a room carefully furnished in one style makes a oneness of impression; whereas if things are brought together heterogeneously, even if each separate thing is selected for its own special virtue and beauty, the feeling of enjoyment will be far less complete.

There is a certain kinship in pieces of furniture made or originated at the same period and fashioned by a prevailing sentiment of beauty, which makes them harmonious when brought together; and if our minds are in sympathy with that period and style of expression, it becomes a great pleasure to use it as a means of expression for ourselves. Whatever appeals to us as the best or most beautiful thought in manufacture we have a right to adopt, but we should study to understand the circumstances of its production, in order to do justice to it and ourselves, since style is evolved from surrounding influences. It would seem also that its periods and origin should not be too far removed from the interests and ways of our own time, and incongruous with it, because it would be impossible to carry an utterly foreign period or method of thought into all the intimacies of domestic life. The fad of furnishing different rooms in different periods of art, and in the fashion of nations and peoples whose lives are totally dissimilar, may easily be carried too far, and the spirit of home, and even of beauty, be lost. Of course this applies to small, and not to grand houses, which are always exceptions to the purely domestic idea.

There are many reasons why one should be in sympathy with what is called the "colonial craze"; not only because colonial days are a part of our history, but because colonial furniture and decorations were derived directly from the best period of English art. Its original designers were masters who made standards in architectural and pictorial as well as household art. The Adams brothers, to whom many of the best forms of the period are referable, were great architects as well as great designers. Even so distinguished a painter as Hogarth delighted in composing symmetrical forms for furniture, and preached persistently the beauty of curved instead of rectangular lines. It was, in fact, a period in which superior minds expressed themselves in material forms, when Flaxman, Wedgwood, Chippendale and many others of their day, true artists in form, wrote their thoughts in wood, stone, and pottery, and bequeathed them to future ages. Certainly the work of such minds in such company must outlast mere mechanical efforts. It is interesting to note, that many of the Chippendale chairs keep in their under construction the square and simple forms of a much earlier period, while the upper part, the back, and seats are carved into curves and floriated designs. One cannot help wondering whether this square solidity was simply a reminiscence or persistence of earlier forms, or a conscious return to the most direct principles of weight-bearing constructions.

All furniture made under primitive conditions naturally depends upon perpendicular and horizontal forms, because uninfluenced construction considers first of all the principle of strength; but under the varied influences of the Georgian period one hardly expects fidelity to first principles. New England carpenters and cabinet-makers who had wrought under the masters of carpentry and cabinet-work in England brought with them not only skill to fashion, but the very patterns and drawings from which Chippendale and Sheraton furniture had been made in England. Our English forefathers were very fond of the St. Domingo mahogany, brought back in the ship-bottoms of English traders, but the English workmen who made furniture in the new world, while they adopted this foreign wood, were not slow to appreciate the wild cherry, and the different maples and oak and nut woods which they found in America. They were woods easy to work, and apt to take on polish and shining surface. The cabinet-makers liked also the abnormal specimens of maple where the fibre grew in close waves, called curled maple, as well as the great roots flecked and spotted with minute knots, known as dotted maple.

All these things went into colonial furniture, so beautifully cut, so carefully dowelled and put together, so well made, that many of the things have become heirlooms in the families for which they were constructed. I remember admiring a fine old cherry book-case in Mr. Lowell's library at Cambridge, and being told by the poet that it had belonged to his grandfather. When I spoke of the comparative rarity of such possessions he answered: "Oh, anyone can have his grandfather's furniture if he will wait a hundred years!"

Nevertheless, with modern methods of manufacture it is by no means certain that a hundred years will secure possession of the furniture we buy to-day to our grandchildren. In those early days it was not uncommon, it was indeed the custom, for some one of the men who were called "journeymen cabinet-makers"—that is, men who had served their time and learned their trade, but had not yet settled down to a fixed place and shop of their own—to take up an abode in the house with the family which had built it, for a year, or even two or three years, carrying on the work in some out-house or dependence, choosing and seasoning the wood, and measuring the furniture for the spaces where it was to stand.

There was a fine fitness in such furnishing; it was as if the different pieces actually grew where they were placed, and it is small wonder that so built and fashioned they should possess almost a human interest. Direct and special thought and effort were incorporated with the furniture from the very first, and it easily explains the excellences and finenesses of its fashioning.

