THOUGHTS ON HOUSE-DECORATION

House-decoration, it would seem, is almost synonymous with civilization, and certainly has been co-extensive with its development in the world. The domestic interior, so far as we are able to realize it, and all that it implies, affords the best visible evidence of the standard of living and refinement, and sense of beauty existing among a race or people of any age or country.

In proportion as the conditions of human life become more and more artificial, and removed from nature, man seems to require the aid of art.

Decoration, indeed, might be regarded as a sort of aesthetic compensation for the increased artificiality, complexity, and restraint of civilized life.

Sheltered from the storm in a rain-proof, well-drained house, by a comfortable fireside, the comfort of a citizen who sits at home at ease is perhaps increased by the contemplation of pictures of wild landscape, perilous coasts, and even shipwrecks, upon his drawing-room wall; but when the sun smiles and the long days come, something of the instinct of primitive man moves him, and he wants to be off to the woods and moors, seeking nature rather than art.

Thoreau, in his delightful book, “Walden,” describes his endeavours to return to nature and reduce his life to the simplest conditions; he found the woods of Walden and its denizens, and the pond with its wild fowl, and the contemplation of the changeful drama of nature quite sufficient, beyond a little rough wooden shanty, with a bed, a chair, and a writing-desk in it. The only attempt at decoration he seems to have made was when he introduced some curious stones, by way of ornament, but quickly got rid of them again, as they needed dusting and arranging. Here he seems to have reached the zero of house-decoration.

Decoration with primitive and pre-historic man may be considered chiefly personal and possible. The taste for decorative pattern was gratified upon his own skin in the form of tattoo or war-paint, or in strings of beads, feather head-dresses, and the carved handles of his weapons. Not that modern man—still less modern woman—has given up personal decoration, in fact, I suppose feathers and beads were never so much in demand, but it seems that modern painters and decorators having provided so much more elaborate and becoming backgrounds they have to be “lived up to.” One has heard of the man (in “Punch”) who was looking for a wife “to suit his furniture.” Well, the background is an important element of a picture, after all.

Cave-walls, though not neglected in primitive times, no doubt had rather severe limitations, regarded as fields for decoration, and until the art of constructing dwellings had been developed to a certain extent, it is obvious that mural decoration could hardly exist in any ordered form.

Tent-dwellers, like the Tartars and the Arabs, developed the mat and rug, the carpet and cover, and thus, on the textile side, made their historic contribution to an important element in modern house-decoration, as well as to certain typical forms of pattern well known to decorators; but the ancient Egyptian, with his plastered surface over the sun-baked bricks which formed the wall of his dwelling was, so far as we know, the initiator of painted mural decoration. The definite but abstract forms, the primary colours cleared by black outlines, and the resulting flat decorative effect of early Egyptian art, have set the abstract type for mural painting for all ages.

With the Egyptians, however, as with the ancients generally, the buildings most regarded for decorative purposes, owing, of course to their social and religious customs, were the temple, the palace, and the tomb. The Greeks and Romans, and the nations of mediaeval Europe, broadly speaking, followed the same order, inspired by very different ideas, and under the influence of very different habits of life and climatic differences. The classic temple and the mediaeval cathedral became alike the depositories of the most beautiful decorative art. They are the great representative monuments of the art of the age and of the races that produced them, truly collective and typical.

The individual citizen under Greek, Roman, and especially Christian ideas, and the development of commerce becoming of more and more importance, we find the private house considered more and more as a field for the decorator’s art, and for the expression of individual feeling and taste.

As regards walls, fresco and tempera painting appear to have been the chief and most general methods of decoration from classical times to the middle ages, and it is still to those methods we look for the higher forms of mural work.

The remains of Pompeii, disclosed from beneath their pall of volcanic ashes, have furnished a mine of examples to the mural painter, and, indeed, the influence of the Roman and Pompeian taste and methods of treatment seems to have remained almost traditional with the Italian decorator, who has never lost his skill as a workman in tempera painting, though one may not always be able to admire his taste.

