THE term "design" has generally meant the choice and arrangement of certain shapes or forms to produce a decorative effect. It should include not only form but colour, or rather colour and form, for without colour there is no form.

If all objects were exactly the same colour tone it would be impossible to see where one object left off and the other began. In fact, there would be no shapes or forms to discuss. The greater the colour contrast' in hue, value, or intensity, or any two or three of these qualities, the more clearly defined is the form arrangement which these objects produce.

The real recognition of form is a mental process, and it is sufficient to remark here that this is a comparison of previously acquired ideas. Form is not quickly perceived through the sense of sight like colour. This makes the study of form more involved and perhaps, in many cases, less easily understood at first.

Design or composition includes, then, the choice and arrangement of colours, forms and lines with a unit as the desired result. This unit may be the exterior of a huge cathedral, the interior of any room, the individual unit used in any one of these, or whatever in itself expresses the unit idea.

As has already been noted, the structure is the fundamental reason for all decorated things. The build or structure determines the form. The form, then, conversely, is the result of structural lines of certain kinds used in certain combinations to represent individual ideas. When we realize that everything de-pends upon the structural idea it is much easier to see relationships between shapes or forms in furnishing construction and the room in which they are to be used, than if we see parts of furnishing objects or colours or decorations only.

An Italian chair of the early fifteenth century is built on horizontal and vertical lines. Its construction is rectangular and for its beauty it depends upon its simplicity, its exquisite proportion, and its consistent decorative additions. In no field of chair construction has there been a result so dignified, formal, stable, consistent, sincere, and architecturally connected with the house as this beautiful expression of the early Italian Renaissance. The very lines or structure of this chair repeat the lines of room construction.

The same fine feeling for proportion, structural likeness, simplicity and consistency is found in the cabinets, tables, and other objects of furniture during this period of expression. With objects like these it is easy enough to recognize an element harmonizing with the structure of a room, its side walls, its floor and its ceiling.

On the other hand, with furniture of the period of Louis XV in France, where the boundary of every structural part is a curved line of the most subtle character, it is far more difficult to establish relations of harmony between it and the constructive lines of a modern house. It is the character, or kind of line which bounds these forms, that I ask you to notice particularly now.

Very often textiles, wall covers and other objects present exactly the same difficulty. A chair is to become a decorative motif in a room as a background, or a piece of ornament is to become a decorative motif on a textile rug or article of furniture. Either by placing or by its structural lines it must harmonize with the room, with the articles of furniture, and with the textile or other object upon which it is to appear as a decorative unit. Often harmonious motifs are wholly unrelated to the object upon which they are placed, and become glaringly undecorative because their entire line or form effect has no common harmonizing elemental line in concord with the article which it purports to decorate.

It will be seen that the structure is the reason for the decoration, that the decoration must conform to the structure, and that there must be a common element of harmony between the original form and the decorative object used with it.

The first principle of form I shall call consistent structural unity. The facade of a house is an excellent example for structural and decorative study. The vertical and horizontal lines bounding it at least on two of these sides are emphasized, supported and strengthened by cornices. There is a change in treatment at the edges, brought about by the introduction of doors and windows whose structures are in harmony with that of the side of the house, and sometimes with other objects related in the same way.

Not only, however, are these objects related by their general form to the house, of which they are a part, but they are, if pleasing, so placed, when seen in groups, that their bounding lines are horizontal and vertical. When this form does not obtain - for example, if there is one window, then another, and then another lower still - there is a feeling of incongruity and unpleasantness arising from an arrangement which does not harmonize with the general structure form of the facade.

Brought into the house the application of these principles is legion. Most persons see and feel quickly the violation of such a rule on the outside, but fail utterly to grasp the need of the same relationship on the inside.

Let us take first the floor of the room. This is an oblong or a square, infrequently modified by a curved window or some other curved line of unnatural growth. This establishes something of the line of the furniture, but something still more of the arrangement of this furniture as to its place on the floor.

Now let us consider the rug. A common error is to throw the rug - particularly if there are several in the room - upon the floor in an oblique or cat-a-cornered position so that no line boundary of the rug is parallel to or in harmony with the bounding lines of the floor. This immediately establishes a new decorative idea, built on top of the original one. Chairs, tables, divans and other furniture must be placed either with the structural suggestion of the rugs, or with the original structural arrangement of the room. Both lines cannot be followed.