Using One's Natural Perception Of Form

IN perhaps no other department of house-furnishing will the usual common-sense of the individual be so fully a guide as in the matter of form. Not everyone has an eye for colour, and there are many other points on which knowledge must be acquired, but most persons have a fairly good eye for form. It indeed seems to be a more inherent talent than most; for the child, when it begins to draw a face, invariably ignores the masses of light and shade which indicate the most noticeable characteristics and seeks for outline. In furnishing, many mistakes are made in matters relating to form, but almost always because of lack of experience in what to look for: as soon as the error is pointed out it is readily perceived and the person wonders why he had not himself noticed it. It will be the object of this chapter, therefore, to aid in opening the eyes of the reader by a few hints and so enable him to use fully the faculty he already possesses, and this will better be accomplished by first mentioning such matters as they are likely to arise, even if by this method they are taken out of their orderly arrangement. The form of the various rooms of the house and the details of doors, windows, and "trim" have been attended to by the architect and builder. Objectionable features, such as ornamental grilles, may be removed and mantels of bad design replaced by others, but our main concern in the department of form is with furniture, textiles, accessories and their placement.

Form In Selection And Arrangement

If the room be long and low, so that its lines are largely horizontal, it is plain that it should not contain furniture of tall, narrow, high-shouldered character in which the lines are noticeably perpendicular. The converse is also naturally true. If the woodwork is heavy, and particularly if there be a beamed ceiling, so that the whole interior has a sturdy air, then slender, fragile pieces are certainly out of their element here. So also are textiles of very small and refined design. It is therefore fundamental that the furnishings should suit the room, and if they decidedly do not no amount of care or expense spent upon it will render it satisfactory.

Let us remember another point, equally important, the lines of a room are rectangular - it is seldom indeed that we shall find an oval or circular room in a small house or modest apartment. Those lines being rectangular we should not disturb them (and ourselves) with rugs and pieces of furniture disposed at all angles. Even decorators will sometimes swing day-beds, bedsteads, and couches diagonally out into the room and it is seldom that the repose of the room is not disturbed thereby. Many women seem to be possessed with the notion that it is "correct and artistic" to set upright pianos, desks, and china-closets across a corner, leaving an ugly, triangular space behind. Rugs are similarly and wrongly placed. The only position for them and for the main pieces of furniture is in accordance with the directions of the walls, either lengthwise or across.

If a room is sufficiently large to accomodate furniture out upon the floor the rule still holds. A sofa at a fireplace may be placed before and parallel with it, or with the end of the sofa near one side of the chimney-breast, projecting directly out into the room and balanced by another sofa or by a chair and occasional table on the opposite side (Plates 10 and 150) - in either case it will follow one or the other direction of the wall. A table is often most attractively disposed with not its side but its end to the wall, a chair being placed conveniently at hand. A rectangular or elliptical table out upon the floor space should still follow the direction of the wall, either lengthwise or across. Chairs and seating-stools form nearly the only exception - some of these may be left at convenient angles and will give variety without disturbance.

We have seen in the chapter on colour and just now in the placing of furniture that the thing to be avoided is conflict. It will be made plain that this principle runs through the whole field of house-furnishing, so that two definitions cannot be too strongly emphasised:

Contrast is a difference which affords agreeable variety and interest.

Conflict is a difference which is irreconcilable.

Although the lines of a room are rectangular, the use of elliptical (often erroneously called oval) and circular rugs, pictures, and clocks do not cause disturbance but, rather, afford relief. When the Greeks built their beautiful and severely rectangular temples did they employ square, detached pillars? No, they used circular columns: and did not the Ionic capitals have round, spiral volutes? Similarly, medallions in rugs, hangings, or upholstery, if well designed and of due proportion, are perfectly in order - the cartouche has been used to relieve severe forms in the best architecture from the early Renaissance to the present day. But - lay upon the floor one Mousul rug with heavy, strongly-marked, diagonal stripes and see how it twists the room awry!

Top-heaviness would seem to be an immediately noticeable error, and yet the writer recently saw a photograph of a hall table with a mirror suspended above it huge enough to crush the table should it become detached. This is but one instance of lack of "scale": others are filmy curtains depending from heavy poles, immense lamps upon fragile tables, heavy pieces of furniture used with slender ones, textiles of sprawling pattern in a small room, great chairs crowded into a narrow space or a ridiculously small chair attempting to furnish a large area, the side of a room supplied with low pieces only, thus leaving a bare and lofty wall above. These faults are all evident and easily avoided when once we think of them. Rodin has said that "the test of good art is that the eye should be perfectly satisfied." But our perceptions must be fully developed in order to be an infallible guide.

Anyone introducing a wainscot into a room will speedily discover that if it occupies exactly one half of the wall-height its appearance will be "set" and unpleasing; but without a little help he will not know to what height it should reach. This has been found to be either three-eighths of the height of the wall if the wainscot is to be low, or five-eighths if higher - the accurate proportion is that of 1 to 1.618. The attention of artists has recently been called to this principle by Mr. Jay Hambidge in America and Mr. William Schooling in England, and perhaps by others, but it is said to have descended from the Greeks and the masters of painting were known to be aware of it, and its use has been found to exist in the distribution of the areas of their pictures. Mr. Robert Henri showed the writer a number of examples he had carefully worked out in addition to those indicated by others.

It is advisable merely to mention here that in the disposal of furniture the use of the room itself sometimes indicates its prominent feature: the bedstead is plainly the important piece in a bedroom and its situation should first be determined upon. It is said that, owing to the electrical current running from pole to pole, the North and South position is the most hygienic one, so, if possible, the bedstead should thus be placed. The need for light in dressing will have its influence upon selecting a position for dressing-table or bureau. These are obvious indications, but the arrangement of a living-room of fair size is so much a different matter, that it is often passed by with a few remarks. In this volume it is fully treated in the next section.