There is an interesting house in Flushing, Long Island, where such furniture still stands in the rooms where it was put together in 1664, and where it is so fitted to spaces it has filled during the passing centuries, that it would be impossible to carry it through the narrow doors and passages, which, unlike our present halls, were made for the passing to and fro of human beings, and not of furniture.



It is this kind of interest which attaches us to colonial furniture and adds to the value of its beauty and careful adaptation to human convenience. In the roomy "high boys" which we find in old houses there are places for everything. They were made for the orderly packing and keeping of valuable things, in closetless rooms, and they were made without projecting corners and cornices, because life was lived in smaller spaces than at present. They were the best product of a thoughtful time—where if manufacture lacked some of the machinery and appliances of to-day, it was at least not rushed by breathless competition, but could progress slowly in careful leisure. Of course we cannot all have colonial furniture, and indeed it would not be according to the spirit of our time, for the arts of our own day are to be encouraged and fostered—but we can buy the best of the things which are made in our time, the best in style, in intention, in fittingness, and above all in carefulness and honesty of construction.

For some reason the quality of durability seems to be wanting in modern furniture. Our things are fashioned of the same woods, but something in the curing or preparation of them has weakened the fibre and made it brittle. Probably the gradual evaporation of the tree-juices which old-time cabinet-makers were willing to wait for, left the shrunken sinews of the wood in better condition than is possible with our hurried and violent kiln-dried methods. What is gained in time in the one place is lost in another. Nature refuses to enter into our race for speedy completion, and if we hurry her natural processes we shorten our lease of ownership.

As a very apt illustration of this fact, I remember coming into possession some twenty years ago of an oak chair which had stood, perhaps, for more than two hundred years in a Long Island farm-house. When I found it, it had been long relegated to kitchen use and was covered with a crust of variously coloured paints which had accumulated during the two centuries of its existence. The fashion of it was rare, and had probably been evolved by some early American cabinet-maker, for while it had all and even more than the grace of the high-backed Chippendale patterns, it was better fitted to the rounded surfaces of the human body. It was a spindle chair with a slightly hollowed seat, the rim of the back rounded to a loop which was continued into arm-rests, which spread into thickened blades for hand-rests. Being very much in love with the grace and ease of it, I took it to a manufacturer to be reproduced in mahogany, who, with a far-sighted sagacity, flooded the market with that particular pattern.

We are used—and with good reason—to consider mahogany as a durable wood, but of the half-dozen of mahogany copies of the old oak chair, each one has suffered some break of legs or arms or spindles, while the original remains as firm in its withered old age as it was the day I rescued it from the "out-kitchen" of the Long Island farm-house.

For the next fifty years after the close of our colonial history, the colonial cabinet-makers in New England and the northern Middle States continued to flourish, evolving an occasional good variation from what may be called colonial forms. Rush-and flag-bottomed chairs and chairs with seats of twisted rawhide—the frames often gilded and painted— sometimes took the place of wrought mahogany, except in the best rooms of great houses. Many of these are of excellent shape and construction, and specially interesting as an adaptation of natural products of the country. Undoubtedly, with our ingenious modern appliances, we could make as good furniture as was made in Chippendale and Sheraton's day, with far less expenditure of effort; but the demon of competition in trade will not allow it. We must use all material, perfect or imperfect; we cannot afford to select. We must cover knots and imperfections with composition and pass them on. We must use the cheapest glue, and save an infinitesimal sum in the length of our dowels; we must varnish instead of polishing, or "the other man" will get the better of us. If we did not do these things our furniture would be better, but "the other man" would sell more, because he could sell more cheaply.

Since the revived interest in the making of furniture, we find an occasional and marked recurrence to primitive form—on each occasion the apparently new style taking on the name of the man who produced it.

In our own day we have seen the "Eastlake furniture" appear and disappear, succeeded by the "Morris furniture," which is undoubtedly better adapted to our varied wants. At present, mortising and dowelling have come to the front as proper processes, especially for table-building; and this time the style appears under the name of "Mission furniture." Much of this is extremely well suited for cottage furnishing, but the occasional exaggeration of the style takes one back not only to early, but the earliest, English art, when chairs were immovable seats or blocks, and tables absolute fixtures on account of the weighty legs upon which they were built. In short, the careful and cultivated decorator finds it as imperative to guard against exaggerated simplicity as unsupported prettiness.

