A FURNISHED room does not grow as do the lilies of the field. It must be fashioned by studied creative processes. Yet it is the distinguishing characteristic and highest excellence of a perfectly furnished room that it appears to be not a creation but a growth. In every such room each part is so subtly related to all the other parts and to the whole that the relationship appears to be organic. As a result of faultless calculation there is no evidence of calculation. The completed room seems to have grown spontaneously to a perfection to which nothing could be added and from which nothing could be taken away.

This organic harmony is dependent first of all upon proportion. Indeed proportion, or the relation or adaptation of one portion to another, or to the whole, as respects magnitude, quality or degree, is the dominant element in interior decoration, as it is in all the arts of design. Not only the beauty of every form in nature and in art, but its essential character and significance as well, is conditioned by the relationships borne by each of its parts to all the other parts and to the whole. The oak tree is beautiful, and so is the birch, and each has a fiber that is hard and enduring; yet we think always of the oak as sturdy, vigorous and indomitable, and of the birch as graceful, delicate and yielding. Similarly, the body of a perfectly developed athlete is always beautiful; yet no one expects the proportions of the wrestler or the weight-thrower to be the same as those of the runner or the vaulter. Each is beautiful in his own way, because the parts of his body are adapted not only to his stature, but also to the requirements of the game in which he is trained to compete. We can admire both; but we could by no possibility admire a form in which the great shoulders and torso of the one were joined to the slender hips and legs of the other. Inevitably such a form would appear grotesquely ugly in appearance and monstrous in significance.

The sense of proportion derived subconsciously from long familiarity with growing things, and particularly with the human body, conditions our artistic judgments. We expect to find things together which seem capable of having grown together; that is, things characterized by relationships analogous to the relationships existing among growing things. Thus we are best satisfied when the column or pilaster has both a capital, or head, and a plinth or foot; or when the ratio of valance to side hangings is the same as the ratio of head to body. And because the tree, fixed and immovable, has a trunk that tapers from bottom to top, while the animals, moving at will from place to place, have legs that taper from top to bottom, it happens that in the design of furniture the billiard table, which is fixed and immovable, may have legs that taper from bottom to top; that heavy sofas, chairs and tables which though not fixed are not easily movable, may have legs that do not taper either way; but that light and easily movable pieces, to satisfy the subconscious judgments of the mind, must have legs that taper from top to bottom.

Figure 23. - These small light chairs are identical except for the legs. Note that the example with tapering legs is far more satisfying than the one with legs which do not taper.

The attempt to formulate laws of proportion was first made by the Greeks, through whose unique genius the whole realm of human thought and emotion found expression. Observing that the human body - to them the most admirable and beautiful object in the world - is characterized by fairly definite proportions, or relationships among its parts, they set about it to reduce the design of buildings to a similar basis. Taking the size of a single architectural member - usually the semi-diameter of a column at its base - as a module or unit of proportion, they established ideal ratios between this module and every other part of the building. Having decided, in the case of a particular building, upon a linear value for his module, the Greek architect could construct his whole building, whatever its size, according to the laws of proportion, as the anatomist can reconstruct an entire body from a single bone.

The progressive development of Greek architecture, typified most clearly in the three orders, offers an admirable field for the study of proportion as it conditions both the creation of beautiful forms and the expression of emotional ideas. Thus the Doric column - to speak, most incompletely, of the column only and not of its entablature - reveals the characteristics of the race that created it, a race vigorous, proudspirited and grave, of rigid morals, an austere and solemn religion, a passionate love of warfare and of the mimic combats of the gymnasium. The Doric column seems to spring directly and powerfully from the rock of its foundation. Its height is less than six diameters. It tapers strikingly from base to top, has but slight entasis, and is channeled with flutings deeply cut and acute. Thus the order is characterized, particularly in its earlier monuments, by a massive solidity, a virile emphasis upon constructional forms, and a rude and solemn majesty. It was refined and softened as it developed, but it never lost its essential character, which is inherent in its proportions. In the Parthenon, at once the most perfect example of the style and the most beautiful building of the ancient world, there is little of softness or of elegance; but throughout and above all there is a sense of immense strength, of immemorial repose, and of calm and noble majesty.

The Ionic order, born of another racial stock and a later age and employed in the design of temples consecrated to divinities less austere and virile and more gracious, yielding and lovely, reveals the change toward these qualities chiefly through changes in proportion. The Ionic column has a height of from eight to nine diameters. It is slender, graceful, springs from a base composed of subtle curves, is channeled with flutings more slightly marked and separated, and completed by a volute capital which combines superlative grace and beauty of curved line with chaste and delicate ornament.