Yet, in regard to such a marked and distinct type of decoration as the Pompeian, one cannot but feel that in the endeavour (which has often been made) to adapt such types of decoration to modern domestic interiors there is an uncomfortable feeling of anachronism and incongruity. The style, the fancy, the colour, the treatment, the motives, all belong so essentially to another race, and to a different climate. To live surrounded by such imported decorations would be like masquerading in classical costume, and, indeed, to be consistent, the dwellers in a Pompeian room ought to pose in classical draperies, and endeavour to emulate an Alma-Tadema picture in the aspects of their everyday life.

Every race and every age, however, acted upon by all sorts of influences, climatic, social, economic, commercial, political, historic, evolves its own ideas of home and comfort—and appropriate decorative surroundings as a necessary part of home and comfort. These, in the long run, are the fittest to the circumstances and conditions, but by no means always ideally the best, in fact, but rarely so, being the result, as a rule, of certain compromises; but the forces which fashion our lives and characters, which determine our habits and pursuits, also determine the character of our surroundings.

The very ideas of home and comfort which one might consider more fixed and permanent—more traditional—than most human notions, seem, with the increased complexity of modern life, especially on the lines of the present development of large cities, or commercial centres, liable to change. The practice of living in flats and residential hotels must surely tend to displace or modify in the mind of the ordinary citizen the older ideas of what constitutes the completeness and organic relation proper to an independently constructed dwelling. The contraction of space, and sometimes of light, commonly associated with flats, cannot have a favourable physical effect, and the impossibility of any garden setting—beyond a window box—must again, one would think, affect both the general health as well as a healthy sense of decoration.

The decorative designer certainly depends largely for freshness of inspiration and suggestion in design and colour upon growing plants and flowers, upon the sight of birds and animals, of the ever-changing sea and sky, and the colours of the landscape. If the sense from which is produced the very elements of decoration thus requires to be kept alive and in health, surely the sense which appreciates the product, which selects and uses, needs also similar access to nature to preserve a healthy tone. But having provided small brick boxes with slate lids as homes for our people, and packed them together in straight rows all alike on the eligible building land of our towns, we next proceed to economize space (and secure more unearned increment to the square foot) by packing such boxes one on the top of the other and calling them “mansions” or “residential flats.”

Sketch for Collective Dwelling containing Sixteen Cottages with Common Dining-hall, Kitchen, etc. 1/32″ Scale

By Lionel F. Crane

Sketch for Collective Dwelling containing Sixteen Cottages with Common Dining-hall, Kitchen, etc. 1/32″ Scale

On the other hand the collective dwelling, of which perhaps we see the germ in the better type of modern flats, with a common kitchen and dining-hall, may have an important future, and there is no reason why, given favourable conditions, good sites, and ample ground and careful planning with due regard to light, air, and aspect, dwellings on the plan of collective living, or collective homes, should not have dignity and beauty, as well as the comforts of a home combining provision for the necessity of privacy, with the social advantages of a common room, and the economic and continuous advantages of a common kitchen.

It should mean that the administration, the housework, and the cooking would be done by trained hands, and one would suppose that the load of care to devise the recurring scheme of the daily dinner, etc., now so generally pressing on the poor housewife, might thus be lifted, and a great waste of individual effort saved.

The old plan of the quadrangle would be an excellent one for a co-operative dwelling: one side of the square or wing opposite the entrance gate might be occupied by the dining-hall and public rooms, the other sides might contain the private rooms or be divided into separate dwellings with separate private entrances on the outer sides: on the inner side connected by a cloister which would enable the occupants of the private rooms or separate dwellings to pass to the public rooms at the head of the quad. A formal garden might occupy the centre of the quadrangle with a fountain in the centre. Such a scheme has, I believe, already been proposed to be tried in one of the London suburbs.

Frescoes by
Ford Madox Brown

Town Hall, Manchester

Frescoes by
Ford Madox Brown

Town Hall, Manchester

From the decorator’s point of view the plan and scale of such collective dwellings might afford fine scope for art: the large public rooms such as the hall and the common dining-room, might be simple and dignified with panelled walls, leaving space above for a continuous frieze of figures, or divided into separate subjects illustrating local history or legend, poetry, romance, or symbolism of life and nature.

The true place, however, for the decorative perpetuation of local history and legend is the Town Hall, and it is satisfactory to know that this principle has been thoroughly recognized in at least one important city of England and in a modern Town Hall. I allude to the frescoes of Ford Madox Brown which vividly and dramatically illustrate the history of Manchester and her worthies, and appropriately decorate the walls of the City Hall.

In Birmingham, also, I believe a scheme of painted panels has been devised to illustrate local history, and students of the Municipal School of Art have competed for the design of these. This seems an excellent idea which might be generally adopted. Every town which has municipal buildings and a municipal school of art might do much not only to stimulate public spirit and local feeling, but also materially to help young students and designers by giving them an opportunity of doing public work and thus getting practice in the highest kind of decorative art—mural painting.

Surely if we have any pride of place, if we regard our towns and cities as something more than mere mills for money-making we must feel how greatly their interest and beauty might be added to in such ways as these, as well as public parks and gardens, fountains, trees along the streets, and seats and shelters. Indeed, having regard to the future of our race, and the importance of space and open air and surroundings of some beauty to the healthy growth and upraising of children, it becomes a public question of pressing importance, this of the conditions of life in our cities, housing, and house and school building and decoration.

One remarkable demonstration or object lesson has been given, owing to the initiative energy and philanthropy of Mr. George Cadbury at Bournville near Birmingham, which I was afforded the opportunity of seeing the other day. He has proved, at least (even as William Morris did), that factory work may be carried on amid pleasant surroundings and means of recreation for body and mind, and that a working population can be housed in close proximity to their work in picturesque and cheap healthy dwellings, surrounded with ample gardens and pleasant trees.

The Garden City Association is also in the field with Mr. Ebenezer Howard’s scheme for uniting agriculture, horticulture and manufactures, with beautiful and healthy dwellings in garden cities which will, it is hoped, relieve the overcrowding of our great towns, and bring back the people to the country with all the conveniences and advantages of well-organized city life, and moreover enable the inhabitants to become the collective owners thereof.

The rapid means of escape from towns which modern invention and commercial interest and enterprise have placed within reach of the town dweller—while they suggest that modern cities are not meant to dwell in—by those who can get out of them—may to some extent counteract the ill effects of an artificial existence, at least among some classes of the population, but I think a certain restlessness is induced which has its effects—even upon decorative art. The modern mind seems more easily fatigued, and to require more constant and rapid change. This restlessness, no doubt accelerated by the effects of grime and smoke, leads to the desire for more frequent change of colour and pattern in the living rooms, than formerly. This, it may be said, is healthy, because it is “good for trade”—for the painters’ and decorators’ trade, that is. One of the drawbacks of modern life, however, is the existence of trade organizations that are prepared to supply (on the shortest notice) any atrocity which may be in demand—indeed, I am not sure that supply does not in some cases create demand, and I suppose he is but a poor salesman who cannot persuade people to buy what they do not want—it may be some passing whim or phase of public taste, or want of taste; but the circumstances which are good for such trade cannot be expected to evoke much artistic enthusiasm. What is “good for trade” is not always good for human beings, either in the making or the using, of which we have often had evidence, but trade, or profit, is the modern fetish to which, apparently, all other considerations are expected to bow.

View in Bournville

Cottages at Bournville

Now, I take it, a painter or a decorator must be primarily concerned with producing something of beauty, even if, owing to circumstances over which he has no control, it cannot be “a joy for ever.” Let his problem be of the simplest—the choice of a flat tint for a wall, for instance—the important element of individual taste comes in. This, again, must be checked by considerations of adaptability and utility, such as aspect and conditions of lighting in the room, the kind of room, its proportions and purpose.

We all know what a different effect the same tint has in full or in half-light, in sunlight or in shadow, and what transformations are effected in rooms by simply changing the tint or the wall-paper.

The effect, too, of the same tint upon different surfaces should be noted. Any texture or granulation of surface improves the quality of a flat tint, and for this reason wall coverings with a texture in them; such as are known under the name of Burlaps, are excellent, providing a variety of plain tints of pleasant texture for wall coverings, or admirable grounds for the decorator to work upon.

A good sense of colour, therefore, is of the first importance. A knowledge of how to produce certain tints; the effect of one tint upon, or in juxtaposition to, another; the effect of one tint and of different tints in the same light; the best grounds for different tints; all these things, in addition to the workman’s skill of hand in laying on paint evenly, are essential parts of a painter’s and decorator’s training and equipment.

