Part 2
The living room, opening off directly to the right, had its walls done in a soft Colonial yellow flat tone with cream trim; old mahogany furniture was covered in soft brown and dull old greens; an Oriental rug of great beauty and unusual coloring in golds, browns, tans and blues covered the floor. A piece of old brocade hung flat against the chimney breast, against which was hung a long oblong antique Colonial mirror. A pair of old brass candlesticks stood on the mantel with a bowl of laurel leaves reflected in the mirror in the middle; brass andirons and fender--all gave sparkle and life to the room. A wing chair with a low table at its left, on which stood a reading lamp, was placed beside the fire and gave a very inviting touch. There were no fixtures in this room, but many lamps all with gold colored silk shades. The rooms all opened so closely into one another that it was felt best to employ the same colors, though differently expressed.
The trim, throughout the entire house, which was small, with very low ceilings, was kept in the soft creamy tones. The wainscoted dining room had the same soft creamy paint, with a very quaint old black-backgrounded paper above the wainscoting, which was part of the original old house. Old brass sconces made into fixtures added another quaint touch, with soft yellow silk shades lined with deep rose to give a glow of color when lighted. Old mahogany table, chairs, sideboard and corner wall cupboard fastened high up into the corner. The floor, which was finished in a very dark stain, varnished and waxed, was covered with a dark brown--“tête de negre”--seamless chenille rug. None of it expensive, none of it done in a “scheme,” yet all harmonious, happy and unobtrusive.
The loveliest rooms are those that grow from one thing to another as the suggestion is developed. Of course, if your house is so pure in style or period as intelligently to call for only the period furniture of its type, that is a different proposition. We are dealing here with the ordinary conditions of thousands of our American homes--houses and apartments that have no special architecture or “period” background to work up to.
The guest bedroom contained a motley collection which would have cost much to replace with desirable and attractive furniture. An inexpensive copy of a French chintz paper in lovely soft blues and red pinks was found to cover the walls. The trim was painted creamy white. Then, as an inspiration, it was decided to paint the furniture, and a soft dull blue which was in the paper was decided upon. Everything--brass beds, bureau, chiffonier, desk and chairs, all were painted old blue. The dressing table had a much too ornate cheap mirror which was removed entirely and a small antique mahogany shaving mirror was stood on the dressing table in its place. Copies of old hardware handles, etc., replaced the common commercial variety. A red mulberry carpet rug (also one of the tones in the paper) made a wonderful background for the blue furniture, the floor having been properly done as to finish, varnishing, etc. At the windows were organdie curtains ruffled and looped back--no other hangings. The whole made a most charming room.
The same thing was done with another bedroom, in which a soft green instead of blue was used. The trim was done in the same creamy white; a green and white striped paper covered the walls. Again everything, beginning with the brass beds, was painted. An inexpensive English block print chintz was used in this room for curtains. A chaise longue was upholstered in this same chintz which had pink and soft mauves to offset and balance the green paint. Bed spreads with a full gathered valance covered as much of the ugly brass bed as possible. A dark green carpet rug was used,--and so another room was transformed by a coat of paint, at small expense, using what one had and painting all to bring it together happily. A few pieces of old mahogany or walnut can always be used in a room with painted furniture and they relieve the hardness which sometimes occurs with certain types of this kind.
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In another old house in New Jersey, the large living room had an old cupboard with a wonderful green on the panels of the doors. This made the starting point for that room. The color was copied and all the trim, doors and cornices done in this tone. The walls were painted a flat cream. A very simple type of wicker furniture, painted black, was used, with old gold cushions of very inexpensive material. Portieres of this same material were hung. The fireplace was painted black--mantel and all--and black wrought iron lamps with parchment shades of cream with old gold bands and black lines were used. Ruffled curtains of organdie looped back were at the windows.... And, at a very small outlay, simply the application of color and paint, a really delightful room was evolved.
It is always best to keep to the simplest types in furniture, avoiding cheap adaptations and the kind of wicker furniture that is full of scrolls and fancy loops.
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A living room in an apartment had a most distressing look when first beheld by its prospective tenants. The apartment was in an old-fashioned house which had been made over. The doors and trim were of heavy solid oak with a yellow grained varnish finish--very expensive and very ugly. Nothing could look well against such a background.
This was entirely refinished and painted a soft dull green with a gold line on the smaller mouldings. The walls were tinted a greenish grey, the ceiling a soft, dull browny gold. At the windows were hung, only to the sill, filet net curtains, with old gold silk pushed back at the sides, both curtains hanging flat against the window pane to give full value to the deep embrasure of the window and do justice to the panelling and architectural detail.
