HOUSES AND GARDENS 



from their beauty of design is the permanence of their colouring. The 

 most reliable colours generally are yellow and reds, but blue and mauve 

 should be used with caution. Some colours, while they fade, may end 

 by becoming pleasant tints, and a vivid green may thus become eventually a 

 uniform grey green tone, and such materials may often be used when 

 experience has shown to what extent they will change in time. For curtains 

 or other materials which are exposed to direct sunlight, the use of undyed 

 materials may be recommended as a safe course. 



If the spectrum of sunlight is examined, it will be found to range from 

 purple at one end, merging into blue, and a central zone of green, which 

 passes through shades of yellow and orange into red, at the opposite end. 

 The central green zone may be said to represent in the decorative world 

 a normal colour " work-a-day " green, as Morris called it. The blue and 

 purple end represents the more " spirituelle " tints, while the yellow and red 

 appeal to the animal instincts and merge into the heat rays. The cultivation 

 of the colour sense leads to the extension of the spectrum and the inclusion 

 of many gradations of exquisite subtlety. The central green invariably 

 satisfies the normal eye, while the pleasure conveyed by the extreme tints or 

 the spectrum varies according to the predominance of the spiritual or animal 

 in the mood of the observer. 



The terms " spiritual" and "animal" convey the idea I wish to suggest 

 somewhat inadequately, and I do not wish it to be inferred that the heart- 

 warming pleasure conveyed by red is necessarily base, or the refined apprecia- 

 tion of mauves and blues an indication of superiority. In the complete 

 human consciousness each pleasure has its appointed place, and to be uncheered 

 by a red colour is a sign of an incomplete rather than a superior mind. 



A room decorated in tones of blue and mauve may be dainty and refined, 

 but it is somewhat lacking in virility, and it may very well be complemented by 

 a scheme derived from the opposite end of the spectrum, but generally the 

 central green tone of the spectrum is most satisfactory with the introduction of 

 its adjacent tints of either blue or yellow. The decorative use of colour implies 

 the cultivation of the faculty of thinking in colour, as the musician thinks in 

 sounds and this process does not involve the indication of natural forms as 

 a medium for expression of an arrangement of tints which may be disposed in 

 a purely conventional way. As an example of this thinking in colour, one may 

 instance the Japanese prints, which judged on their merits as imitations of 

 nature may seem somewhat crude, while considered as scheme of colour 

 arrangement they are wonderfully beautiful and full of suggestions for 

 decorative schemes, which those who regard painting as merely an imitative 

 art will perhaps hardly appreciate. 



Passages of colour occur just as passages of sound in a musical composi- 

 tion having no relation to any natural objects, and these are charged with a 

 mysterious and inexplicable beauty which is elusive and unsubstantial. But 

 while this kind of beauty is recognised and expected in the musical composi- 

 tion, it is considered, when it is considered at all, only as secondary to 

 imitative art in the picture. The highest form of picture making is often, 

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