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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
A bedroom in the house of the engineer Fuad Qarah. Rest and homeyness are the qualities of this room, and that is the result of the low horizontal lines.