Chapter 3

If, for instance, blue is the keynote, by adding black you have drabs, slates or grays for the floor, while if the keynote be red you have écrus and browns for the floor light or gray, according to the color scale of the keynote.

93. It must be understood that in designating a color we do not mean that it shall be solid or pure, but merely that it prevails. (See ¶ 29.)

A side-wall may be treated in several colors, but as long as orange prevails, it follows the conditions of the combination, pages 42 and 43. The factors included in the line designated A are all of one color family. The factors indicated by B are also family colors. It will be seen that the A or B colors taken by themselves form HARMONIES OF ANALOGY; it is only by combining the A's with the B's that we have HARMONIES OF CONTRAST.

If a room is to be done in harmonies of analogy, use the A colors alone or the B colors alone, but never A and B together.

#THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOR#

94. Whatever may be the charm conveyed by design there is a reason for it. We can analyze it.

It has an inherent quality of beauty or historic interest, and there is a definite and distinct reason for our liking it.

But the effect of color is exciting or disturbing, tranquilizing or pleasing, inexplicable and inexpressible, affecting the senses like an appeal to the passions or the appetite. One might as well explain the love of sport, literature, art or vice. The sense of color is a nerve sense, and this sense varies in the individual. We know that colors which are strongest in direct sun rays, like red and orange, arouse the normal senses, while the blues and violets quiet.

Nature provides vast fields of green because favorable in its effects upon humanity. Experiments prove that men of extreme sensibility exposed to the influences of red light finally show excitement which gives muscular development fifty per cent. in excess of the power possessed by the same subject when exposed for the same period under the influences of blue light.

#TO DETERMINE THE COLOR SENSE#

Color, like music, while subjected to positive rules of harmony, appeals to natures according to the responsiveness of their nerve sense, and the practical decorator in dealing with a customer should discover at the outstart the character of that nerve sense. Some natures respond to the normal colors, barbaric colors. Some respond to the softer tints and are disturbed by the sharper tones. A dulled sense requires sharp contrasts; a quickened sense is satisfied with the soft gray tones. Apart from any question of propriety or environment the individual taste for color must be determined before the individual taste can be pleased.

A demonstration of four examples in color may serve the purpose of determining one's color sense.

First. Combinations of normal primary and secondary colors, (_a_) arranged in contrasts, (_b_) in analogies.

Second. Combinations of tones of the above colors, (_a_) arranged in contrasts, (_b_) in analogies.

Third. Combinations of tints of the above colors, (_a_) arranged in contrasts, (_b_) in analogies.

Fourth. Combinations of the gray (tertiary) tones of the above colors, (_a_) arranged in contrasts, (_b_) in analogies.

95. Do not allow your personal color-sympathies to dominate your work. All colors have their usefulness, for there are occasions when it is proper they should be used, apart from any question of harmony; one must consider always the uses of colors, the lights, and the purpose of the room under treatment.

96. Nature gives to the dark forest depths great brilliancy of floriculture, and dark-skinned people indulge unconsciously the same bright scale of color. But as we come out of the forest and advance in civilization we use barbaric colorings more discriminately.

97. We employ gold, orange or yellow for the north room not for inherent beauty, but for the sense of warmth which they convey to an atmosphere chilled by the absence of sunlight. We employ receding colors in a small room that the room may look larger. We employ cold colors in a sunny room, especially in the summer home, for reasons psychological rather than æsthetic.

#PERIOD USES OF COLOR#

98. If our furniture is white and gold, it is clearly evident that the colorings of a room should be soft and harmonious. If we adopt the dark teakwood of India or the deep brown of Flanders, our color scheme again changes. The preponderance of white in Colonial rooms was due to architectural conditions. White illuminates; and in the days when our ceilings were no higher than seven and a half feet, and our windows were small, the room needed an artificial light, and white supplied this.

99. In furnishing an Empire room, the decorators have, little by little, led themselves to believe that what is known as Empire green is a distinct shade of green. On the contrary, green was used in the period of the Empire simply because it was in pleasing contrast with the mahogany and brass so much used. If the mahogany is dark, a dark green is desirable; if light, a light green.

100. Egyptian decoration was full of gold and brilliant coloring, and a popular form of combination was the triad form:

Black, yellow and red. Red, blue and white. Dark blue, light blue and white. Cream color, blue and black. Dark red, medium yellow and blue.

101. The Greek decorators, who painted in fresco, used white, red, blue, yellow and black. Natural marbles were much used in green and red and alabaster, and bronze, gold and silver.

We see the flat colors of the Greek, Etruscan and Pompeiian age and we imagine they are typical of the period, but we must consider that the examples of that period which we now possess are faded and emasculated, and that the more authentic the example, the more aged it is, and hence the more weakened in color character.

