The Decoration of Houses |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
American houses antechamber apartments arabesques architects architectural architrave artistic ball-room beauty bedroom bookcases boudoir bronze built carpet carved ceiling chairs chimney-breast chintz color comfort composition contain cornice curtains dado deco detail dining-room door doorway drawing-room ducal palace effect eighteenth century England English entablature examples fact fireplace floor France furniture gala rooms gilding hall house-decoration house-planning hung Inigo Jones interior Italian Italian palaces Italy knick-knacks less lines Louis XIV LOUIS XV PERIOD mantel mantel-pieces Mantua marble marquetry medićval ment modern mouldings never objects of art old French ormolu ornament over-door over-mantel painted PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU PALACE OF VERSAILLES panelling Paris plain plaster Plate produced proportion regarded Renaissance saloon scheme of decoration school-room seen seldom sense staircase stairs stone stucco suited tapestry taste tion ugly usually vaulted Vaux-le-Vicomte VERTEMATI vestibule Villa wall-decoration wall-paper wall-space walls well-designed wood wooden XVI CENTURY
Popular passages
Page 24 - Each room in a house has its individual uses: some are made to sleep in, others are for dressing, eating, study, or conversation; but whatever the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not preserved as a small world by itself.
Page xiv - De la distribution des maisons de plaisance et de la décoration des édifices en général ». Paris, 1737.
Page 10 - ... accepted as the necessary laws of the various forms of art. Thus, in reasoning, originality, lies not in discarding the necessary laws of thought, but in using them to express new intellectual conceptions ; in poetry, originality consists not in discarding the necessary laws of rhythm, but in finding new rhythms within the limits of those laws. Most of the features of architecture that have persisted through various fluctuations of taste, owe their preservation to the fact that they have been...
Page 4 - Houses, that architecture and decoration could be set right "only by a close study of the best models"— and these, she made plain, were "chiefly to be found in buildings erected in Italy after the beginning of the sixteenth century, and in other European countries after the full assimilation of the Italian influence.
Page 200 - Modern civilization has been called a varnished barbarism: a definition that might well be applied to the superficial graces of much modern decoration. Only a return to architectural principles can raise the decoration of houses to the level of the...
Page 189 - Anyone could acquire bibelots — all you needed was money. But not anyone could collect or acquire objets d'art: Good objects of art give to a room its crowning touch of distinction. Their intrinsic beauty is hardly more valuable than their suggestion of a mellower civilization — of days when rich men were patrons of the "arts of elegance" and when collecting beautiful objects was one of the obligations of noble leisure.
Page 14 - ... that none of them precludes the exercise of individual taste, any more than the acceptance of the syllogism or of the laws of rhythm prevents new thinkers and poets from saying what has never been said before. * * * All good architecture and good decoration must be based on rhythm and logic. * * * To conform to a style then is to accept those rules of proportion which the artistic experience of centuries has established as the best, while within those limits allowing free scope to the individual...
Page 7 - This rule naturally holds good of house-planning, and it is for this reason that the origin of modern house-planning should be sought rather in the prince's...
Page xxiv - When the rich man demands good architecture his neighbors will get it too. The vulgarity of current decoration has its source in the indifference of the wealthy to architectural fitness. Every good moulding, every carefully studied detail, exacted by those who can afford to indulge their taste, will in time find its way to the carpenter-built cottage. Once the right precedent is established, it costs less to follow than to oppose it.
Page 19 - Men, in these matters, are less exacting than women, because their demands, besides being simpler, are uncomplicated by the feminine tendency to want things because other people have them, rather than to have things because they are wanted.