Fortunately there has been a great deal of attention paid to good cabinet work within the last few years, and although the method of its making lacks the human motive and the human interest of former days—it is still a good expression of the art of to-day, and at its best, worthy to be carried down with the generations as one of the steps in the evolutions of time. What we have to do, is to learn to discriminate between good and bad, to appreciate the best in design and workmanship, even although we cannot afford to buy it. In this case we should learn to do with less. As a rule our houses are crowded. If we are able to buy a few good things, we are apt instead to buy many only moderately good, for lavish possession seems to be a sort of passion, or birthright, of Americans. It follows that we fill our houses with heterogeneous collections of furniture, new and old, good and bad, appropriate or inappropriate, as the case may be, with a result of living in seeming luxury, but a luxury without proper selection or true value. To have less would in many cases be to have more—more tranquillity of life, more ease of mind, more knowledge and more real enjoyment.

There is another principle which can be brought into play in this case, and that is the one of buying—not a costly kind of thing, but the best of its kind. If it is a choice in chairs, for instance, let it be the best cane-seated, or rush-bottomed chair that is made, instead of the second or third best upholstered or leather-covered one. If it is a question of tables, buy the simplest form made of flawless wood and with best finish, instead of a bargain in elaborately turned or scantily carved material. If it is in bedsteads, a plain brass, or good enamelled iron or a simple form in black walnut, instead of a cheap inlaid wood—and so on through the whole category. A good chintz or cotton is better for draperies, than flimsy silk or brocade; and when all is done the very spirit of truth will sit enthroned in the household, and we shall find that all things have been brought into harmony by her laws.



Although the furnishing of a house should be one of the most painstaking and studied of pursuits, there is certainly nothing which is at the same time so fascinating and so flattering in its promise of future enjoyment. It is like the making of a picture as far as possibility of beauty is concerned, but a picture within and against which one's life, and the life of the family, is to be lived. It is a bit of creative art in itself, and one which concerns us so closely as to be a very part of us. We enjoy every separate thing we may find or select or procure—not only for the beauty and goodness which is in it, but for its contribution to the general whole. And in knowledge of applied and manufactured art, the furnishing of a house is truly "the beginning of wisdom." One learns to appreciate what is excellent in the new, from study and appreciation of quality in the old.

It is the fascination of this study which has made a multiplication of shops and collections of "antiques" in every quarter of the city. Many a woman begins from the shop-keeper's point of view of the value of mere age, and learns by experience that age, considered by itself, is a disqualification, and that it gives value only when the art which created the antique has been lost or greatly deteriorated. If one can find as good, or a better thing in art and quality, made to-day—by all means buy the thing of to-day, and let yourself and your children be credited with the hundred or two years of wear which is in it. We can easily see that it is wiser to buy modern iridescent glass, fitted to our use, and yet carrying all the fascinating lustre of ancient glass, than to sigh for the possession of some unbuyable thing belonging to dead and gone Caesars. And the case is as true of other modern art and modern inventions, if the art is good, and the inventions suitable to our wants and needs.

Yet in spite of the goodness of much that is new, there is a subtle pleasure in turning over, and even in appropriating, the things that are old. There are certain fenced-in-blocks on the east side of New York City where for many years the choice parts of old houses have been deposited. As fashion and wealth have changed their locality—treading slowly up from the Battery to Central Park—many beautiful bits of construction have been left behind in the abandoned houses—either disregarded on account of change in popular taste, or unappreciated by reason of want of knowledge. For the few whose knowledge was competent, there were things to be found in the second-hand yards, precious beyond comparison with anything of contemporaneous manufacture.

There were panelled front doors with beautifully fluted columns and carved capitals, surmounted by half-ovals of curiously designed sashes; there were beautifully wrought iron railings, and elaborate newel-posts of mahogany, brass door-knobs and hinges, and English hob-grates, and crystal chandeliers of cost and brilliance, and panelled wainscots of oak and mahogany; chimney-pieces in marble and wood of an excellence which we are almost vainly trying to compass, and all of them to be bought at the price of lumber.

These are the things to make one who remembers them critical about the collections to be found in the antique shops of to-day, and yet such shops are enticing and fashionable, and the quest of antiques will go on until we become convinced of the art-value and the equal merit of the new—which period many things seem to indicate is not far off. In those days there was but one antique shop in all New York which was devoted to the sale of old things, to furniture, pictures, statuary, and what Ruskin calls "portable art" of all kinds. It was a place where one might go, crying "new lamps for old ones" with a certainty of profit in the transaction. In later years it has been known as Sypher's, and although one of many, instead of a single one, is still a place of fascinating possibilities.

