MENTION has been made of the effects produced in decorative units where the scale or relative sizes of its elements are well or badly chosen. A more detailed treatment of this subject is not likely to make us too careful in our selections in this field of expression.

The term scale is broader in its meaning than the mere word implies. It means not only that every element of each separate article must be in the right proportion to every other element of that article, but that every object used in the room unit must have the same perfect scale relation to every other object used and to the room itself.

Furthermore, this scale feeling extends not only to the appearance or to the forms, sizes and colours in their aesthetic effects, but also to these as each expresses its particular function idea.

Examine the treatment as it is applied to a chair, for instance. First, this given chair must have general proportions which are both pleasing and possible in its functional capacity. The proportion of height to width, and of each of these to the depth of the chair as a whole, must be considered. The dimensions of the back, of the seat, the height of the seat from the floor, the design of the arms, if there be any arms, must be so related that the chair will fulfill its functional idea of comfort. Then all of its parts by their perfect scale relation, each to each, will awaken through their significant forms a sense of Aesthetic pleasure.

The proportion, too, of the legs to the cross bars of the chair; of the members of the back to those parts and to each other; the mouldings (if there are any) to all these and to each other should be a subject for careful individual study no matter how small the detail may be. American furniture shows a woful lack of knowledge of such details, a lack of sincerity in expressing an idea and a neglect of aesthetic proportion.

If the chair is perfectly suited by its proportion and its forms to the idea for which it stands, and if these form relations are so pleasing by comparison that an aesthetic sensation is produced, the chair has fulfilled the law, so far as its scale relation is concerned, as a separate unit. But this is not the final tribunal before which this particular chair comes in composition with other chairs and other articles of furniture making up the room unit.

If the chair under discussion is to be covered with upholstery material and this material has decorative units of ornament upon its surface, these also must show a scale feeling. These have the same artistic relationship as that which exists between other members of the same general whole. Very often a chair with slim, delicate, refined legs will be found in historic periods with backs far too heavy, or vice versa, and while the chair is perhaps an expression of some stage of development during the period, it is an ugly aggregate of scale relationships and an inartistic model for present-day use. Sometimes when these parts are well related in scale the period demanded a textile the design of which was far too heavy, or perhaps too weak, for the structural scale elements of the chair.

There is a question, then, of choosing between bad forms, bad sizes, and poorly related scales as the expression of some period when these forms were not clearly sensed, or of so relating these parts in scale that they shall represent not only their functional idea but also an aesthetic scale relationship. There can be no question as to which to choose. The slavish acceptance or copy of a period article of furniture or decoration, bad in any part, but copied because of its period significance, bespeaks bad taste. It shows also a bad tendency on the part of the person who prefers to copy and hold intact badly expressed ideas, rather than to try to grasp the idea, modifying and improving it as much as he is able to under particular circumstances.

It should be made quite clear at this point that there are no periods in which one cannot find, and find often, the grossest inconsistencies in some phase of national expression. At no period and at no time have people succeeded in keeping a perfect balance of ideas; therefore, in no period have they made a perfect balance in expressing those ideas.

Sometimes, as in the High Greek period, proportion has been fundamental in all things and appears in its most highly developed form. At other times rhythm and grace of line have been the dominant thought, and dancing, waving-line combinations have been carried to their greatest degree of perfection. This occurred in the period of Louis XIV, when proportion and scale relations between rooms and their furnishings were often totally ignored in the matter of assembling objects as a room unit.

A single chair sometimes carried out in every particular the scale idea, but it was placed in a room in which the scale relation was absolutely unsensed and at times it was associated with articles of furniture having the same defect. Then, too, it frequently occurred that naturalistic decorative motifs were woven in the tapestry covering the seats of a Louis XV chair, decorations large enough in motif and strong enough in colour to have dominated a huge formal chair of the period of the High Renaissance in Italy.

The reason for studying scale from period standpoints is to establish the fact that certain scale relations are consistent and harmonious, and therefore pleasing, and that a violation of these scale relations is bound to destroy the consistency, the harmony and the pleasure resulting from scale as an artistic consideration.

One is quite likely to come across badly related things in the most ordinary furnishings of the most ordinary houses as well as in the most elaborate ones where periods and types are more thoughtlessly mixed.

A table generally has a larger leg than a chair, but the ratio of size between the leg and the chair should have a bearing on the general size of the table as it relates to the general size of the chair; or, rather, the general contour, size and thickness of material in any article of furniture establishes a relationship between its dimensions as a whole and the dimensions of its parts, such as its legs, its top, its slats or its panels.

SIMPLE SIDE WALL ELEVATION, EXPRESSING GOOD SCALE RELATIONS AND EMPHASIZING 1JV DECORATIVE EFFECTS THE WINDOWS AND CHIMNEY PIECE TREATMENT.

Having established this relationship, a chair which is one-fourth as big as a cabinet or a table should have a leg not as big as the table but in a scale somewhat corresponding to its size, as its size relates to the table dimensions.