MUCH confusion exists at the present time as to the artistic essentials of a modern house. A great deal has been written - perhaps more has been said - about this subject, and still it is vague to most of us. This vagueness is partly because we have not realized fully that a house is but the normal expression of one's intellectual concept of fitness and his aesthetic ideal of what is beautiful.

The house is but the externalized man; himself expressed in colour, form, line and texture. To be sure, he is usually limited in means, hampered by a contrary and penurious landlord or by family heirlooms, and often he cannot find just what he wants in the trade; but still the house is his house. It is he.

Another reason for this vagueness is the extreme difficulty of parting with traditions. We all deplore this reluctance in others and then embrace our individual traditions the more closely. The first we must dispel are those concerning art; then we must try to find out what art really is. Another quite as necessary to overcome is the generally accepted idea that one must learn all he knows of colour, form and texture through "feeling." This doctrine has for generations kept the consciousness of thousands of people closed to the simplest principles of the language structure of colour and form. Being free of these misleading traditional beliefs, the way is open for learning to do what is not only essential, but natural.

The periods, too, have been treated as strange and incomprehensible, too deep and mysterious for anything but unquestioning admiration and slavish copy. The decorative idea is so completely hidden by the belief in and admiration for ornamental show, that the Baroque idea is the only one generally considered as decorative at all.

These and other misconceptions are the reasons for this book. It is modestly hoped that it may be of service to somebody in pointing out what a house is really for and what it should express. It is designed also to make clear the essential qualities which are the life and soul of each of the decorative periods in history.

More than anything else, perhaps, it attempts to express simply the principles of colour and form harmony in such a way that any one, who desires to, may express with some degree of confidence his individual ideas. These ideas in terms of colour, form, line and texture form his ideal of interior decoration.

Each of the illustrations submitted is an expression of some particular quality or qualities explained in the captions. The violation of other principles of arrangement in some cases detracts from the perfect unity of the room. Each illustration should be seen from this point of view also.