To sum up the gospel of furnishing, we need only fall back upon the principles of absolute fitness, actual goodness, and real beauty. If the furniture of a well-coloured room possesses these three qualities, the room as a whole can hardly fail to be lastingly satisfactory. It must be remembered, however, that it is a trinity of virtues. No piece of furniture should be chosen because it is intrinsically good or genuinely beautiful, if it has not also its use—and this rule applies to all rooms, with the one exception of the drawing-room.

The necessity of use, governing the style of furnishing in a room, is very well understood. Thus, while both drawing-room and dining-room must express hospitality, it is of a different kind or degree. That of the drawing-room is ceremonious and punctilious, and represents the family in its relation to society, while the dining-room is far more intimate, and belongs to the family in its relation to friends. In fact, as the dining-room is the heart of the house, its furnishing would naturally be quite different in feeling and character from the drawing-room, although it might be fully as lavish in cost. It would be stronger, less conservative, and altogether more personal in its expression. Family portraits and family silver give the personal note which we like to recognise in our friends' dining-rooms, because the intimacy of the room makes even family history in place.

In moderate houses, even the drawing-room is too much a family room to allow it to be entirely emancipated from the law of use, but in houses which are not circumscribed in space, and where one or more rooms are set apart to social rather than domestic life, it is natural and proper to gather in them things which stand, primarily, for art and beauty—which satisfy the needs of the mind as distinct from those of bodily comfort. Things which belong in the category of "unrelated beauty" may be appropriately gathered in such a room, because the use of it is to please the eye and excite the interest of our social world; therefore a table which is a marvel of art, but not of convenience, or a casket which is beautiful to look at, but of no practical use, are in accordance with the idea of the room. They help compose a picture, not only for the eyes of friends and acquaintances, but for the education of the family.

It follows that an artistic and luxurious drawing-room may be a true family expression; it may speak of travel and interest in the artistic development of mankind; but even where the experiences of the family have been wide and liberal, if the house and circumstances are narrow, a luxurious interior is by no means a happiness.

It may seem quite superfluous to give advice against luxury in furnishing except where it is warranted by exceptional means, because each family naturally adjusts its furnishing to its own needs and circumstances; but the influence of mere beauty is very powerful, and many a costly toy drifts into homes where it does not rightly belong and where, instead of being an educational or elevating influence, it is a source of mental deterioration, from its conflict with unsympathetic circumstances. A long and useful chapter might be written upon "art out of place," but nothing which could be said upon the subject would apply to that incorporation of art and beauty with furniture and interior surrounding, which is the effort and object of every true artist and art-lover.

The fact to be emphasised is, that objects d'art—beautiful in themselves and costly because of the superior knowledge, artistic feeling, and patient labour which have produced them—demand care and reserve for their preservation, which is not available in a household where the first motive of everything must be ministry to comfort. Art in the shape of pictures is fortunately exempt from this rule, and may dignify and beautify every room in the house without being imperilled by contact in the exigencies of use.

Following out this idea, a house where circumstances demand that there shall be no drawing-room, and where the family sitting-room must also answer for the reception of guests, a perfect beauty and dignity may be achieved by harmony of colour, beauty of form, and appropriateness to purpose, and this may be carried to almost any degree of perfection by the introduction and accompaniment of pictures. In this case art is a part of the room, as well as an adornment of it. It is kneaded into every article of furniture. It is the daily bread of art to which we are all entitled, and which can make a small country home, or a smaller city apartment, as enjoyable and elevating as if it were filled with the luxuries of art.



But one may say, "It requires knowledge to do this; much knowledge in the selection of the comparatively few things which are to make up such an interior," and that is true—and the knowledge is to be proved every time we come to the test of buying. Yet it is a curious fact that the really good thing, the thing which is good in art as well as construction, will inevitably be chosen by an intelligent buyer, instead of the thing which is bad in art and in construction. Fortunately, one can see good examples in the shops of to-day, where twenty years ago at best only honest and respectable furniture was on exhibition. One must rely somewhat on the character of the places from which one buys, and not expect good styles and reliable manufacture where commercial success is the dominant note of the business. In truth the careful buyer is not so apt to fail in quality as in harmony, because grade as well as style in different articles and manufactures is to be considered. What is perfectly good in one grade of manufacture will not be in harmony with a higher or lower grade in another. Just as we choose our grade of floor-covering from ingrain to Aubusson, we must choose the grade of other furnishings. Even an inexperienced buyer would be apt to feel this, and would know that if she found a simple ingrain-filling appropriate to a bed-chamber, maple or enamelled furniture would belong to it, instead of more costly inlaid or carved pieces.

