AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
December, 1911 
WITHIN THE HOUSE 
SUGGESTIONS ON INTERIOR DECORATING 
AND NOTES OF INTEREST TO ALL 
WHO DESIRE TO MAKE THE HOUSE 
MORE BEAUTIFUL AND MORE HOMELIKE 
The Editor of this Department will be glad to answer all queries 
from subscribers pertaining to Home Decoration. — 
should be enclosed when a direct personal reply is desired 
Stamps 
ON GOOD TASTE IN INTERIOR DECORATION 
By Harry Martin Yeomans 
m@1E home-builder without architectural ex- 
perience should hardly attempt to build his 
own house without the assistance of a com- 
petent architect. An article on this subject 
appeared in the October number of AMERI- 
—————! CAN HomMEs AND GARDENS and presented 
the matter in a light that served to enable the reader to 
draw his own conclusions definitely in accord with this state- 
ment. However, once the structure itself is finished, it 
oftens happens that the average homemaker does not feel 
that he either can or wishes to go to the expense of having 
the decoration of the house carried out all at one time under 
the supervision of any one professional decorator, even 
though he might wish to have one or two rooms done 
in this manner. And so, under the circumstances, he will 
probably decide to do the decorations himself, making his 
selections and carrying out his ideas in the matter of fur- 
nishings without other assistance than his own taste. Hap- 
pily the average small house as a rule does not present to 
the decorator many of the technical difficulties that have 
to be overcome by the architect. ‘Therefore the amateur 
decorator may approach his task with a reasonable degree 
of confidence. 
HE various articles that appear from time to time in 
the pages of AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS Strive 
to present to their readers individual problems whose solu- 
tions are accomplished through the medium of good taste 
in the selection and application. ‘The illustrations chosen 
are such as give safe guidance in the matter of architecture 
and decorative designs, wherefore one undertaking for the 
A dining-room, elegant in the simplicity of its well-chosen turmisnings 
first time the decoration of his 
own home personally will, 
it is hoped, find both inspiration and instruction in the peru- 
sal of these pages. 
T is not enough alone that the house should be well de- 
signed and well built, or that it should be well fur- 
nished—it is just in this matter of furnishing that one finds 
the keynote of the house that is homelike in contradistinction 
to the house which is not. It oftens happens that the house 
undertaken by the professional decorator, especially the 
small house, though charming in its design as a thing of con- 
struction apart from its association with the life of those 
who are to inhabit its rooms, turns out to be alien in spirit 
to those living within the house. Indeed, the most success- 
ful houses are those which reflect the personalities of the 
dwellers therein and become appropriate settings for them- 
selves and for their lares and penates, for which reason it 
invariably happens that the most successful homelike small 
house is that which is decorated personally by its owner if 
he only exercises restraint in selection and carries out his 
plans for beautifying the house within under the guidance 
of good taste. 
N aspiring playwright once asked a well-known drama- 
yas tist how he constructed his plays, and was told in reply 
that he wrote all of his scenes and speeches at great length 
just as they occurred to him, but when he came to arrange 
the parts of his drama he commenced a process of elimina- 
tion whereby he left out everything not necessary to the 
artistic evolution of his play and everything not absolutely 
requisite to its utility, the result being one of vigorous 
dramatic strength. This illustrates in a way the principle 
that might well be applied to the matter of interior decora- 
tion in a house of any sort. For good taste not only 
concerns itself with the question of what could be put 
1 
ie, 
A paneled dining-room, not overcrowded with inappropriate furnishings 
eo ee 
