Chapter 5
My greatest difficulty in introducing chintzes here was to convert women who loved their plush and satin draperies to a simpler fabric. They were unwilling to give up the glories they knew for the charms they knew not. I convinced them by showing them results! My first large commission was the Colony Club, and I used chintzes throughout the Club: Chintzes of cool grapes and leaves in the roof garden, hand-blocked linens of many soft colors in the reading-room, rose-sprigged and English posy designs in the bedrooms, and so on throughout the building.
Now I am using more chintz than anything else. It is as much at home in the New York drawing-room as in the country cottage. I can think of nothing more charming for a room in a country house than a sitting-room furnished with gray painted furniture and a lovely chintz.
Not long ago I was asked to furnish a small sea-shore cottage. The whole thing had to be done in a month, and the only plan I had to work on was a batch of chintz samples that had been selected for the house. I extracted the colorings of walls, woodwork, furniture, etc., from these chintzes. Instead of buying new furniture I dragged down a lot of old things that had been relegated to the attic and painted them with a dull ground color and small designs adapted from the chintzes. The lighting fixtures, wall brackets, candle sticks, etc.--were of carved wood, painted in polychrome to match the general scheme. One chintz in particular I would like to have every woman see and enjoy. It had a ground of old blue, patterned regularly with little Persian "pears," the old rug design, you know. The effect of this simple chintz with white painted walls and furniture and woodwork and crisp white muslin glass curtains was delicious.
The most satisfactory of all chintzes is the _Toile de Jouy_. The designs are interesting and well drawn, and very much more decorative than the designs one finds in ordinary silks and other materials. The chintzes must be appropriate to the uses of the room, well designed, in scale with the height of the ceilings, and so forth. It is well to remember that self-color rugs are most effective in chintz rooms. Wilton rugs woven in carpet sizes are to be had now at all first class furniture stores.
Painted furniture is very popular nowadays and is especially delightful when used in chintz rooms. The furniture we see now is really a revival and reproduction of the old models made by Angelica Kaufman, Heppelwhite, and other furniture-makers of their period. The old furniture is rarely seen outside of museums nowadays, but it has been an inspiration to modern decorators who are seeking ideas for simple and charming furniture.
A very attractive room can be made by taking unfinished pieces of furniture--that is, furniture that has not been stained or painted--and painting them a soft field color, and then adding decorations of bouquets or garlands, or birds, or baskets, reproducing parts of the design of the chintz used in the room. Of course, many of these patterns could be copied by a good draftsman only, but others are simple enough for anyone to attempt. For instance, I decorated a room in soft cream, gray, yellow and cornflower blue. The chintz had a cornflower design that repeated all these colors. I painted the furniture a very soft gray, and then painted little garlands of cornflowers in soft blues and gray-greens on each piece of furniture. The walls were painted a soft cream color. The carpet rug of tan was woven in one piece with a blue stripe in the border.
The color illustrations of this book will give you a very good idea of how I use chintzes and painted furniture. One of the illustrations shows the use of a black chintz in the dressing-room of a city house. The chintz is covered with parrots which make gorgeous splashes of color on the black ground. The color of the foliage and leaves is greenish-blue, which shades into a dozen blues and greens. This greenish-blue tone has been used in the small things of the room. The chintz curtains are lined with silk of this tone, and the valance at the top of the group of windows is finished with a narrow silk fringe of this greenish-blue. The small candle shades, the shirred shade of the drop-light, and the cushion of the black lacquer chair are also of this blue.
The walls of the room are a deep cream in tone, and there are a number of old French prints from some Eighteenth Century fashion journals hung on the cream ground. The dressing-table is placed against the windows, over the radiator, so that there is light and to spare for dressing. Half curtains of white muslin are shirred on the sashes back of the dressing-table. The quaint triplicate mirror is of black lacquer decorated with Chinese figures in gold, and the little, three-cornered cabinet in the corner is also of black and gold. The chintz is used as a covering for the dressing-seat.
Another illustration shows the writing-corner of the bedroom which leads into this dressing-room. The walls and the rose-red carpet are the same in both rooms, as you see. This bedroom depends absolutely on the rose and blue chintz for its decoration. There is a quaint bed painted a pale gray, with rose-red taffeta coverlet. The bed curtains are of the chintz lined with the rose-red silk. There are several white-enamel chairs upholstered with the chintz, and there is a comfortable French couch with a kidney table of mahogany beside it. The corner of the room shown in the illustration is the most convenient writing-place. The desk is placed at right angles to the wall between the two windows. The small furnishings of the writing-desk repeat the queer blues and the rose-red of the chintz. A very comfortable stool with a cushion of old velvet is an added convenience.