It may be well to reiterate the fact that the predominant use of each room in a house gives the clew to the best rules of treatment in decoration and furniture. For instance, the hall, being an intermediate space between in and out of doors, should be coloured and furnished in direct reference to this, and to its common use as a thoroughfare by all members of the family. It is not a place of prolonged occupation, and may therefore properly be without the luxury and ease of lounges and lounging-chairs. But as long as it serves both as entrance-room to the house and for carrying the stairways to the upper floors, it should be treated in such a way as to lead up to and prepare the mind for whatever of inner luxury there may be in the house. At the same time it should preserve something of the simplicity and freedom from all attempt at effect which belong to out-of-door life. The difference between its decoration and furniture and that of other divisions of the house should be principally in surface, and not in colour. Difference of surface is secured by the use of materials which are permanent and durable in effect, such as wood, plaster, and leather. These may all be coloured without injury to their impression of permanency, although it is generally preferable to take advantage of indigenous or "inherent colour" like the natural yellows and russets of wood and leather. When these are used for both walls and ceiling, it will be found that, to give the necessary variation, and prevent an impression of monotony and dulness, some tint must be added in the ornament of the surface, which could be gained by a forcible deepening or variation of the general tone, like a deep golden brown, which is the lowest tone of the scale of yellow, or a red which would be only a variant of the prevailing tint. The introduction of an opposing or contrasting tint, like pale blue in small masses as compared with the general tint, even if it is in so small a space as that of a water-colour on the wall, adds the necessary contrast, and enlivens and invigorates a harmony.

No colour carries with it a more appropriate influence at the entrance of a house than red in its different values. Certain tints of it which are known both as Pompeiian and Damascus red have sufficient yellow in their composition to fall in with the yellows of oiled wood, and give the charm of a variant but related colour. In its stronger and deeper tones it is in direct contrast to the green of abundant foliage, and therefore a good colour for the entrance-hall or vestibule of a country-house; while the paler tones, which run into pinks, hold the same opposing relation to the gray and blue of the sea-shore. If walls and ceiling are of wood, a rug of which the prevailing colour is red will often give the exact note which is needed to preserve the room from monotony and insipidity. A stair-carpet is a valuable point to make in a hall, and it is well to reserve all opposing colour for this one place, which, as it rises, meets all sight on a level, and makes its contrast directly and unmistakably. A stair-carpet has other reasons for use in a country-house than aesthetic ones, as the stairs are conductors of sound to all parts of the house, and should therefore be muffled, and because a carpeted stair furnishes much safer footing for the two family extremes of childhood and age.

The furniture of the hall should not be fantastic, as some cabinet-makers seem to imagine. Impossible twists in the supports of tables and chairs are perhaps more objectionable in this first vestibule or entrance to the house than elsewhere, because the mind is not quite free from out-of-door influences, or ready to take pleasure in the vagaries of the human fancy. Simple chairs, settles, and tables, more solid perhaps than is desirable in other parts of the house, are what the best natural, as well as the best cultivated, taste demands. If there is one place more than another where a picture performs its full work of suggestion and decoration, it is in a hall which is otherwise bare of ornament. Pictures in dining-rooms make very little impression as pictures, because the mind is engrossed with the first and natural purpose of the room, and consequently not in a waiting and easily impressible mood; but in a hall, if one stops for even a moment, the thoughts are at leisure, and waiting to be interested. Aside from the colour effect, which may be so managed as to be very valuable, pictures hung in a hall are full of suggestion of wider mental and physical life, and, like books, are indications of the tastes and experiences of the family. Of course there are country-houses where the halls are built with fireplaces, and windows commanding favourite views, and are really intended for family sitting-rooms and gathering-places; in this case it is generally preceded by a vestibule which carries the character of an entrance-hall, leaving the large room to be furnished more luxuriously, as is proper to a sitting-room.

The dining-room shares with the hall a purpose common to the life of the family, and, while it admits of much more variety and elaboration, that which is true of the hall is equally true of the dining-room, that it should be treated with materials which are durable and have surface quality, although its decoration should be preferably with china rather than with pictures. It is important that the colour of a dining-room should be pervading colour—that is, that walls and ceiling should be kept together by the use of one colour only, in different degrees of strength.

