The Decoration of Houses Part 9

The walls of the staircase in large houses should be of panelled stone or marble, as in the examples given in the plates accompanying this chapter.

In small houses, where an expensive decoration is out of the question, a somewhat similar architectural effect may be obtained by the use of a few plain mouldings fixed to the plaster, the whole being painted in one uniform tint, or in two contrasting colors, such as white for the mouldings, and buff, gray, or pale green for the wall. To this scheme may be added plaster medallions, as suggested for the vestibule, or garlands and other architectural motives made of staff, in imitation of the stucco ornaments of the old French and Italian decorators. When such ornaments are used, they should invariably be simple and strong in design. The modern decorator is too often tempted by mere prettiness of detail to forget the general effect of his composition.

In a staircase, where only the general effect is seized, prettiness does not count, and the effect produced should be strong, clear and telling.

For the same reason, a stair-carpet, if used, should be of one color, without pattern. Ma.s.ses of plain color are one of the chief means of producing effect in any scheme of decoration.

When the floor of the hall is of marble or mosaic,--as, if possible, it should be,--the design, like that of the walls, should be clear and decided in outline (see Plate x.x.x). On the other hand, if the hall is used as an antechamber and carpeted, the carpet should be of one color, matching that on the stairs.

In many large houses the stairs are now built of stone or marble, while the floor of the landings is laid in wood, apparently owing to the idea that stone or marble floors are cold. In the tropically-heated American house not even the most sensitive person could be chilled by pa.s.sing contact with a stone floor; but if it is thought to "look cold," it is better to lay a rug or a strip of carpet on the landing than to permit the proximity of two such different substances as wood and stone.

Unless the stairs are of wood, that material should never be used for the rail; nor should wooden stairs be put in a staircase of which the walls are of stone, marble, or scagliola. If the stairs are of wood, it is better to treat the walls with wood or plaster panelling. In simple staircases the best wall-decoration is a wooden dado-moulding nailed on the plaster, the dado thus formed being painted white, and the wall above it in any uniform color. Continuous pattern, such as that on paper or stuff hangings, is specially objectionable on the walls of a staircase, since it disturbs the simplicity of composition best fitted to this part of the house.

For the lighting of the hall there should be a lantern like that in the vestibule, but more elaborate in design. This mode of lighting harmonizes with the severe treatment of the walls and indicates at once that the hall is not a living-room, but a thoroughfare.[33]

If lights be required on the stairs, they should take the form of fire-gilt bronze sconces, as architectural as possible in design, without any finikin prettiness of detail. (For good examples, see the _appliques_ in Plates V and x.x.xIV). It is almost impossible to obtain well-designed _appliques_ of this kind in America; but the increasing interest shown in house-decoration will in time doubtless cause a demand for a better type of gas and electric fixtures. Meantime, unless imported sconces can be obtained, the plainest bra.s.s fixtures should be chosen in preference to the more elaborate models now to be found here.

Where the walls of a hall are hung with pictures, these should be few in number, and decorative in composition and coloring. No subject requiring thought and study is suitable in such a position. The mythological or architectural compositions of the Italian and French schools of the last two centuries, with their superficial graces of color and design, are for this reason well suited to the walls of halls and antechambers.

The same may be said of prints. These should not be used in a large high-studded hall; but they look well in a small entranceway, if hung on plain-tinted walls. Here again such architectural compositions as Piranesi's, with their bold contrasts of light and shade, Marc Antonio's cla.s.sic designs, or some frieze-like procession, such as Mantegna's "Triumph of Julius Caesar," are especially appropriate; whereas the subtle detail of the German Little Masters, the symbolism of Durer's etchings and the graces of Marillier or Moreau le Jeune would be wasted in a situation where there is small opportunity for more than a pa.s.sing glance.

In most American houses, the warming of hall and stairs is so amply provided for that where there is a hall fireplace it is seldom used.

In country houses, where it is sometimes necessary to have special means for heating the hall, the open fireplace is of more service; but it is not really suited to such a situation. The hearth suggests an idea of intimacy and repose that has no place in a thoroughfare like the hall; and, aside from this question of fitness, there is a practical objection to placing an open chimney-piece in a position where it is exposed to continual draughts from the front door and from the rooms giving upon the hall.