In this room a lovely English glazed chintz was used to cover the large davenport and large winged chair. Pleated valances were used on these pieces. The chintz had a very soft pinky tan background with flowers in red pink and blue and yellow, producing a very old mellow effect. The other odd pieces of furniture were covered in a dull dark old blue. Built-in sunken book-cases flush with the wall were filled with books whose bindings reflected again the colors in the chintz. A fireplace of Italian design in dull green and gold composition with a pair of very quaint andirons of Italian reproduction and fixtures of the same style made another note in the room.
A very beautiful old Sheraton table was pulled up to the left of the guest as he sat on the davenport, which was placed at right angles to the fireplace, and held magazines, books and a large reading lamp with a gold colored shade. A room which was a mixture of English, Italian and Colonial, yet the effect of which was warm, soft and most sympathetic--all of which would have been impossible with the yellow varnished oak background originally in the room.
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In every one of the rooms described, extraordinary results were produced by paint and color at small expense.
Arrangement is most important and furniture should be shifted and changed about until, by the very sense of balance you get, suddenly you know you have hit it.
It is right. The light falls in just the right way over your shoulder as you read, write or sew. The chairs are grouped in the living room in such a way that friends dropping in for tea find a cozy spot at once. It is not a question of vast expense. With the right touch and the right color it can be done with most satisfactory results and really marvellous things can be done with paint. Every room herein described has actually been done.
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In furnishing the Hostess Houses at the Camps throughout the country, wonderful effects were produced almost entirely with color and paint. The men craved color. They were weary of khaki, tans and dust color, and their joy in and appreciation of the Hostess Houses was a delight to see. Expensive fabrics were out of the question. How, then, to get color? By paint! Perfectly ordinary kitchen chairs and tables in the cafeterias were painted soft light cheerful greens. Body color coats of brilliant warm orange and deep royal blue were given to a very simple type of wicker chair in the huge living rooms. The effect of these masses of color offset by the khaki of the men was gay and cheerful beyond words. Large paper shades of orange color shaded the lamps. The rooms glowed with a joy and welcome that none of the men failed to appreciate.
Make your homes as gay and cheerful as you possibly can, not “jumpy” with hard, unlovely color, but as full of warm soft tones as you can get them, remembering always that Home must be a place of peace and rest as well as joy.
We feel like echoing the sentiment of the old Gloucester fisherman who gave his schooner a new coat of paint in the spring, and, gazing with pride and admiration at his work, remarked, “Ain’t it wonderful what a lick o’ paint’ll do!”
The Small House
In these servantless days, the bungalow type of house grows more and more popular. It is compact, convenient; it only asks for a simple type of furniture. A mixture of good willow, painted or left in its natural color, in the body, and with the braided edge painted or stained; some old mahogany or walnut pieces, if you are fortunate enough to own them, mix in well, or good simple reproductions. By walnut furniture I do not mean the hideous black walnut “Eastlake” types. These, with their scrolls and marble tops and glooms, are, I hope, forever relegated to oblivion.
I shudder now in remembrance of a set of black walnut furniture in my grandmother’s bedroom, particularly an enormous bureau, with its marble top, huge great mirror supported by carved columns that wiggled upward, and topped over all by massive carved grapes. How I gazed in awe while a terrible stillness always filled me as I planted my small person in front of it!
And oh! the terrible “best rooms” of the past! I remember a friend telling me that in her father’s house the “best room” door was never left open. That closed door, at the foot of the stairs--how it filled her with absolute horror! And she had a trick of throwing herself around the newel post with a tremendous swing--with enough “way” to land her up two or three steps of the stairs if she was going up, or ’way round, well past that awful door, if she was coming down stairs. Imagine the effect on that little mind. And the shrinking terror with which she grew up. The awful something behind those doors! What was it? What an opportunity for an inhibition! The “best room,” thank Fate, has forever left us, and in its place we are putting the living room where the family draws magnetically together. Wonderful if it has an open fire, and most bungalows now have. The open fire is the soul of a room. We gravitate toward it instinctively. We group our furniture round it. We draw up chairs, stools, anything to get within its cheerful glow.
Arrange your furniture with some meaning, in groups if it is a large room. There is the group around the fire; the group around the tea table; the group around the reading table, with its glow of light, centred to draw the family together in peace and concord.