The Greeks loved color, and their embroideries were in gold and blue and Tyrian purple.

Roman coloring was but a continuance of the Greek, characterized by dark and rich backgrounds, which were frequently black, red or deep yellow and dark blue, on which figures and landscapes, or animals, or groups from still life, were executed in bright colorings of powerful contrasts. Black and white were used, and later, when the Byzantine artists and craftsmen found their way to Western Italy, they spread this love of bold coloring, so that at the dawn of the Renaissance we find a return to the Greek and Roman coloring, which, however, was modified in England, Germany and Flanders, according to temperamental conditions.

102. We find, for instance, some forms of Florentine decoration, full of yellow, red-yellow, blue-greens and light slate blues. Botticelli used whites, creams, reds and citrine, with umber tones heightened by gold, and if we examine carefully the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Italian brocades which are preserved in the museums, we discover a great preponderance of yellow-green as an ornament on dark violet, or light olive green on dark blue, or dull orange on crimson brown.

In some of the richest early Italian fabrics we find:

Purple and sage-green ornaments on indigo ground; outlines in gold.

Dull crimson, pale blue and chrome yellow ornaments on dark gray ground.

Pale yellow-green ornaments on deep amber ground.

Dark blue-green and light greenish-yellow ornaments on deep crimson ground.

Pale greenish-blue ornaments on dark gray-blue ground, with white and gold picked out in small quantities.

Emerald green and dull orange ornaments on dark gray-green ground outlined in gold.

103. The French Renaissance takes inspiration from the Roman and Greek.

The Louis XIV is a development of the Renaissance, with a conspicuous use of gold.

The Louis XV is an elaboration along the same lines.

The Louis XVI is a simplification and a return to the classic.

The Georgian is largely Roman and Pompeiian.

104. The Adam style was taken directly from the Pompeiian, but in most cases, instead of having the Pompeiian solid color background with design lightly executed, the background is in the light color, and the design dark. To follow strictly the Pompeiian palace style would be too garish in our modern circumscribed environment.

105. It is a nice psychological problem to decorate the house in a way to give true balance to the æsthetic sense. No matter how great one's admiration for a thing, there is always a final point of satiety at which the desire needs rest or balance. A woman may love flowers, for example, but in the season of flowers, when all nature supplies an over-abundance, the visual sense becomes satiated, and the house interior that is furnished in cool tints and two-tones gives positive relief.

106. On the other hand, floral decorations in the home are the balance needed to the mind that craves them during the Winter period when there is a lack of color without.

* * * * *

#ILLUSION EFFECT AND EXPRESSION IN THE USE OF LINES#

107. We very often notice a room which has been carefully carried out but is utterly lacking in charm. The color seems right, and, considered in detail, the furniture and the furnishings are appropriate, but the room lacks effectiveness.

It is uninteresting.

It is like a doll face that is, perhaps, perfect in detail, but utterly devoid of EXPRESSION.

The artist who paints a portrait is a failure without the ability to give expression: hence in architecture the acute-angled spires or arched roofs have the same expression that the "long face" carries.

If we smile, the mouth curves upward; if we grieve, the lines turn downward.

108. In festival decorations, joy is expressed by loops, curves and festoons.

109. In serious decorations (libraries, studies, church or office work) straight lines are used; curtains are gathered in plaits so that the sags and drapes are all out of them; they are drawn. It is the same when we say of a person: "He looks serious, his face is drawn; it is full of lines."

110. The observation, "a broad smile on his face," means literally just that; the lines extend outward and upward, giving an expression of breadth and joy to the countenance.

#ILLUSION#

111. A doorway looks wider that has at the top a drapery which crosses in one complete curved sweep. A side-wall is larger apparently if along the frieze line long, wide loops or festoons are arranged. The same wall is more contracted and higher if treated in arrow-point forms of design.

The decorator should study these matters of illusion, for they are vital to the success of his labor. (See ¶ 116.)

112. Perpendicular lines contract the wall space and extend the apparent height of a room; horizontal lines shorten the apparent height of the ceiling and lengthen the width of the room. (See exceptions, ¶ 119.)

These straight lines may be used where extremes are needed. (See pages 61 and 63.)

A short doorway, for instance, looks higher where the portière is hung in straight folds; so also with a cottage window.

113. Every decorator who handles fabrics, every cabinetmaker who lays out the woodwork of a room, every stained glass window maker, should appreciate one fact: A line which is finished at the top or bottom, or both, with acute angles appears longer than the line that is finished top and bottom with an obtuse or right angle. It is the same with the finish of a wall frieze.