For many reasons, but principally because it is the best material to use in a dining-room, the rich yellows of oiled wood make the most desirable colour and surface. The rug, the curtains, the portieres and screen, can then be of any good tint which the exposure of the room and the decoration of the china seem to indicate. If it has a cold, northern exposure, reds or gold browns are indicated; but if it is a sunny and warm-looking room, green or strong India blue will be found more satisfactory in simple houses. The materials used in curtains, portieres, and screens should be of cotton or linen, or some plain woollen goods which are as easily washable. A one-coloured, heavy-threaded cotton canvas, a linen in solid colour, or even indigo-blue domestic, all make extremely effective and appropriate furnishings. The variety of blue domestic which is called denim is the best of all fabrics for this kind of furnishing, if the colour is not too dark.

The prettiest country house dining-room I know is ceiled and wainscoted with wood, the walls above the wainscoting carrying an ingrain paper of the same tone; the line of division between the wainscot and wall being broken by a row of old blue India china plates, arranged in groups of different sizes and running entirely around the room. There is one small mirror set in a broad carved frame of yellow wood hung in the centre of a rather large wall-space, its angles marked by small Dutch plaques; but the whole decoration of the room outside of these pieces consists of draperies of blue denim in which there is a design, in narrow white outline, of leaping fish, and the widening water-circles and showery drops made by their play. The white lines in the design answer to the white spaces in the decorated china, and the two used together in profusion have an unexpectedly decorative effect. The table and chairs are, of course, of the same coloured wood used in the ceiling and wainscot, and the rug is an India cotton of dark and light blues and white. The sideboard is an arrangement of fixed shelves, but covered with a beautiful collection of blue china, which serves to furnish the table as well. If the dining-room had a northern exposure, and it was desirable to use red instead of blue for colouring, as good an effect could be secured by depending for ornament upon the red Kaga porcelain so common at present in Japanese and Chinese shops, and using with it the Eastern cotton known as bez. This is dyed with madder, and exactly repeats the red of the porcelain, while it is extremely durable both in colour and texture. Borders of yellow stitchery, or straggling fringes of silk and beads, add very much to the effect of the drapery and to the character of the room.



A library in ordinary family life has two parts to play. It is not only to hold books, but to make the family at home in a literary atmosphere. Such a room is apt to be a fascinating one by reason of this very variety of use and purpose, and because it is a centre for all the family treasures. Books, pictures, papers, photographs, bits of decorative needlework, all centre here, and all are on most orderly behaviour, like children at a company dinner. The colour of such a room may, and should, be much warmer and stronger than that of a parlour pure and simple, the very constancy and hardness of its use indicating tints of strength and resistance; but, keeping that in mind, the rules for general use of colour and harmony of tints will apply as well to a room used for a double purpose as for a single. Of course the furniture should be more solid and darker, as would be necessary for constant use, but the deepening of tones in general colour provides for that, and for the use of rugs of a different character. In a room of this kind perhaps the best possible effect is produced by the use of some textile as a wall-covering, as in that case the same material with a contrasted colour in the lining can be used for curtains, and to some extent in the furniture. This use of one material has not only an effect of richness which is due to the library of the house, but it softens and brings together all the heterogeneous things which different members of a large family are apt to require in a sitting-room.

To those who prefer to work out and adapt their own surroundings, it is well to illustrate the advice given for colour in different exposures by selecting particular rooms, with their various relations to light, use, and circumstances, and seeing how colour-principles can be applied to them.

We may choose a reception-hall, in either a city or country house, since the treatment would in both cases be guided by the same rules. If in a city house, it may be on the shady or the sunny side of the street, and this at once would differentiate, perhaps the colour, and certainly the depth of colour to be used. If it is the hall of a country house the difference between north or south light will not be as great, since a room opening on the north in a house standing alone, in unobstructed space, would have an effect of coldness, but not necessarily of shadow or darkness. The first condition, then, of coldness of light would have to be considered in both cases, but less positively in the country, than in the city house. If the room is actually dark, a warm or orange tone of yellow will both modify and lighten it.

Gold-coloured or yellow canvas with oak mouldings lighten and warm the walls; and rugs with a preponderance of white and yellow transform a dark hall into a light and cheerful one. It must be remembered that few dark colours can assert themselves in the absolute shadow of a north light. Green and blue become black. Gold, orange, and red alone have sufficient power to hold their own, and make us conscious of them in darkness.