Above all things avoid “small junk.” The sins that are committed in the name of “bric-à-brac” can never be atoned for. There is no Hades big enough! And the amount of money that is spent is appalling. If you can’t have a few fine bits, preferably antique, there are many modern Chinese porcelains that are lively and full of color. Don’t be afraid of empty spaces--books, flowers, a work box, all have meaning and purpose. There never was a drawing room too fine for a lady’s work box; and what a sense of cozy human sympathy it always has--the chair beside a low table with a work box, a vase of flowers, a book. That brings us to another point. Have low tables--as many as your room will hold--without crowding, of course, and instead of cheap, utterly meaningless junk--cheap though it may have cost much actual money--have flowers, or green branches of laurel leaves or a small growing plant; and a book or magazine on a low table placed beside the chair where your family or guest may take comfort and pleasure.
To go back to our starting point--the bungalow. Arrange any rooms on the first floor so that they do not clash, not necessarily using the same tones but as far as possible letting the colors in one room lead into another or carry on a suggestion from one to another. In other words, keep your vista so that the effect, while not being monotonous, avoids the chopped-up restless result we have when we break up our space by too many colors. Have your house restful and keep away from the temptation to put too many things about. Rather do as the Japanese--keep a lot in the closet and change them around. Have a large table with a large lamp whose shade permits a wide radius of light, so that several persons may sit within its circle. Put books and magazines and papers on the table or in little racks, for your bungalow living room is an informal room. Parchment lamp-shades are lovely in a bungalow and can be made plain with bands of color or with a design, depending on the material used for cushions, etc. Have one or two large divans with loose cushions, depending on the size of your living room. Over-stuffed pieces look much smarter and most intimate if upholstered in chintzes. If your chintz is delicate in color and design, have fitted slip covers well made with corded seams and pleated valances. Very tailored these must be--not at all the loose baggy things we put on as dust-covers in summer. The finest drawing rooms in England have these fitted slip covers, and the delicate chintzes can thus be easily cleansed.
In the niches or corners between your rooms put large Spanish or Moorish jars, which come in a very inexpensive pottery vivid in color; and one can always get a bough of green to put in them.
Of course there are many types of bungalows, from the very simple ones with pine sheathed varnished walls to the permanent type with plastered and tinted walls, which permit of a more elaborate and permanent kind of furnishings.
For the primitive bungalow, grass rugs or those made of fiber, of which there are many charming and very smart ones to choose from, are very effective, if your furnishings are very simple and you haven’t much color about. But in the permanent type of house almost any kind of carpet rug, Oriental or Chinese rug can be used.
Have only lamps in your living room, lots of them; no side lights, though these in simple appropriate design are most attractive and necessary in the dining room, as you have no overhead light and no other light except your table candles. Painted furniture is most charming in a bungalow dining room, or you can use painted chairs and a mahogany table. The color in your rooms should be determined by the exposure of your house.
Personally I like paper in country bedrooms. There are so many very pretty papers that are reproductions of fine old chintz designs, that give a deliciously crisp fresh look, and it is so easy to take one of the colors in the paper as your color scheme for the room. Paint up a lot of old furniture if you have it; body color it some tone in your paper and put lines of another color; or if you can paint, take some motive in your paper or chintz and reproduce it on your furniture. Don’t be in a hurry to do it all at once. It will grow--one thing will suggest another and it becomes a perfectly fascinating sort of game.
If your wall has a flowered paper, it is well to use some plain material for curtains--or something with very inconspicuous pattern. If your windows are very small and your house is where no one can see in, have your sash window curtains pushed well back to give you all the beauty of your view. Let in all the sunshine and air you possibly can.
For country bedrooms nothing is prettier than dotted swiss--or organdie or ordinary book muslin, made with little ruffles on the inside. They dress up a room at once; and remember this--that if your windows are properly handled, your curtains well chosen and well made, your room is half--more than half--done, for immediately on entering a room our gaze goes toward the window. Really enchanting curtains can be made of ginghams and voiles and many materials that one sees in the day’s shopping. For bedrooms a valance of chintz over the muslin window curtain will give up color--if we don’t want chintz curtains at the sides of our window.
Be very careful that you get the right shade of your color. There are blues that are warm and blues that are very cold. Pink can be one of the hardest tones I know, if it is in a room with the wrong exposure. Some yellows are sunny, others very dull. You have to try them in your rooms--each with its own angle of exposure and light and reflection.
In your verandah furnishings you have room for no end of color. You can let yourself go to your heart’s content--not freakish color but good strong ringing tones. The out of doors absorbs them in such a way that they are never garish or hard. Avoid heavy stuffy coverings and portieres, avoid “schemes” of decoration. Plan for comfort, for a suitable background that expresses the life of the family living within the walls of your house. Keep your floors low in tone--a well finished floor has much to do as a background with all the furniture we place upon it. See that it is well stained and polished and your wall tones soft and neutral. Be sincere--don’t do things for effect, but let your home express your life and in return it will give you joy and comfort.