If the wall frieze ends abruptly (Illustration A on page 57), it is foreshortened; if it is finished by angles (Illustration B), the height of the room is apparently greater. (See the illustration on page 51.)

114. It is the same way with curves; given two lines of equal length and enclose one with convex and the other with concave curves, and the line enclosed convex will appear longer.

115. In dress a collar brought down to an acute angle in the front of the waist gives height effect, whereas a perfectly straight collar around the neck reduces the apparent height and gives width effect.

116. The use of arches should be studied. A space that is arched looks wider than it actually is, for the eye unconsciously follows the lines of the arch, and a distance or width effect is the result. The same space treated with a straight line is quickly bridged. The same space treated with lines that come to an angle looks narrower, for the reason that the eye becomes focused by the apex of the angle, and a height effect, not a breadth effect, is the result. (See page 57.)

117. This illusion is best shown in the illustrations of the parallel lines that are crossed diagonally, with the result that the lines no longer look parallel because of the angles. Nevertheless, they are parallel, and the lines running diagonally at the bottom of this page are also parallel.

We present two practical illustrations of illusion in the use of lines. (See ¶ 112.) They represent the side-walls of two rooms of the same dimensions, but showing apparently different proportions, the perpendicular lines making the side-wall look higher and the horizontal lines making the side-wall look lower. (See page 59.)

The length of the wall space is shortened, moreover, by the perpendicular lines and lengthened by the horizontal lines.

118. No period expresses more clearly the joy of curves as opposed to the severity of straight lines than that voluptuous period of Louis XV known as Rococo. It was a profligate era, an era of pleasure, and the appended illustration of part of a frieze is in no way exaggerated, but a true example of a common expression. (See page 60.)

119. Distinct perpendicular lines give height effect, but they also narrow the apparent width of a wall space. It is best to have such line effects indistinct unless they appear as in the illustration on page 63, where they are intended to reduce the breadth effect of the pattern and neutralize a squat tendency.

Indistinct perpendiculars give height effect, and do not reduce the wall width.

#COLOR TERMS#

120. In the study of color and its application authorities differ so materially that it is not only impossible to reconcile their theories, but the different terms used to express color thought create inextricable confusion.

121. One authority fixes the neutrals as being black, gray and white; another regards them as those hues or tones which lack definite color, like quaternaries. Authorities differ, moreover, upon even the fundamental principles. Chevreuil selects red, yellow and blue as the primaries; Dr. Thomas Young selects red, green and violet. Helmholtz selects carmine, pale green and blue-violet; Maxwell scarlet red, emerald green and blue-violet; Professor Rood agrees with Maxwell; Professor Church, of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, regards the primaries as red, green and blue; George Hurst, the English authority, fixes upon red, yellow and blue, the Brewsterian theory.

122. One must remember always in studying color that we are treating with the material, not with the illusion. We are dealing with pigments, not with prismatic phenomena, and it must be obvious that the only three primary colors that can be used in a way to produce all other colors are red, yellow and blue.

123. Whatever may be the spectrum theories of Sir Isaac Newton, Young or Helmholtz, for practical reasons we prefer to follow an authority as eminent as Chevreuil, for years the head of the National Gobelin Works of France, and a man experienced in the practice as well as the theory of color. Any effort to fix the character of color and describe it by periods and epochs will always prove unsatisfactory, for the reason that terms and expressions have changed with every period since the Egyptian, 4000 B.C.

124. We think we know purple until we discover that the purple of royalty, the ermine and purple, the purple of the cardinals' robes, frequently approximated what we now call carmine. Royal purple and Venetian blue are mere trade terms. Practical men in the purchase of things decorative soon discover that color terms convey only individual impressions and no distinctive qualities that may be relied upon; so that any effort to fix the color value by periods would be futile. We may assume that in the age of oak, mahogany, white and gold or walnut furniture, the fabric and wall colors harmonized with the wood colors, and to that degree we may fix the period character of color. The moment that the tone of the woodwork or the light conditions varied, color character varied also.

125. We must also bear well in mind that colors which have come down to us as examples of ancient times have been subjected to the changing influences of centuries, and have faded and altered. The colors on the walls of the historic rooms of European palaces have greatly altered. The flat reds and the deadish blues of the Pompeiian frescoes have been altered by chemical action during the 1,850 years' burial under the lava of Vesuvius. We are not justified in judging of the colors of A.D. 79 by the restoration-examples in 1900. Hence the mere expressions Pompeiian red, Pompeiian blue, can convey no definite, positive meaning.