The complex elements out of which have been evolved our ideas of harmonious decoration are not more complex than those out of which the varieties of the modern house have been produced. True taste, as well as common sense, would say, “cut your coat according to your cloth”—build your house and decorate it according to what you can spend upon it: let it represent your own ideas of taste and comfort, after due thought, and not be an imitation of another’s, or of something in the mode which you think you ought to like, neither something costly because of the cost, or a cheap imitation of something costly.

How few houses seem to be built or decorated upon these principles. How few, indeed, build their houses at all, or have much choice in the matter—except perhaps that of Hobson, who must also have been a jerry builder.

There is an old saying that fools build houses and wise men live in them. However that may be, certainly town-dwellers are often like hermit-crabs, glad to creep into more or less inconvenient empty shells erected by former generations, happy if they succeed in adapting them to their own requirements more or less. In a book on architecture of about the date 1836, elevations and plans are given of “a First-rate House,” “a Second-rate House,” “a Third-rate House,” and even “a Fourth-rate”—quite on the principle of railway carriages, but going one better, or one worse. They all present modest street frontages of about twenty feet, duly cemented and painted. They differ chiefly in the number of their stories, and consequently windows, but the plans and elevations are all of the same type, slightly varied in the details. The “first-rate” house, though a little more ornate and classic in some ways is by no means a palace, and the fourth-rate house is not exactly a cottage; the second-rate is only a cheaper edition of the first-rate, and the third-rate tries to look like the second-rate, but is conscious of having only one window to the dining-room. All sport balconies to the first-floor front windows and iron railings, guarding the ground-floor and basement, only the fourth-rate has no basement. It is as if the architect started with one elevation and literally cut it down to meet the exigencies of second, third, and fourth-rate tenants—I had almost said passengers—and in strict accordance with the then building acts.

Those building acts, perhaps, are responsible for the monotony of our modern streets. Although they have in some respects been modified of late, houses in a street or road are obliged to dress up to a straight building line, toeing the mark like a file of soldiers. Or, perhaps, more suggestive of a train of railway carriages, which only needs a locomotive attached to the end of the row to pull them along, and one might hope, out of sight, also. There are miles of houses of this type still existing in our towns, notably London, for which in fact the designs I speak of were intended, but I have seen their like in Liverpool, Dublin, and elsewhere.

Though carefully graded in classes and adjusted to certain rentals, the aim of the builder has been to make each present, on the outside, an equally neat and respectable appearance. This is thoroughly characteristic of mid-nineteenth century ideas, and the love of neatness has always been characteristic of the English. The compromise, also, between modest requirements, or shall we say, between 5 per cent. and a respect for the Five Orders, which the street frontages of this period exhibit, is equally characteristic. We see the last results of the wave of Greco-Roman taste which ruled from the end of the eighteenth century to the early Victorian time. Of course we have got beyond all that now, though the type remains, and in some cases even, with its remnants of style, affords a slight relief and sense of repose after certain flamboyant erections in terra-cotta and plate glass which have appeared in our streets, with the up-to-date builders.

The type, as I have said, of these middle-class dwellings remains, their chief charm as well as decorative point being in the design of the street doorway, with classical columns or pilasters and a fanlight often with a graceful design in leaded glazing, too often ruthlessly scooped out to make way for blank plate glass. We know those iron railings (protecting the area and kitchen quarters from the attacks of the soldier and policeman), the windows of the basement timidly peeping above the ground as with half-closed eyes; the steps to the front door whitened by successive generations of devoted housemaids; the more or less Doric front door; the entrance hall, or long squeezy passage with the umbrella stand as a principal decoration; the staircase at the end leading to the upper rooms; the dining-room opening out of the aforesaid passage, with perhaps a dismal window in the rear, commanding a fine prospect of back yards, unless considerately veiled by ferns, or stopped out by some would-be stained glass. The bedrooms over, back and front, follow naturally from such an obvious plan.

Such types of houses, however out of date, ought not to be without interest to the house-painter and decorator, since they depend for keeping up appearances almost entirely upon fresh paint—and nothing is, as we know, “as fresh as paint.” Indeed, I have often noticed in London—from that commanding eminence the top of a ’bus—how the white-painted old-fashioned fronts with green doors of some of the houses in Piccadilly, facing the Green Park, donning new “coats” for the season, quite put to shame some of their neighbours—the gorgeous stone-built and marble-columned club façades with all the grime of a London winter thick upon them.