The chintz curtains at the windows hang in straight, full folds. A flat valance, cut the length of the design of the chintz, furnishes the top of the two windows. Some windows do not need these valances, but these windows are very high and need the connecting line of color. The long curtains are lined with the rose-red silk, which also shows in a narrow piping around the edges.
The other two color illustrations are of the most popular room I have done, a bedroom and sitting room combined. Everyone likes the color plan of soft greens, mauve and lavender. There is a large day bed of painted wood, with mattress, springs and cushions covered with a chintz of mauve ground and gay birds. The rug is a self-toned rug of very soft green, and the walls are tinted with the palest of greens. The woodwork is white, and the furniture is painted a greenish-gray that is just a little deeper than pearl. A darker green line of paint outlines all the furniture, which is further decorated with prim little garlands of flowers painted in dull rose, blue, yellow and green.
The mauve chintz is used for the curtains, and for the huge armchair and one or two painted chairs. There is a little footstool covered with brocaded violet velvet, with just a thread of green showing on the background. The lighting fixtures are of carved wood, painted in soft colors to match the garlands on the furniture, with shirred shades of lavender silk. Two lamps made of quaint old green jars with lavender decorations have shirred shades of the same silk. One of these lamps is used on the writing-table and the other on the little chest of drawers.
This little chest of drawers, by the way, is about the simplest piece of furniture I can think of, for any girl who can use her brushes at all. An ordinary chest of drawers should be given several coats of paint--pale yellow, green or blue, as may be preferred. Then a thin stripe of a darker tone should be painted on it. This should be outlined in pencil and then painted with a deeper tone of green color; for instance, an orange or brown stripe should be used on pale yellow, and dark green or blue on the pale green.
A detail of the wall paper or the chintz design may be outlined on the panels of the drawers and on the top of the chest by means of a stencil, and then painted with rather soft colors. The top of the chest should be covered with a piece of plate glass which will have the advantage of showing the design of the cover and of being easily cleaned. Old-fashioned glass knobs add interest to this piece of furniture. A mirror with a gilt frame, or an unframed painting similar to the one shown in the illustration would be very nice above the chest of drawers.
VIII
THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
In all the equipment of the modern house, I think there is nothing more difficult than the problem of artificial light. To have the light properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights shall be beautifully balanced,--all this means prodigious thought and care before the actual placing of the lights is accomplished.
In domestic architecture light is usually provided for some special function; to dress by, to read by, or to eat by. If properly considered, there is no reason why one's lighting fixtures should not be beautiful as well as utilitarian. However, it is seldom indeed that one finds lights that serve the purposes of utility and beauty.
I have rarely, I might say never, gone into a builder's house (and indeed I might say the same of many architects' houses) but that the first things to require changing to make the house amenable to modern American needs were the openings for lighting fixtures. Usually, side openings are placed much too near the trim of a door or window, so that no self-respecting bracket can be placed in the space without encroaching on the molding. Another favorite mistake is to place the two wall openings in a long wall or large panel so close together that no large picture or mirror or piece of furniture can be placed against that wall. There is also the tendency to place the openings too high, which always spoils a good room.
I strongly advise the woman who is having a house built or re-arranged to lay out her electric light plan as early in the game as possible, with due consideration to the uses of each room. If there is a high chest of drawers for a certain wall, the size of it is just as important in planning the lighting fixtures for that wall as is the width of the fireplace important in the placing of the lights on the chimney-breast. I advise putting a liberal number of base openings in a room, for it costs little when the room is in embryo. Later on, when you find you can change your favorite table and chair to a better position to meet the inspiration of the completed room and that your reading-lamp can be moved, too, because the outlet is there ready for it, will come the compensating moments when you congratulate yourself on forethought.
There are now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the smaller the town the cheaper is the cost of electricity. This is not a cut-and-dried statement, but an observation from personal experience. The little town's electricity is usually a byproduct of some manufacturing plant, and current is often sold at so much per light per month, instead of being measured by meter. It is pleasant to think that many homes have bridged the smelly gap between candles and electricity in this magic fashion.
Gas light is more difficult to manage than electricity, for there is always the cumbersome tube and the necessity for adding mechanical accessories before a good clear light is secured. Gas lamps are hideous, for some obscure reason, whereas there are hundreds of simple and excellent wall fixtures, drop lights and reading lamps to be bought already equipped for electricity. The electric wire is such an unobtrusive thing that it can be carried through a small hole in any good vase, or jar, and with a suitable shade you have an attractive and serviceable reading light. Candlesticks are easily equipped for electricity and are the most graceful of all fixtures for dressing-tables, bedside tables, tea tables, and such.
It is well to remember that if a room is decorated in dark colors the light will be more readily absorbed than in a light-colored room, and you should select and place your lighting-fixtures accordingly. Bead covers, fringes and silk shades all obscure the light and re-absorb it, and so require a great force of light to illuminate properly.
The subject of the selection of lighting-fixtures is limitless. There are so many fixtures to be had nowadays--good, bad and indifferent--that it were impossible to point out the merits and demerits of them all. There are copies of all the best lamps and lanterns of old Europe and many new designs that grew out of modern American needs. There are Louis XVI lanterns simple enough to fit well into many an American hallway, that offer excellent lessons in the simplicity of the master decorators of old times. Contrast one of these fine old lanterns with the mass of colored glass and beads and crude lines and curves of many modern hall lanterns. I like a ceiling bowl of crystal or alabaster with lights inside, for halls, but the expense of such a bowl is great. However, I recently saw a reproduction of an old alabaster bowl made of soft, cloudy glass, not of alabaster, which sold at a fraction of the price of the original, and it seemed to meet all the requirements.
Of course, one may easily spend as much money on lighting-fixtures as on the remainder of the house, but that is no reason why people who must practise economy should admit ugly fixtures into their homes. There are always good and bad fixtures offered at the lowest and highest prices. You have no defense if you build your own house. If you are making the best of a rented house or an apartment, that is different. But good taste is sufficient armor against the snare of gaudy beads and cheap glass.
There was recently an exhibition in New York of the craftsmanship of the students of a certain school of design. There were some really beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their avocation. One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and there were many notable fixtures. There must be easily tens of thousands of young people who are students in the various schools of design, manual training high schools and normal art schools.
Why doesn't some far-seeing manufacturer of lighting-fixtures give these young people a chance to adapt the fine old French and Italian designs to our modern needs? Why not have your daughter or son copy such an object that has use and beauty, instead of encouraging the daubing of china or the piercing of brass that leads to nothing? And if you haven't a daughter or son, encourage the young artisan, your neighbor, who is trying to "find himself." Let him copy a few good old fixtures for you. They will cost no more than the gaudy vulgar fixtures that are sold in so many shops.
The photograph shown on page 108 illustrates the possibility of using a number of lighting-fixtures in one room. The room shown is my own drawing-room. You will observe that in this picture there are many different lights. The two old French fixtures of wrought gilt, which flank the mantel mirror, hold wax candles. The two easy chairs have little tables beside them holding three-pronged silver candlesticks. There is also a small table holding an electric reading-lamp, made of a Chinese jar, with a shade of shirred silk. The chandelier is a charming old French affair of gracefully strung crystal globules. For a formal occasion the chandelier is lighted, but when we are few, we love the fire glow and candlelight. If we require a stronger light for reading there is the lamp.
The photograph here given may suggest a superfluous number of lights, but the room itself does not. The wall fixtures are of gilt, you see, the candlesticks of silver, the chandelier of crystal and the lamp of Chinese porcelain and soft colored silk; so one is not conscious of the many lights. If all the lights were screened in the same way the effect would be different. I use this picture for this very reason--to show how many lights may be assembled and used in one place. In considering the placing of these lights, the firelight was not forgotten, nor the effect of the room by day when the sunlight floods in and these many fixtures become objects of decorative interest.
A lamp, or a wall fixture, or a chandelier, or a candlestick, must be beautiful in itself--beautiful by sunlight,--if it is really successful. The soft glow of night light may make commonplace things beautiful, but the final test of a fixture is its effect in relation to the other furnishings of the room in sunlight.
The picture on page 118 shows the proper placing of wall fixtures when a large picture is the chief point of interest. These wall fixtures are particularly interesting because they are in the style of the Adam mirrors that hang on the recessed wall spaces flanking the chimney wall. This photograph is a lesson in the placing of objects of art. The large painting is beautifully spaced between the line of the mantel shelf and the lower line of the cornice. The wall fixtures are correctly placed, and anyone can see why they would be distressingly out of key if they were nearer the picture, or nearer the line of the chimney wall. The picture was considered as an important part of the chimney-piece before the openings for the fixtures were made.
Another good lamp is shown on the small table in this picture. There is really a reading-lamp beside a comfortable couch, which cannot be seen in the picture. This lamp, like the one in the drawing-room, is made from a porcelain vase, with a shirred silk shade on a wire frame. An electric light cord is run through a hole bored for it. If electricity were not available, an oil receptacle of brass could be fitted into the vase and the beauty of the lamp would be the same.
There are so many possibilities for making beautiful lamps of good jars and vases that it is surprising the shops still sell their frightful lamps covered with cabbage roses and dragons and monstrosities. A blue and white ginger jar, a copper loving-cup, or even a homely brown earthenware bean-pot, will make a good bowl for an oil or electric lamp, but of the dreadful bowls sold in the shops for the purpose the less said the better. How can one see beauty in a lurid bowl and shade of red glass! Better stick to wax candles the rest of your life than indulge in such a lamp!
I know people plead that they have to buy what is offered; they cannot find simple lamps and hanging lanterns at small prices and so they _must_ buy bad ones. The manufacturer makes just the objects that people demand. So long as you accept these things, just so long will he make them. If all the women who complain about the hideous lighting-fixtures that are sold were to refuse absolutely to buy them, a few years would show a revolution in the designing of these things.
There has been of late a vulgar fashion of having a huge mass of colored glass and beads suspended from near-brass chains in the dining-rooms of certain apartments and houses. These monstrous things are called "domes"--no one knows why. For the price of one of them you could buy a three pronged candlestick, equipped for electricity, for your dining-room table. It is the sight of hundreds of these dreadful "domes" in the lamp shops that gives one a feeling of discouragement. The humblest kitchen lamp of brass and tin would be beautiful by contrast.
When all is said and done, we must come back to wax candles for the most beautiful light of all. Electricity is the most efficient, but candlelight is the most satisfying. For a drawing-room, or any formal room where a clear light is not required, wax candles are perfect. There are still a few houses left where candlesticks are things of use and are not banished to the shelves as curiosities. Certainly the clear, white light of electricity seems heaven-sent when one is dressing or working, but for between-hours, for the brief periods of rest, the only thing that rivals the comfort of candlelight is the glow of an open fire.
IX
HALLS AND STAIRCASES
In early days the hall was the large formal room in which the main business of the house was transacted. It played the part of court-room, with the lord of the manor as judge. It was used for dining, living, and for whatever entertainment the house afforded. The stairs were not a part of it: they found a place as best they could. From the times of the primitive ladder of the adobe dwelling to the days of the spiral staircase carried up in the thickness of the wall, the stairway was always a primitive affair, born of necessity, with little claim to beauty.
With the Renaissance in Italy came the forerunner of the modern entrance hall, with its accompanying stair. Considerations of comfort and beauty began to be observed. The Italian staircase grew into a magnificent affair, "L'escalier d'honneur," and often led only to the open galleries and _salons de parade_ of the next floor. I think the finest staircases in all the world are in the Genoese palaces. The grand staircase of the Renaissance may still be seen in many fine Italian palaces, notably in the Bargello in Florence. This staircase has been splendidly reproduced by Mrs. Gardner in Fenway Court, her Italian palace in Boston. This house is, by the way, the finest thing of its kind in America. Mrs. Gardner has the same far-seeing interest in the furtherance of an American appreciation of art as had the late Pierpont Morgan. She has assembled a magnificent collection of objects of art, and she opens her house to the public occasionally and to artists and designers frequently, that they may have the advantage of studying the treasures.
To return to our staircases: In France the intermural, or spiral, staircase was considered quite splendid enough for all human needs, and in the finest châteaux of the French Renaissance one finds these practical staircases. Possibly in those troublous times the French architects planned for an aristocracy living under the influence of an inherited tradition of treachery and violence, they felt more secure in the isolation and ready command of a small, narrow staircase where one man well nigh single-handed could keep an army at bay. A large wide staircase of easy ascent might have meant many uneasy moments, with plots without and treachery within.