#COLOR VOCABULARY#

126. In music, a tone which is formed by a certain number of vibrations per second is the same the world over, and each and every tone has a name; but in color no such standards exist. People have attempted to formulate a system by denominating the primary colors, red, yellow and blue, respectively as R, Y and B, and the combinations of these colors as combinations of letters. For example, red, with varying degrees of yellow added, is denominated by the letters R R O, or R O R, or O O R. This system tends to confusion, and is inadequate to express tints and shades. Various other systems have been devised. Color charts have been made, and in each system arbitrary names have been assigned, so that each color may be known by one of several names. The difficulty of insuring accuracy under these circumstances becomes very evident.

127. In discussing color combinations, one is usually confused because the subject is not a tangible expression that can be grasped like the sound of a note in music. With color charts, every maker has a standard of his own and the term "red" may mean anything within a wide range; a yellow-red or a blue-red, the yellow-red perhaps being cherry, the blue-red perhaps being carmine. An appreciation of the Harmonies of Contrast or Harmonies of Analogy or Relationship is accompanied by great confusion because of this lack of standardization.

128. There is only one true standard of color, and that is the standard as shown in the prism, and expressed by the spectrum. It is within the province of any man to determine the proper relationship of color if he starts with the chart we here present. We fix definitely the three primary and the three secondary colors, the primaries, red, yellow and blue, being those indicated by the heavy black lines; the secondaries, orange, green and violet, being indicated by the broad stipple lines.

All other lines are the tertiary or quaternary colors.

If we have clearly in our minds the appearance of the normal red and yellow, and clearly in our minds the orange that is made up by combining the two, we ought to be able to fix in our imagination the colors that come midway between the red and the orange, or the colors that come nearer the red or nearer the orange. Let us assume we are to select colors in the harmony of _contrast_. Take a ruler and lay across the chart and the contrasting colors are always opposite; the direct contrast of red is green because green is composed of the other two primary colors, yellow and blue; the contrast of blue is orange because orange is a combination of the other two primaries, yellow and red; the contrast of yellow is violet, a combination of blue and red.

Now, to determine the niceties of distinction, let us take a red that is a little off shade, a little yellowish; one must determine in the mind's eye about how much yellow there is in it and, to determine the true contrast, carry your line across from the point which you think is represented by the yellowish and you find that it is green with a little blue added, or bluish-green.

129. One must also determine the scale of color. The parallel circular lines on the chart designate four scales, or four grades, of each color, growing lighter by adding white, to the center; as you add more and more white the tint becomes more and more light. In determining contrast, be careful to stick to your scale. Contrasts, to be in harmony, must be colors of the same scale.

130. Harmony of analogy or relationship is clearly expressed in the chart. The family relations of red are the things which go with red. We may have a harmony of analogy in violet which includes the relations of red and blue. We must not attempt to carry the family relationship too far. There is a wide range of variety in these combinations of analogy because they may include not only all scales of each color from the darkest tones to the lightest tints but they include tertiaries and quaternaries.

Each man must establish his own standard, and by establishing it he forms unconsciously a very comprehensive understanding of color. It has never been possible to print a true colored chart because no two copies of the sheet off the press would be alike. A little more ink or a little less ink, or a little lighter or a little heavier impression, changes the values.

The chart illustrates contrasts of all of the primaries and secondary colors and the broken colors or hues. In the same way the tertiary or quaternary colors may be arranged, but for convenience we show the contrasts as follows:

RUSSET:

Tertiary, 32 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue 31 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 17 parts Blue 30 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 18 parts Blue 29 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 19 parts Blue 28 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 20 parts Blue 27 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 21 parts Blue 26 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 22 parts Blue 25 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow, 23 parts Blue

SLATE:

Tertiary, 32 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 16 parts Yellow 31 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 17 parts Yellow 30 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 18 parts Yellow 29 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 19 parts Yellow 28 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 20 parts Yellow 27 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 21 parts Yellow 26 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 22 parts Yellow 25 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 23 parts Yellow

CITRINE:

Tertiary, 32 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 16 parts Red 31 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 17 parts Red 30 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 18 parts Red 29 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 19 parts Red 28 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 20 parts Red 27 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 21 parts Red 26 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 22 parts Red 25 parts Yellow, 16 parts Blue, 23 parts Red

SAGE:

Quaternary, 24 parts Blue, 16 parts Red, 24 parts Yellow 25 parts Yellow, 23 parts Blue, 16 parts Red 26 parts Yellow, 22 parts Blue, 16 parts Red 27 parts Yellow, 21 parts Blue, 16 parts Red 28 parts Yellow, 20 parts Blue, 16 parts Red 29 parts Yellow, 19 parts Blue, 16 parts Red 30 parts Yellow, 18 parts Blue, 16 parts Red 31 parts Yellow, 17 parts Blue, 16 parts Red

BUFF: