The Decoration Of Houses | by Edith Wharton, Ogden Codman Jr.
Rooms may be decorated in two ways: by a superficial application of ornament totally independent of structure, or by means of those architectural features which are part of the organism of every house, inside as well as out. In the middle ages, when warfare and brigandage shaped the conditions of life, and men camped in their castles much as they did in their tents, it was natural that decorations should be portable, and that the naked walls of the mediaeval chamber should be hung with arras, while a ciel, or ceiling, of cloth stretched across the open timbers of its roof...
| Title | The Decoration Of Houses |
| Author | Edith Wharton, Ogden Codman Jr |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Year | 1897 |
| Copyright | 1897, Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Amazon | The Decoration of Houses |
"Une forme doit etre belle en elle-meme et on ne doit jamais compter sur le decor applique pour en sauver les imperfections".
Henri Mayeux: La Composition Dicoratrion.
Books Consulted- French Androuet du Cerceau, Jacques. Les Plus Excellents Batiments de France. Paris, 1607. Le Muet, Pierre. Mantere de Bien Batir pour toutes sortes de Personnes. Oppenord, Gilles Marie...
- Introduction
- Rooms may be decorated in two ways: by a superficial application of ornament totally independent of structure, or by means of those architectural features which are part of the organism of every house...
- I. The Historical Tradition
- THE last ten years have been marked by a notable development in architecture and decoration, and while France will long retain her present superiority in these arts, our own advance is perhaps more si...
- The Historical Tradition. Part 2
- There were, of course, private houses in Renaissance Italy, but these were occupied rather by shopkeepers, craftsmen, and the bourgeoisie than by the class which in France and England lived in country...
- The Historical Tradition. Part 3
- It was not until the social influences of the reign of Louis XIV were fully established that modern domestic life really began. Tradition ascribes to Madame de Rambouillet a leading share in the advan...
- The Historical Tradition. Part 4
- In other words, decoration is always subservient to proportion; and a room, whatever its decoration may be, must represent the style to which its proportions belong. The less cannot include the greate...
- The Historical Tradition. Part 5
- As a matter of fact, the bed-rooms, sitting-rooms, libraries and other private apartments in the smaller dwelling-houses built in Europe between 1650 and 1800 were far simpler, less pretentious and mo...
- II. Rooms In General
- BEFORE beginning to decorate a room it is essential to consider for what purpose the room is to be used. It is not enough to ticket it with some such general designation as library, drawing-room,...
- Rooms In General. Part 2
- The writing-table might find place against the side-wall near either window; but these spaces are usually sacred to the piano and to that modern futility, the silver-table. Thus of necessity the writi...
- Rooms In General. Part 3
- In deciding upon a scheme of decoration, it is necessary to keep in mind the relation of furniture to ornament, and of the room as a whole to other rooms in the house. As in a small house a very large...
- Rooms In General. Part 4
- The worst defects of the furniture now made in America are due to an Athenian thirst for novelty, not always regulated by an Athenian sense of fitness. No sooner is it known that beautiful furniture w...
- III. Walls
- PROPORTION is the good breeding of architecture. It is that something, indefinable to the unprofessional eye, which gives repose and distinction to a room: in its origin a matter of nice mathematical ...
- Walls. Part 2
- What the instinct for symmetry means, philosophers may be left to explain; but that it does exist, that it means something, and that it is most strongly developed in those races which have reached the...
- Walls. Part 3
- In rooms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when little furniture was used, the dado was often richly ornamented, being sometimes painted with delicate arabesques corresponding with those on ...
- Walls. Part 4
- It must not be supposed that because painting, panelling and tapestry are the noblest forms of wail-decoration, they are necessarily the most unattainable. Good tapestry is, of course, very expensive,...
- Walls. Part 5
- The hanging of walls with chintz or any other material is even more objectionable than the use of wall-paper, since it has not the saving merit of cheapness. The custom is probably a survival of the t...
- IV. Doors
- THE fate of the door in America has been a curious one, and had the other chief features of the house - such as windows, fireplaces, and stairs - been pursued with the same relentless animosity by arc...
- Doors. Part 2
- When a doorway is over three feet six inches wide, a pair of doors should always be used; while a single door is preferable in a narrow opening. In rooms twelve feet or less in height, doorways sho...
- Doors. Part 3
- Great taste and skill were displayed in the decoration of door-panels and embrasure. In the earlier part of the seventeenth century, doors and embrasures were usually painted, and nothing in the way o...
- Doors. Part 4
- Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the use of highly polished mahogany doors became general in England. It has already been pointed out that the juxtaposition of a dark-colored door and a wh...
- V. Windows
- IN the decorative treatment of a room the importance of openings can hardly be overestimated. Not only do they represent the three chief essentials of its comfort, - light, heat and means of access, -...
- Windows. Continued
- The effect of a perpetually open window, produced by a large sheet of plate-glass, while it gives a sense of coolness and the impression of being out of doors, becomes for these very reasons a disadva...
- VI. Fireplaces
- THE fireplace was formerly always regarded as the chief feature of the room, and so treated in every well-thought-out scheme of decoration. The practical reasons which make it important that the wi...
- Fireplaces. Part 2
- With the seventeenth century, French mantel-pieces became more architectural in design and less florid in ornament, and the ponderous hood laden with pinnacles, escutcheons, fortified castles and stat...
- Fireplaces. Part 3
- It was soon seen that besides resisting the heat better than any other substance, the iron lining served to radiate it into the room. The iron back consequently held its own through every subsequent c...
- Fireplaces. Part 4
- Mantels which in the eighteenth century would have been thought in scale with rooms of certain dimensions would now be considered too small and insignificant. The use of large mantel-pieces, besides t...
- VII. Ceilings And Floors
- Should follow the rectangular subdivisions formed by open timber-framing. In the South, however, where the floors were generally of stone, resting on stone vaults, the structural conditions were so di...
- Ceilings And Floors. Part 2
- In the general effect of the room, the form of the ceiling is of more importance than its decoration. In rooms of a certain size and height, a flat surface overhead looks monotonous, and the ceiling s...
- Ceilings And Floors. Part 3
- This pressed-flower ornamentation is a direct precedent to the modern ceiling covered with wall-paper. One would think that the inappropriateness of this treatment was obvious; but since it has become...
- VIII. Entrance And Vestibule
- THE decoration of the entrance necessarily depends on the nature of the house and its situation. A country house, where visitors are few and life is simple, demands a less formal treatment than a hous...
- IX. Hall And Stairs
- WHAT is technically known as the staircase (in German the Treppenbaus) has, in our lax modern speech, come to be designated as the hall. In Gwilt's Encyclopedia of Architecture the staircase is def...
- Hall And Stairs. Part 2
- Viollet-le-Duc, in his dictionary of architecture, under the heading Cbateau, has given a sympathetic and ingenious explanation of the tenacity with which the French aristocracy clung to the obsolete ...
- Hall And Stairs. Part 3
- In Italy, where wood was little employed in domestic architecture, stairs were usually of stone. Marble came into general use in the grander houses when, in the seventeenth century, the stairs, instea...
- Hall And Stairs. Part 4
- The furniture of the hall should consist of benches or straight-backed chairs, and marble-topped tables and consoles. If a press is used, it should be architectural in design, like the old French and ...
- X. The Drawing-Room, Boudoir, And Morning-Room
- THE with-drawing-room of mediaeval England, to which the lady and her maidens retired from the boisterous festivities of the hall, seems at first to have been merely a part of the bedchamber in whic...
- The Drawing-Room, Boudoir, And Morning-Room. Part 2
- The purpose for which the salon de compagnie is used necessitates its being furnished in the same formal manner as other gala apartments. Circulation must not be impeded by a multiplicity of small pie...
- The Drawing-Room, Boudoir, And Morning-Room. Part 3
- The same may be said of the old French tables - from desks, card and work-tables, to the small gueridon just large enough to hold a book and candlestick. All these tables were simple and practical in ...
- XI. Gala Rooms: Ball-Room, Saloon, Music Room, Gallery
- EUROPEAN architects have always considered it essential that those rooms which are used exclusively for entertaining - gala rooms, as they are called - should be quite separate from the family apartme...
- Gala Rooms: Ball-Room, Saloon, Music Room, Gallery. Part 2
- The gallery was probably the first feature in domestic house-planning to be borrowed from Italy by northern Europe. It is seen in almost all the early Renaissance chateaux of France; and as soon as th...
- Gala Rooms: Ball-Room, Saloon, Music Room, Gallery. Part 3
- Gala apartments, as distinguished from living-rooms, should be lit from the ceiling, never from the walls. No ball-room or saloon is complete without its chandeliers: they are one of the characteristi...
- XII. The Library, Smoking-Room, And Den
- IN the days when furniture was defined as that which may be carried about, the natural bookcase was a chest with a strong lock. These chests, packed with precious manuscripts, followed the prince or...
- The Library, Smoking-Room, And Den. Continued
- When there are books enough, it is best to use them as part of the decorative treatment of the walls, panelling any intervening spaces in a severe and dignified style; otherwise movable bookcases may ...
- XIII. The Dining-Room
- THE dining-room, as we know it, is a comparatively recent innovation in house -planning. In the early middle ages the noble and his retainers ate in the hall; then the grand'salle, built for ceremonia...
- The Dining-Room. Continued
- The following description, accompanying d'Aviler's plate, is quoted here as an instance of the manner in which elaborate compositions were worked out by the old decorators: The second antechamber, be...
- XIV. Bedrooms
- THE history of the bedroom has been incidentally touched upon in tracing the development of the drawing-room from the mediaeval hall It was shown that early in the middle ages the sleeping-chamber, wh...
- Bedrooms. Continued
- Although bedrooms are still done in chintz, and though of late especially there has been a reaction from the satin-damask bedroom with its dust-collecting upholstery and knick-knacks, the modern hab...
- XV. The School-Room And Nurseries
- ONE of the most important and interesting problems in the planning and decoration of a house is that which has to do with the arrangement of the children's rooms. There is, of course, little opport...
- The School-Room And Nurseries. Part 2
- The children of the rich are usually the worst sufferers in such cases, since the presents received by those whose parents and relations are not well off have the saving merit of usefulness. It is t...
- The School-Room And Nurseries. Part 3
- The choristers of Robbia, the lean little St Johns of Donatello and his school - Verrocchio's fierce young David, and the Capitol Boy with the Goose - these may alternate with fragments of the Parth...
- XVI. Bric-A-Brac
- IT is perhaps not uninstructive to note that we have no English word to describe the class of household ornaments which French speech has provided with at least three designations, each indicating a d...
- Bric-A-Brac. Part 2
- Only time and experience can acquaint one with those minor peculiarities marking the successive manners of a master, or even with the technical nuances which at once enable the collector to affix a ...
- Bric-A-Brac. Part 3
- Below the great painter and sculptor came the trained designer who, formed in the same school as his superiors, did not attempt a poor copy of their masterpieces, but did the same kind of work on simp...
- Conclusion
- IN the preceding pages an attempt has been made to show that in the treatment of rooms we have passed from the golden age of architecture to the gilded age of decoration. Any argument in support of...
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