HOUSE AND GARDEN 
July, 1911 
easily used, once they are 
thought out. 
First the house is divested, 
in imagination at least, of 
everything it contains. Each 
room is reduced to four bare 
walls, a floor and a ceiling; and 
their proportion, lighting and 
material are carefully consider¬ 
ed. Then comes the study of 
the use of the room, the things 
old or new that it must con¬ 
tain, of the personality and oc¬ 
cupations of its probable occu¬ 
pants. 
With all these elements sim¬ 
mering in her mind, the decora¬ 
tor gradually evolves mental 
pictures of a room in which col¬ 
or and line produce a harmo¬ 
nious setting for certain arti¬ 
cles conveniently placed for 
use, and for certain human 
beings using these things in 
the daily occupations of an 
actual life. 
This method does not pro¬ 
duce period rooms, though 
the designer must he con¬ 
versant with the periods 
and able to use this knowl¬ 
edge to the best advantage, 
but it gives rooms of quiet 
beauty and distinction that 
actually invite one to live. 
If it is not possible or de¬ 
sirable to take down walls to 
throw together two small 
rooms, try the effect of re¬ 
moving the door and filling 
in the adjacent corners on 
either side of the door with 
built-in seats which are to 
appear as one partitioned 
into two, sections. This door 
will usually be formed about 
three or four feet from the 
end wall, near its windows— 
just the place for a comfort¬ 
able seat. This is much sim¬ 
pler of course than taking 
down the partition, since it in¬ 
volves only cutting through 
some laths and plaster, dis¬ 
turbing no beams. 
It is almost a truism to say 
that the two rooms should 
have wall covering and hang¬ 
ings alike and their furnish¬ 
ings of the same character in 
order to deceive the observer 
into thinkng them one. Per¬ 
haps seats may not be desir¬ 
able, and in any case will not 
be needed on both sides of the 
door. The other may be occu¬ 
pied by bookcases in the same 
Character and cheeriness were given this old dining-room by the 
new white wainscot and the stenciled frieze that has been so 
well handled 
This low-ceilinged bedroom was made to seem higher by the pronounced 
verticality of wall paper and door panels 
way. The cases should be 
built right up to the door cas¬ 
ing, and a molding line of 
some kind carried around the 
casing to secure the effect of 
continuity. 
We are just beginning to 
realize the value of built-in 
furniture, not only as a con¬ 
venience but for securing 
special lines. The house¬ 
keeper knows well to what 
degree it helps in keeping a 
room tidy, and one has only 
to try it once to appreciate its 
value in space saving. Its 
possibilities in correcting bad 
proportions are as great. For 
example, a plan used in 
a studio whose width was 
inadequate to its length, 
was the building in of a 
square cupboard with ca¬ 
pacious shelves for candles 
and all the painter’s tools — 
it would do for a clothes 
closet in a bedroom — reach¬ 
ing two-thirds of the way 
to the ceiling, and filling in 
the remaining space with a 
seat. This entire arrange¬ 
ment was built quite sepa¬ 
rate — attached and could 
be easily moved and re-ad¬ 
justed to another room. 
The dining-room on pages 
34 and 35 was the result al¬ 
most entirely of a process 
of simplification. In a house 
built some twenty years 
ago, it had a plate-rail 
loaded with different ob¬ 
jects, dish cupboards and 
sets of shelves without 
number and the typical bay- 
window with window-seat 
— a useless arrangement, 
usually, for no one sits in a 
dining-room except at meals. 
The plate-rail was removed 
and replaced by a simple 
scheme of moldings, with an 
occasional Dutch poster set in 
to give color and life to the 
walls. 
New wainscoting in harmony with 
to offset the cornice were the c 
of this old dining-room 
old trim, and the plain frieze 
features in the redecoration 
The custom of having only 
a few pictures and those fine 
ones is rapidly growing. A 
heterogeneous collection of 
pictures, differently framed is 
always difficult to arrange. 
To have all the frames alike 
on paintings, photographs 01- 
prints of whatever subject is 
still worse and suggests that 
you have bought up the over 
(Continued on page 64) 
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