The best way of heating a hall is by means of a faience stove--not the oblong block composed of shiny white or brown tiles seen in Swiss and German _pensions_, but one of the fine old stoves of architectural design still used on the Continent for heating the vestibule and dining-room. In Europe, increased attention has of late been given to the design and coloring of these stoves; and if better known here, they would form an important feature in the decoration of our halls.

Admirable models may be studied in many old French and German houses and on the borders of Switzerland and Italy; while the museum at Parma contains several fine examples of the rocaille period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _PLATE x.x.xIII._

FRENCH ARMOIRE, LOUIS XIV PERIOD.

MUSEUM OF DECORATIVE ARTS, PARIS.]

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Burckhardt, in his _Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien_, justly points out that the seeming inconsequence of mediaeval house-planning in northern Europe was probably due in part to the fact that the feudal castle, for purposes of defence, was generally built on an irregular site. See also Viollet-le-Duc.

[30] "Der gothische Profanbau in Italien ... steht im vollen Gegensatz zum Norden durch die rationelle Anlage." Burckhardt, _Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien_, p. 28.

[31] See the stairs of the Riccardi palace in Florence, of the Piccolomini palace at Pienza and of the ducal palace at Urbino.

[32] For a fine example of a hall-niche containing a statue, see Plate x.x.x.

[33] In large halls the tall _torchere_ of marble or bronze may be used for additional lights (see Plate x.x.xII).

X

THE DRAWING-ROOM, BOUDOIR, AND MORNING-ROOM

The "with-drawing-room" of mediaeval England, to which the lady and her maidens retired from the boisterous festivities of the hall, seems at first to have been merely a part of the bedchamber in which the lord and lady slept. In time it came to be screened off from the sleeping-room; then, in the king's palaces, it became a separate room for the use of the queen and her damsels; and so, in due course, reached the n.o.bleman's castle, and established itself as a permanent part of English house-planning.

In France the evolution of the _salon_ seems to have proceeded on somewhat different lines. During the middle ages and the early Renaissance period, the more public part of the n.o.bleman's life was enacted in the hall, or _grand'salle_, while the social and domestic side of existence was transferred to the bedroom. This was soon divided into two rooms, as in England. In France, however, both these rooms contained beds; the inner being the real sleeping-chamber, while in the outer room, which was used not only for administering justice and receiving visits of state, but for informal entertainments and the social side of family life, the bedstead represented the lord's _lit de parade_, traditionally a.s.sociated with state ceremonial and feudal privileges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _PLATE x.x.xIV._

SALA DELLA MADDALENA, ROYAL PALACE, GENOA.

XVIII CENTURY.

(ITALIAN DRAWING-ROOM IN ROCAILLE STYLE.)]

The custom of having a state bedroom in which no one slept (_chambre de parade_, as it was called) was so firmly established that even in the engravings of Abraham Bosse, representing French life in the reign of Louis XIII, the fashionable apartments in which card-parties, suppers, and other entertainments are taking place, invariably contain a bed.

In large establishments the _chambre de parade_ was never used as a sleeping-chamber except by visitors of distinction; but in small houses the lady slept in the room which served as her boudoir and drawing-room. The Renaissance, it is true, had introduced from Italy the _cabinet_ opening off the lady's chamber, as in the palaces of Urbino and Mantua; but these rooms were at first seen only in kings'

palaces, and were, moreover, too small to serve any social purpose.

The _cabinet_ of Catherine de' Medici at Blois is a characteristic example.

Meanwhile, the gallery had relieved the _grand'salle_ of some of its numerous uses; and these two apartments seem to have satisfied all the requirements of society during the Renaissance in France.

In the seventeenth century the introduction of the two-storied Italian saloon produced a state apartment called a _salon_; and this, towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, was divided into two smaller rooms: one, the _salon de compagnie_, remaining a part of the gala suite used exclusively for entertaining (see Plate x.x.xIV), while the other--the _salon de famille_--became a family apartment like the English drawing-room.