In a hall which has plenty of light, but no sun, red is an effective and natural colour, copper-coloured leather paper, cushions and rugs or carpets of varying shades of red, and transparent curtains of the same tint give an effect of warmth and vitality. Red is truly a delightful colour to deal with in shadowed interiors, its sensitiveness to light, changing from colour-tinted darkness to palpitating ruby, and even to flame colour, on the slightest invitation of day-or lamp-light, makes it like a living presence. It is especially valuable at the entrance of the home, where it seems to meet one with almost a human welcome.

If we can succeed in making what would be a cold and unattractive entrance hospitable and cordial by liberal use of warm and strong colour, by reversing the effort we can just as easily modify the effect of glaring, or overpowering, sunlight.

Suppose the entrance-hall of the house to be upon the sunny side of the street, where in addition to the natural effect of full rays of the sun there are also the reflections from innumerable other house-fronts and house-windows.

In this case we must simulate shadow and mystery, and this can be done by the colour-tones of blues and greens. I use these in the plural because the shadows of both are innumerable, and because all, except perhaps turquoise and apple-green, are natural shadow-tints. Green and blue can be used together or separately, according to the skill and what is called the "colour-sense" with which they are applied.

To use them together requires not only observation of colour-occurrences in nature but sensitiveness to the more subtle out-of-door effects, resulting from intermingling of shadows and reflection of lights. Well done, it is one of the most beautiful and satisfactory of achievements, but it may easily be bad by reason of sharp contrasts, or unmodified juxtaposition.

But a room where blue in all its shades from dark to light alone predominates, or a room where only green is used, bright and gray tones in contrast and variation is within the reach of most colour-loving mortals, and as both of these tints are companionable with oak and gold, and to be found in nearly all decoration materials, it is easy to arrange a refined and beautiful effect in either colour.

It will require little reflection to show that a hall skilfully treated with green or blue tints would modify the colour of sunlight, without giving a sense of discord. It would be like passing only from sunlight to grateful shadow, and this because in all art the actual representation shadow-colour would be blue or green. The shadow of a tree falling upon snow on a sunny winter day is blue. The shadow of a sunheated rock in summer is green, and the success of either of these schemes of decoration would be because of adherence to an actual principle of colour, or a knowledge of the peculiar qualities of certain colours and their proper use. It would be an intelligent application of the medicinal or healing qualities of colour to the constitution of the house, as skilful physicians use medicines to overcome constitutional defects or difficulties in man.

This may be called corrective treatment of a room, and may, of course, include all the decorative devices of ornament, design and furniture, and although it is not, strictly speaking, decoration, it should certainly and always precede decoration.

It is sad to see an elaborate scheme of ornament based upon bad colour-treatment, and unfortunately this not infrequently happens.

It is difficult to give a formula for the decoration of any room in relation to its colour-treatment, except by a careful description of certain successful examples, each one of which illustrates principles that may be of use to the amateur or student of the art.

One which occurs to me in this immediate connection is a dining-room in an apartment house, where this room alone is absolutely without what may be called exterior light. Its two windows open upon a well, the brick wall of which is scarcely ten feet away. Fortunately, it makes a part of the home of a much travelled and exceedingly cultivated pair of beings, the business of one being to create beauty in the way of pictures and the other of statues, so perhaps it is less than a wonder that this square, unattractive well-room should have blossomed under their hands into a dining-room perfect in colour, style, and fittings. I shall give only the result, the process being capable of infinite small variations.

At present it is a room sixteen feet square, one side of which is occupied by two nearly square windows. The wood-work, including a five-foot wainscot of small square panels, is painted a glittering varnished white which is warm in tone, but not creamy. The upper halves of the square windows are of semi-opaque yellow glass, veined and variable, but clear enough everywhere to admit a stained yellow light. Below these, thin yellow silk curtains cross each other, so that the whole window-space radiates yellow light. If we reflect that the colour of sunlight is yellow, we shall be able to see both the philosophy and the result of this treatment.

The wall above the wainscot is covered with a plain unbleached muslin, stencilled at the top in a repeating design of faint yellow tile-like squares which fade gradually into white at a foot below the ceiling. At intervals along the wall are water-colours of flat Holland meadows, or blue canals, balanced on either side by a blue delft plate, and in a corner near the window is a veritable blue porcelain stove, which once faintly warmed some far-off German interior. The floor is polished oak, as are the table and chairs. I purposely leave out all the accessories and devices of brass and silver, the quaint brass-framed mirrors, the ivy-encircled windows, the one or two great ferns, the choice blue table-furniture:—because these are personal and should neither be imitated or reduced to rules.

