Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Trianon garden, in line with the terrace where we take our meals. This trellis was rebuilt many times before it satisfied me, but now it is my greatest joy. The niches are planned to hold two old statues and several prim box trees. I used very much the same constructive design on one of the walls of the Colony Club trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of honor. Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully curved urns, box trees, statues, marble benches, fountains—all these belong to the formal outdoor trellis.
The trellis is primarily suitable for garden architecture, but it may be fitted to interior uses most skilfully. Pictures of the trellis room in the Colony Club have been shown so often it is not necessary to repeat more than one of them. The room is long and high, with a floor of large red tiles. The walls and ceiling are covered with rough gray plaster, on which the green strips of wood are laid. The wall space is entirely covered with the trellis design broken into ovals which hold lighting-fixtures—grapes and leaves in cloudy glass and green enamel. The long room leads up to the ivy-covered trellis of the fountain wall, a perfect background for the fountain, a bowl on the brim of which is poised a youthful figure, upheld by two dolphins. The water spills over into a little pool, banked with evergreens. Ivy has been planted in long boxes along the wall, and climbs to the ceiling, where the plaster is left bare, save for the trellised cornice and the central trellis medallion, from which is suspended an enchanting lantern made up of green wires and ivy leaves and little white flames of electric light.
The roof garden of the Colony Club is latticed in a simple design we all know. This is lattice, not trellis, and in no way should be confounded with the trellis room on the entrance floor. This white-painted lattice covers the wall space. Growing vines are placed along the walls and clamber to the beams. The glass ceiling is supported by white beams. There are always blossoming flowers and singing birds in this room. The effect is springlike and joyous on the bleakest winter day. The room is heated by two huge stoves of green Majolica brought over from Germany when other heating systems failed. Much of the furniture is covered with a grape-patterned chintz and a green and white striped linen. The ceiling lights are hidden in huge bunches of pale green grapes.
I recently planned a most beautiful trellis room for a New York City house. The room is long and narrow, with walls divided into panels by upright classic columns. The lower wall space between the columns is covered with a simple green lattice, and the upper part is filled with little mirrors framed in narrow green moldings, arranged in a conventional design which follows the line of the trellis. One end of the room is made up of two narrow panels of the trellis with a fireplace between. On the opposite wall the middle panel is a background for a delightful wall fountain. The fretwork of mirrors which takes the place of frieze in the room is continued all around the four walls. One of the walls is filled entirely with French doors of plate glass, beneath the mirrored frieze; the other long wall has the broad, central panel cut into two doors of plate glass, and stone benches placed against the two trellised panels flanking the doors. The ceiling is divided into three great panels of trellis, and from each of the three panels a lantern is suspended.
In the Guinness house in New York there is a little hallway wainscoted in white with a green trellis covering the wall space above. Against this simple trellis—it is really a lattice—a number of plaster casts are hung. In one corner an old marble bowl holds a grapevine, which has been trained over the walls. The floor is of white tiles, with a narrow Greek border of black and white. This decoration of a little hall might be copied very easily.
The architects are building nowadays many houses that have a sun-room, or conservatory, or breakfast room. The smallest cottage may have a little breakfast room done in green and white lattice, with green painted furniture and simple flower boxes. I have had furniture of the most satisfactory designs made for my trellis rooms. Green painted wood with cane insets seems most suitable for the small rooms, and the marbles of the old trellised Temples d'Amour may be replaced by cement benches in our modern trellis pavillions.
There is so much of modern furniture that is refreshing in line and color, and adapted to these sun-rooms. There is a desk made by Aitchen, a notable furniture designer in London, which I have used in a sun-room. The desk is painted white, and is decorated with heavy lines of dark green. The drawer front and the doors of the little cupboard are filled with cane. The knobs are of green. This desk would be nice in a white writing-room in a summer cottage, though it was planned for a trellis room. It could be used as a dressing table, with a bench or chair of white, outlined in green, and a good mirror in white and green frame. Another desk I have made is called a jardiniere table, and was designed for Mrs. Ogden Armour's garden room at Lake Forest. The desk, or table, is painted gray, with faint green decorations. At each end of the long top there is a sunken zinc-lined box to hold growing plants. Between the flower boxes there is the usual arrangement of the desk outfit, blotter pad, paper rack, ink pots, and so forth. The spaces beneath the flower boxes are filled with shelves for books and magazines. This idea is thoroughly practicable for any garden room, and is so simple that it could be constructed by any man who knows how to use tools.
LOOKING OVER THE TAPIS VERT TO THE TRELLIS