The distinction between the _salon de compagnie_ and the _salon de famille_ had by this time also established itself in England, where the state drawing-room retained its Italian name of _salone_, or saloon, while the living-apartment preserved, in abbreviated form, the mediaeval designation of the lady's with-drawing-room.

Pains have been taken to trace as clearly as possible the mixed ancestry of the modern drawing-room, in order to show that it is the result of two distinct influences--that of the gala apartment and that of the family sitting-room. This twofold origin has curiously affected the development of the drawing-room. In houses of average size, where there are but two living-rooms--the master's library, or "den," and the lady's drawing-room,--it is obvious that the latter ought to be used as a _salon de famille_, or meeting-place for the whole family; and it is usually regarded as such in England, where common sense generally prevails in matters of material comfort and convenience, and where the drawing-room is often furnished with a simplicity which would astonish those who a.s.sociate the name with white-and-gold walls and uncomfortable furniture.

In modern American houses both traditional influences are seen.

Sometimes, as in England, the drawing-room is treated as a family apartment, and provided with books, lamps, easy-chairs and writing-tables. In other houses it is still considered sacred to gilding and discomfort, the best room in the house, and the convenience of all its inmates, being sacrificed to a vague feeling that no drawing-room is worthy of the name unless it is uninhabitable.

This is an instance of the _salon de compagnie_ having usurped the rightful place of the _salon de famille_; or rather, if the bourgeois descent of the American house be considered, it may be more truly defined as a remnant of the "best parlor" superst.i.tion.

Whatever the genealogy of the American drawing-room, it must be owned that it too often fails to fulfil its purpose as a family apartment.

It is curious to note the amount of thought and money frequently spent on the one room in the house used by no one, or occupied at most for an hour after a "company" dinner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _PLATE x.x.xV._

CONSOLE IN THE PEt.i.t TRIANON, VERSAILLES.

LATE LOUIS XV STYLE.

BUST OF LOUIS XVI, BY PAJOU.]

To this drawing-room, from which the inmates of the house instinctively flee as soon as their social duties are discharged, many necessities are often sacrificed. The library, or den, where the members of the family sit, may be furnished with shabby odds and ends; but the drawing-room must have its gilt chairs covered with brocade, its _vitrines_ full of modern Saxe, its guipure curtains and velvet carpet.

The _salon de compagnie_ is out of place in the average house. Such a room is needed only where the dinners or other entertainments given are so large as to make it impossible to use the ordinary living-rooms of the house. In the grandest houses of Europe the gala-rooms are never thrown open except for general entertainments, or to receive guests of exalted rank, and the spectacle of a dozen people languishing after dinner in the gilded wilderness of a state saloon is practically unknown.

The purpose for which the _salon de compagnie_ is used necessitates its being furnished in the same formal manner as other gala apartments. Circulation must not be impeded by a multiplicity of small pieces of furniture holding lamps or other fragile objects, while at least half of the chairs should be so light and easily moved that groups may be formed and broken up at will. The walls should be brilliantly decorated, without needless elaboration of detail, since it is unlikely that the temporary occupants of such a room will have time or inclination to study its treatment closely. The chief requisite is a gay first impression. To produce this, the wall-decoration should be light in color, and the furniture should consist of a few strongly marked pieces, such as handsome cabinets and consoles, bronze or marble statues, and vases and candelabra of imposing proportions. Almost all modern furniture is too weak in design and too finikin in detail to look well in a gala drawing-room.[34] (For examples of drawing-room furniture, see Plates VI, IX, x.x.xIV, and x.x.xV.)

Beautiful pictures or rare prints produce little effect on the walls of a gala room, just as an acc.u.mulation of small objects of art, such as enamels, ivories and miniatures, are wasted upon its tables and cabinets. Such treasures are for rooms in which people spend their days, not for those in which they a.s.semble for an hour's entertainment.

But the _salon de compagnie_, being merely a modified form of the great Italian saloon, is a part of the gala suite, and any detailed discussion of the decorative treatment most suitable to it would result in a repet.i.tion of what is said in the chapter on Gala Rooms.