There is nothing like leather—I mean paint—after all! In fact, whether inside or outside, the town house requires constantly cheering up by the painter and decorator, but it must be the decoration that cheers but not inebriates—and there is a good deal of what I should call inebriated decoration about. Much of what is generally known as “l’Art nouveau,” for instance, belongs to this category—the wild and whirling squirms which form the chief ornamental unit, whether in surface decoration, furniture construction, wood carving, inlays, or textiles—which was so much in evidence at the late Paris Exhibition, and in the pages of “The Studio,” which is, moreover, generally on the continent considered to be English in its origin. In some of its forms it certainly does suggest a free translation into French or German of a kind of decorative art associated with the designers of the Glasgow school, but, no doubt, like all modern and mixed styles (like the melancholy of Jacques in “As you like it”), it is extracted from many simples and compounded of many elements. It is said that the Emperor Augustus found Rome of brick and he left it a city of marble. I should, contrariwise, suggest that our decorator, supposing he found the woodwork of “a desirable residence” grained, should leave it plain-painting—beginning at the front door. Iron railings, it may be noted, in passing, are generally painted (perhaps from economic reasons) too dark a colour, which darkens still more in the smoke of towns. A favourite hue is a kind of beefy red, sometimes picked out with gilding, though this artistic touch is generally reserved for public buildings—or the public house. Graceful wrought ironwork of a light kind often looks well painted white or a light cool green, but ordinary Brunswick-green (of a middle tint) has a good appearance with the white window frames, reveals and door jambs of a red-brick house, the green being repeated for the front door and any outside shutters. Apropos of the heavy red paint so frequently used for ironwork, I think that the cylinders of gas-works (which form such important items in the scenery of our suburbs) would be far less trying objects if they were painted a discreet and retiring cool tint of green, and the light ironwork supporting standards or columns painted white. I do not think such a treatment ought to raise the price of gas, but it would certainly elevate (or shall we say mitigate) the gasometer, and it would certainly dispel the irresistible impression on the mind of the unprejudiced that these rotundas were really huge rounds of pressed beef waiting for some giant Cormoran’s luncheon.

But we stopped at a green door, with white jambs. Dear to some decorator-painters’ hearts (and hands) is “graining.” Wonderful, and sometimes fearful are its results. I quite recognize the skill sometimes spent upon graining—the extraordinary imitation of costly natural woods which a skilled grainer can produce over ordinary painted deal. There are also motives of economy, I believe, to account for the persistence of graining—in an age of such transparent honesty and simple habits as ours (?). The practice, I have heard, commends itself in some quarters for the same reason that influenced Dame Primrose in the choice of her wedding gown, namely, “for qualities that wear well.”

Nothing can be a more delightful, or a more durable lining for the walls of hall or living-room than oak panelling, but nothing, to my mind, can be more sordid and unpleasant than the woodwork of a room grained to imitate oak.

Interior, 1a, Holland Park.

From a Photograph by W. E. Gray

The one field where skill in graining and marbling would be appropriate is that of stage scenery and decoration, where the object is to imitate, and where the scene has to be quickly changed in obedience to the demands of the drama.

Few interiors are more pleasant than the white-painted panelled rooms in eighteenth-century houses, a mode which some modern architects have revived with much success. There is nothing like white paint for the wood-work of modern rooms. It is the best set-off to wall-papers, and though many attempts have been made by house painters and decorators to get variety of effect by repeating in the styles and panels of the doors some leading tint of the wall-paper, the eye soon tires of the rather restless result, and welcomes plain white flatted paint, leaving it to the mouldings to give the necessary relief.

Door panels are often considered suitable fields for painted or other decoration; if, however, door panels are emphasized in this way, the walls would have to be quiet in pattern and colour, so as to let the doors tell as the chief decorative points; in such a scheme they would naturally be balanced by a painted treatment of a wood mantelpiece and connected by a chair rail and panelled dado, or wainscot; on the other hand, with a richly patterned and coloured wall the wood-work, if painted, should be kept plain colour.