The lesson is in the use of yellow and white, accented with touches of blue, which converts a dark and perfectly cheerless room into a glitter of light and warmth.

The third example I shall give is of a dining-room which may be called palatial in size and effect, occupying the whole square wing of a well-known New York house. There are many things in this house in the way of furniture, pictures, historic bits of art in different lines, which would distinguish it among fine houses, but one particular room is, perhaps, as perfectly successful in richness of detail, picturesqueness of effect, and at the same time perfect appropriateness to time, place, and circumstances as is possible for any achievement of its kind. The dining-room, and its art, taken in detail, belongs to the Venetian school, but if its colour-effect were concentrated upon canvas, it would be known as a Rembrandt. There is the same rich shadow, covering a thousand gradations,—the same concentration of light, and the same liberal diffusion of warm and rich tones of colour. It is a grand room in space, as New York interiors go, being perhaps forty to fifty feet in breadth and length, with a height exactly proportioned to the space. It has had the advantage of separate creation—being "thought out" years after the early period of the house, and is, consequently, a concrete result of study, travel, and opportunities, such as few families are privileged to experience. Aside from the perfect proportions of the room, it is not difficult to analyse the art which makes it so distinguished an example of decoration of space, and decide wherein lies its especial charm. It is undoubtedly that of colour, although this is based upon a detail so perfect, that one hesitates to give it predominant credit. The whole, or nearly the whole west end of the room is thrown into one vast, slightly projecting window of clear leaded glass, the lines of which stand against the light like a weaving of spiders' webs. There is a border of various tints at its edge, which softens it into the brown shadow of the room, and the centre of each large sash is marked by a shield-like ornament glowing with colour like a jewel. The long ceiling and high wainscoting melt away from this leaded window in a perspective of wonderfully carved planes of antique oak, catching the light on lines and points of projection and quenching it in hollows of relief.



These perpendicular wall panels were scaled from a room in a Venetian palace, carved when the art and the fortunes of that sea-city were at their best, and the alternately repeating squares of the ceiling were fashioned to carry out and supplement the ancient carvings. If this were a small room, there would be a sense of unrest in so lavish a use of broken surface, but in one large enough to have it felt as a whole, and not in detail, it simply gives a quality of preciousness. The soft browns of the wood spread a mystery of surface, from the edge of the polished floor until it meets a frieze of painted canvas filled with large reclining figures clad in draperies of red, and blue, and yellow—separating the walls from the ceiling by an illumination of colour. This colour-decoration belongs to the past, and it is a question if any modern painting could have adapted itself so perfectly to the spirit of the room, although in itself it might be far more beautiful. It is a bit of antique imagination, its cherub-borne plates of fruit, and golden flagons, and brown-green of foliage and turquoise of sky, and crimson and gold of garments, all softened to meet the shadows of the room. The door-spaces in the wainscot are hung with draperies of crimson velvet, the surface frayed and flattened by time into variations of red, impossible to newer weavings, while the great floor-space is spread with an enormous rug of the same colour—the gift of a Sultan. A carved table stands in the centre, surrounded with high-backed carved chairs, the seats covered with the same antique velvet which shows in the portieres. A fall of thin crimson silk tints the sides of the window-frame, and on the two ends of the broad step or platform which leads to the window stand two tall pedestals and globe-shaped jars of red and blue-green pottery. The deep, ruby-like red of the one and the mixed indefinite tint of the other seem to have curdled into the exact shade for each particular spot, their fitness is so perfect.

The very sufficient knowledge which has gone to the making of this superb room has kept the draperies unbroken by design or device, giving colour only and leaving to the carved walls the privilege of ornament.

It will be seen that there are but two noticeable colour-tones in the room—brown with infinite variations, and red in rugs and draperies.

There is no real affinity between these two tints, but they are here so well balanced in mass, that the two form a complete harmony, like the brown waves of a landscape at evening tipped with the fire of a sunset sky.

Much is to be learned from a room like this, in the lesson of unity and concentration of effect. The strongest, and in fact the only, mass of vital colour is in the carpet, which is allowed to play upwards, as it were, into draperies, and furniture, and frieze, none of which show the same depth and intensity. To the concentration of light in the one great window we must give the credit of the Rembrandt-like effect of the whole interior. If the walls were less rich, this single flood of light would be a defect, because it would be difficult to treat a plain surface with colour alone, which should be equally good in strong light and deep shadow.