The Art of Home Beautification

Every month, with regularity, Miss Afaf Abd al-Baqi, a specialist in "home beautification" from the American College of Beirut, presents us with some of the secrets of this new art, keeping in view our particular needs in the light of her comprehensive studies. The models published with this article are from our own Lebanese homes... The drawings are by the artist "Toros."

In view of the importance of the art of home beautification in the present age, I have found myself impelled to furnish the readers of "The Woman's Voice" with the information and the drawings pertaining to this art, which for a long stretch of time has lain obscured among us.

The prevailing belief is that this art is confined to the wealthy class and no other; the truth is that every person can work at beautifying his home according to his limited means, and obtain the desired result in adorning his house, if he follows the principles which I shall endeavor to explain.

Some imagine that the beauty of the house lies in its costly furniture and sumptuous furnishings. This is not the fact of the matter, for the beauty of the house rests fundamentally upon arranging the furniture in a way that gives its inhabitants ease. And the harmony of colors with one another has the amplest effect in instilling rest and reassurance into tired nerves. On this account I address my word now to the ladies who complain of straitened means and therefore refrain from beautifying and arranging their homes. I say that if they incline toward a comfortable and beautiful house, they must know and apply the fundamentals of the art of home beautification, which vary with a person's means but always yield the sought-after result, namely: beauty, comfort, and charm.

When you understand, madam, the elements of decoration, at once simple and fundamental, there grows in you a taste of your own, which is reflected in the selection of your home's furniture and its arrangement; and soundness of taste shows in the style you follow and in the comfort of the people of the house and their enjoyment of its charms.

Few are they whose taste is

inborn. Rather, taste is acquired; it grows and takes shape. As for the theories of home beautification, they are within our reach; we find them in books, magazines, advertisements, and the cinema — even nature herself suggests ideas and colors to us.

The houses in which a particular taste and style shine forth always express an idea. What, then, is the idea you wish your house to express? Some, for example, incline toward a formal atmosphere in their house, and express that inclination by choosing styles such as those of Louis the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth, and of Queen "Anne" with her delicate silks and light colors, or the Oriental style to which they are accustomed. Just as some prefer the formal modern style, with its gleaming wood, its sumptuous fabrics, and its Persian carpets. Another sort of people love the simple, natural life, and so select comfortable, sturdy furniture of simple build and plain wood, with gay colors and designs, the atmosphere on the whole being simple and rustic.

When you have settled upon the style you desire, it behooves you then to apply your idea in practice; a great number of ladies err when they set about furnishing their homes without any prior studied plan or idea. If we wish, for example, to buy covers for the chairs, we are at a loss in choosing the suitable color, and we usually buy the color we love, taking no heed of the harmony of these colors with the room concerned. This is a great error from the standpoint of absolute beauty, for it robs that room of its beauty and its charm. If we wish to renew, in a given room, the color of its walls, the covers of its chairs, and its curtains, we may draw the suitable colors from an artistic picture, for instance, if we own one. If that picture is Cézanne's "The Little Bridge," we see that its basic color is green. It can therefore be used for the ceiling of the room and for three of the walls; the fourth would be in the color of the stone bridge, which leans toward cream and pink, and we use this color as well for some of the chairs... For the curtains and the sofa we use green, in a striped or brocaded fabric, with a seat or two covered in watermelon-red cloth... This is what makes the picture we have taken as our model an inseparable part of the room.

Do you ask yourself, madam, about the inclinations of the members of your family when you arrange the rooms of your house? Your first care must be directed to your family, who will be using these rooms. And when you arrange the furniture of the house, take care that it be organized for comfort and use around the vital centers of the room — the hearth, for example — while keeping easy passage to the various rooms.

As for the interior of the house, preserve harmony among all its parts. It will not do for the entrance to be formal, the parlor a stage for everything under the sun, the dining room springlike, and so on and so forth...

Elegant and cheerful dwellings, madam, are not created by chance; they are the fruit of work, inquiry, and perseverance........ the fruit of a positive will and a pressing desire, shown by the lady of the house in order to present her house in the image and the idea that she desires.