The City Home
We all know the kind of narrow house with the black hole of a middle room to be found all over New York City. How people endured the gloom of it all is a mystery. I once was asked to do over a house of this kind. The walls and woodwork were tinted a dark brown. The middle room was practically useless. My client said rather pathetically: “Can’t this be made a place where the men would like to linger and smoke?”--it adjoined the dining room. “They now run through it as fast as they can to the library above, which is cheerful.” I didn’t wonder. Even a piano and a “canned music” cabinet couldn’t hold them.
I immediately had all the woodwork scraped and panelled and painted a soft old ivory. I found an English chintz with large flowers in the gayest of rose and blue and mauve tones on a cream background. It was some time before I could convince my client that the chintz was what she wanted--but I have since had the satisfaction of having her tell me she loves it more each year. I knew she would!
The curtains and portieres between the dark middle room and the dining room--the darkest spot in the room--were made of this beautiful chintz, so full of color and life. A large arm-chair was covered with it and placed where you couldn’t resist it as you came out of the dining room; a low table with a lamp was placed beside the chair, the only light in the room previously having come from remote wall fixtures. Small low tables for coffee cups also had lamps. Several pieces of furniture were covered in the rose red--a wonderful shade--in the chintz, and warm old rose rugs deep in tone were used. The room was transformed. And my client laughingly said she couldn’t get the men away from it. The moment they began to use it the charm began to work; the evening papers with their various items of interest placed on a table as a lure made a topic for conversation and the ice was broken. Conversations begun at the table were easily continued over the coffee cups and cigarettes. The room still had a distinct dignity and formality as well, but it had the charm that only color can give.
We applied the same treatment to the library on the second floor, where golden oak trim and green walls flaunted their ugliness. The oak was rubbed down, stained and waxed, hand rubbed to make a soft velvety English oak finish. A putty colored wall was used, a wonderful tone where subdued yellow and green blended marvellously; beautiful Chinese rugs of exquisite golden brown backgrounds--a rare color in Chinese rugs--all made the setting, the frame for all else that was used in the room. Book-cases built awkwardly out into the room were removed and placed in a heaven-sent niche which we acquired by ripping out two closets full of junk that were placed between the library and bedroom adjoining. These niches were large enough to hold a desk on one side and a table with a reading light on the other, the walls being lined with shelves and filled with books. The space made by removing the shelves from the room allowed us to place very comfortably in just the right light a baby grand piano.
This room had two great points of architectural background: a very well proportioned semi-circular window seat commanding a heavenly view of the river and Palisades, with casement windows of small leaded panes and a deep window seat; and a large fireplace framed in the most villainous shade of green glazed tile and a wildly ornate “over-mantel” with endless jig-saw wreaths and mirrors galore in panels. The ornamentation was most carefully planed off--the over-mantel and its mirrors entirely removed, leaving a very nicely proportioned low mantel, absolutely simple. The hearth was re-tiled in old English clay tiles and wrought iron fire-irons and andirons supplanted the modern brass of hideous and much ornamented design. The same furniture recovered was unrecognizable in its new background.
The only light came from the large bay window which took up practically the entire width of the room. Only very thin curtains of grenadine covered the windows, with a hanging at either end of the arch to give color and soften the frame. It is marvellous, once our eyes are opened to the possibilities of the changes we can bring about in our surroundings. And if only people can be made to realize the extraordinary reaction on their lives--in their spirits, in their very health itself. Wasn’t it Whistler who said, after a visit to Walt Whitman: “The room was furnished by a large earthen jar filled with golden-rod and sunshine”?
It requires thought and judgment and it results in a gain to us of perception and observation. You can gain some sort of a result out of almost any collection of furniture if you will place it with a view to producing a livable arrangement, just as, on the other hand, you can “queer” very beautiful things by a poor arrangement.
Bear in mind that the home your children will remember is the home they are growing up in now, today, and its effect is now reacting on all their future lives. I honestly believe that much illness would be spared if we tried to make our homes more happy in color and furnishings. It is not possible to be gloomy in a room full of sunshine and color and life.
You can get a gloomy result with very beautiful furniture. Men decorators (I am sorry to have to say it) generally do get this result. Their interiors are handsome, expensive, but heavy, and never by any chance intimate or charming. You can make a home with a red geranium, a muslin curtained window, a few unpainted chairs, a freshly scrubbed floor and a clear kerosene lamp. It’s all in the touch; and once we are awakened to it, and begin to see that, we can do wonders.