The nature and the purpose of this study are, I believe, accurately indicated by its title. It is an attempt to analyze, correlate and set forth as clearly as possible the artistic principles that underlie sound work in the decoration of houses. This attempt is based upon the conviction that in a knowledge of these principles, their scientific basis, and the methods of their application, the beginner in this art will find the surest and easiest path to reasonably successful results in practice.

The book is designed primarily to be of interest to the housewife, concerned with the attractiveness of her home; to the worker in housefurnishing shops, concerned with increasing the value of his services; to the teacher, concerned with imparting compact and workable knowledge, and to the reader who desires a general understanding of the subject. In other words, it is designed to be of interest primarily to the beginner and the reader whose knowledge of interior decoration is limited, rather than to the artist and the expert.

The artist, precisely because he is an artist, has reached a point where he works intuitively, without conscious reference to the scientific substratum which necessarily underlies all his creative processes. He gets the results at which he aims, and need not trouble with reasons. The beginner, however, possesses little or none of this power. He cannot with safety depend wholly or even largely upon intuition, as multitudes of unlovely houses abundantly witness. His choices must be reasoned choices, based upon conscious reference to the principles of decorative composition involved in his problem. His only alternative is the method of simple experiment - a method enormously wasteful, in time, in money, in comfort, and especially in beauty.

There have been many attempts to formulate the principles of interior decoration, and there will no doubt be many more. The final work on any art can never be written, since artistic theory does not precede the practice of creative artists, but follows after. Of the present book I can say truthfully only that it represents a great amount of hard work, now finished. With a profound sense of relief I pass the work of judgment on to the reader.

The ideas herein set forth have been drawn from manifold and widely scattered sources. Many of them have of course been taken from the common stock-pot of professional practice. A few, I believe, are my own. For the most part, however, they have of necessity resulted, either directly or through processes of synthesis, from the reading of other men's works. Most of this reading, extending through many years and covering many fields, has been done without a notebook. At this late day it is unhappily impossible to trace and credit these ideas to their original sources. All that I can do now is to make a general acknowledgment of indebtedness, particularly to the works of Ruskin and Walter Crane; to the Grammaire des arts decoratifs and the Grammaire historique des arts du dessin of Ch. Blanc; to Mayeux's La composition decorative; Harvard's L'art dans la maison; Croce's Theory of AEsthetic; Lipps' Raumasthetik und geo-metrisch-optische Tauschungen; Souriau's L'esthetique de la lumiere; Raymond's series of volumes on comparative esthetics; Valentine's Introduction to the Experimental Psychology of Beauty; Fere's Pathology of Emotions, and to Chevreul, Rood, Von Bezold, Ridgeway and Luckiesh among the colorists.

Grateful acknowledgment is due to Mr. William Cusick of San Francisco, who twice read the manuscript during the formative stages of its preparation, and to Mr. Gregg O'Brien, who made most of the drawings essential to a clear understanding of the text.

The method of illustration is unusual in books on interior decoration, and merits a word of explanation. While the suggestive value of photographic reproductions of good interiors is very great, so that the student will want to be familiar with the large number of such interiors to be found in the books and magazines of every library, for the purposes of this study the amount of detail in illustrations of this character renders them of questionable value. They include too much and teach too little. Being here concerned with the illustration of specific principles as they are separately considered, I have employed for the purpose line drawings and simple photographs, each emphasizing the point involved - often to the degree of intentional overemphasis - and no other. The drawings are inserted in the body of the text, thus linking indissolubly the discussion and illustration of each point. By this method the pictorial value of the book may perhaps be lessened. I feel sure, however, that its real usefulness to the reader will be very greatly increased.

I was in London at the time the manuscript was completed, and the photographs reproduced are for that reason largely from English sources. They were for the most part made available through the courtesy of Messrs. Gill & Reigate, Ltd., Messrs. Arthur Sanderson & Sons, Ltd., the National Gallery and the British Museum. It is a pleasure to acknowledge my appreciation of these courtesies.

Berkeley, California.

Bernard C. Jakway.