The Art of Home Decoration

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Art is nothing but a delicious stirring of the soul at a real phenomenon, which is creative beauty. And the appreciation of its merits differs among mankind. This difference gives us, for example, the beauty of the Japanese stamp, or the Damascene copper plate, or the Mexican peasant pitcher.

A room of splendid design is in itself a piece of art, like a painting or a statue or a building. And to create a work of art you must, madam, understand its following foundations, which are: line, shape, size, color, and material... These foundations are embodied in the design of a room just as they appear in other artistic expressions. The fine arts include painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, acting, and dance. In this study of ours we single out painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Lines, like colors, express a particular feeling; therefore you must understand them before setting about adorning your house. Lines surround us on every side, in buildings, automobiles, and clothes, and their effect appears above all in nature. The importance of line reaches its height in home decoration, for all the contents of the house are distinguished by their lines, which display the beauty of their shapes and their proportion to one another. Likewise the kind of line creates certain inner feelings in the beholder. And when decorating any room, it is essential that you be able to distinguish the different lines, and sense their relations to one another and the purpose of their presence, so as to arrive at the proportion that lends the room the desired luster. Proportion in lines breathes beauty and splendor into a design — an example of this is the harmony of the lines in a chair in the style of Louis XV.

Let us now consider the importance of these lines:

Vertical lines embody strength and height, and bring out above all sobriety and balance in a room; they also lift the gaze upward and make the atmosphere of the place formal.

Horizontal

Horizontal lines are the lines of stretching out and rest — the lines of the body in sleep — set against the lines of the standing body braced for work (the vertical lines). The qualities of this line show plainly in Eastern sitting rooms, with their low, flat divans, their carpets, and their low horizontal tables, which breathe complete rest and homeyness into the soul.

Curved

Curved lines indicate the work

The pictures are by the artist Karis

and strain of a person running. And unskillful use of these lines leaves a bad, disturbing effect on the beholder's spirit, for they tire the eye in following them. These lines, in fabrics and carpets and in the arrangement of furniture, suggest perpetual motion; therefore it is necessary that you take care not to place the large furniture, such as the sofa, the tables, and the chairs, in the direction of these lines, but parallel to the basic lines of the room — the vertical and the horizontal; and when these grow too numerous, the use of fabrics with curved lines in their patterns brings something new, and life, to the room.

Slanting

Slanting lines show softness and femininity and give an appearance of rest more than straight lines do. But if they multiply in a room, the result is reversed and the room becomes over-ornamented. These lines, when used with taste, lend the room a pleasing look.

Circle

As for shapes, they are the result of the joining of opposing lines. Straight lines give the square, the rectangle, and the triangle, while curved lines give the circle and the ovals. A shape is usually marked by the qualities of the lines that predominate in it.

Oval

The square shape suggests strength, but its one defect is that its lines are equal in length, so that it becomes monotonous. Imagine the contents

Square

and furnishings of a room — carpets, seats, pictures, and windows — squares upon squares: they would appear utterly rigid; whereas the rectangular shape, in which life shows itself, is the more used,

Rectangle

and the Greeks considered it the basis of good form, and called it the golden rectangle. The triangle gives the idea of balance and cohesion among the parts, and denotes completeness and rest;

so a triangular table, or a triangular picture, in a room where squares and rectangles abound, casts over it an air holding some variety... The circle is the line of perpetual motion; it suggests continuity. This shape abounds in mirrors, pictures, tables, and chairs; but on the whole the oval is finer and more beautiful than the circle, and it harmonizes easily with squares.

Triangle

Thus an oval dining table harmonizes with rectangles, such as the chairs and the buffet, with much accord... And so we see that when kinds of line of one sort gather in a room, they give the room a monotonous, uncomfortable character. Hence, to attain complete rest, and to bring out the beauty of the furnishings together with an inner ease as to their positions and shapes, you must make some variety in the arrangement of the lines — provided this variety is not abrupt, creating in us a certain disquiet. For when the eye looks upon a new place it casts at once a general glance, upon which there arise in the soul feelings either disturbing and anxious, or delicious and restful.