18 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
O F the many professions which 
enter into the creation of the 
house in good taste, none is more 
misunderstood than that of the in¬ 
terior decorator. 
Like Pol Roger and Vouvray Mousseu, 
the decorator needs no bush, but she de¬ 
serves explanation. Some people think of 
her as a Super-Shopper, and nothing else. 
Others believe the decorator to be a higher 
grade of house-and-sign painter who has 
learned to wear kid gloves and to pro¬ 
nounce Art with a latitudinal “A.” Still 
others think that any woman who has 
“cutey” ideas for “fixing up” a room is 
qualified to undertake the work. And a 
fourth class believes decoration to be a 
Haven of Cash and Kudos for indigent 
widows of respectable breeding, aspiring 
and finished debutantes, women who wear 
their clothes well, divorcees, brokendown art 
students and sundry other detached but 
financially dependent persons, male and 
female, who somehow or another have not 
just exactly fitted into that state of life unto 
which it has pleased God to call them. 
Since decoration is neither an easy call¬ 
ing nor a last hope, but a profession with 
an ancient lineage and strict requirements, 
let us see what equipment a decorator must 
have before she attempts decorating. 
T HE love for beautiful things properly 
arranged is a gift at birth, as is 
the love for good music and good books. 
Appreciation may come with the years, 
training and study may awaken the 
spark dormant for generations, but the 
invisible genus must be there. It is a 
quality of feeling not possible of defi¬ 
nition, but possible of very definite ex¬ 
pression. 
Given a man or woman with such in¬ 
nate taste, and the ground is ripe for 
cultivation. There must be laid a solid 
foundation—a task perhaps as tiring but 
as necessary as grinding German irregu¬ 
lar verbs—in the characteristics of the 
Historic Periods and the philosophy of 
life that brought each into being; in 
color values and combinations and the 
psychology of each; in line and its sub¬ 
tle differences. Each of these has a 
definite raison d'etre. 
The Periods were an expression of 
life, a crystallizing in very material 
form of an immaterial spirit which pre¬ 
dominated a time and found expression 
in certain master workmen. Moreover, 
they were designed to meet definite 
needs and customs. It is useless to 
attempt interpreting the present spirit 
in a modern interior if one does not 
understand how the feeling of the past 
was expressed. As in life, so in deco¬ 
ration, the present is only the culmina¬ 
tion of the past, and the laws of human 
nature are as irrevocable to-day and as 
definite in expression as they were in 
the far-off days of Queen Anne or 
Marie Antoinette. 
Underlying color is a whole universe 
in the study of optical response which 
students have reduced to the laws gov¬ 
erning those colors that are pleasing and 
displeasing, the colors that can be com¬ 
bined and those that cannot, and the 
colors and their corrolaries that express 
mood, personality, or produce effects on 
the eye to which other parts of the 
nerve system respond harmoniously. 
IN DEFENSE of DECORATORS 
Thus the decorator learns that such a com¬ 
bination as vivid red and green is displeas¬ 
ing in a room, whereas it is pleasing in 
Nature—and why; that tans and greys are 
cooling; and that the colors which are suit¬ 
able for the young girl’s room will not go 
in her grandmother’s. 
Line is partly dependent on Period usage 
which, in turn, has much the same funda¬ 
mental reason as color—lines being pleas¬ 
ing or displeasing according to their com¬ 
bination and their rhythm. 
By training such as this the indefinable 
quality of innate good taste begins to shape 
itself into definable expression. The pos¬ 
sessor of good taste learns how to exer¬ 
cise it with discretion. 
Then she is thrown out on the world to 
sink or swim. She becomes known and 
successful or remains in oblivion, just to 
that degree with which all those laws she 
has learned in training become subcon¬ 
scious habit with her, as subconscious as 
the innate good taste with which she started. 
When the decorator reaches the point 
where she can absorb the wishes and per¬ 
sonality of a client and express them in 
good taste in an interior, then she attains 
the plane of real creative art. And when 
she reaches that point it will really 
not matter whether she began as a 
house-and-sign painter, a debutante, 
a woman with “cutey” ideas, a 
divorcee, or an indigent but perfectly re¬ 
spectable widow. 
“IlfHY employ a decorator?” asks Mrs. 
VV Blank. “I know what I want in 
my house.” 
But does she? Follow Mrs. Blank on a 
shopping tour for furniture, rugs, carpets, 
lighting fixtures, wall papers, curtains, 
lamps and the other thousand and one nec¬ 
essary accessories. By the end of the first 
day she will not know what she wants. By 
the end of the second day her family will 
be crying for help. By the end of the third 
the local physician will have another case 
of nervous breakdown on his hands. 
For a matter of fact this generic Mrs. 
Blank only thinks she knows what she 
wants. Between that state of mind and 
the finished interior are many, many days 
of hard work and harder thinking. 
Frankly, if she has the money, Mrs. 
Blank hires the experience and training of 
a decorator, buys into bondage her brains 
and her assisting taste, just as she hires 
an architect or a doctor or a plumber 
or any other type of man or woman whose 
training in a special line makes him 
invaluable in that line. 
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THE SUBURBANITE 
The 5:19 pulls darkly out 
The train-shed, and the city-folk 
Crowd down the avenue above 
From daily grind to nightly yoke; 
They do not stop to think how I, 
After the murk of working-hours, 
In this dull train am going home 
To rest and flowers. 
Dusty and draughty coaches yours, 
Grim 5 : 19 , once young and, bold; 
We both, who have been friends so long 
At last, I fear, are growing old; 
But should they “take you off” ere / 
Am taken off and reach my end, 
I’d miss you — crusty, often late — 
As I should miss a valued friend. 
Oh, when that other train shall bear 
My outworn vesture from the shed 
Of work and play, from town and home, 
When I, who was alive, am dead, 
May I, thus passing darkly forth, 
Go unregarded and unseen 
To find, as now, my rest and flowers, 
Old 5 : 19 ! 
Reginald Wright Kauffman 
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T O understand the decorator’s re¬ 
strictions one must compare her 
work with that of a kindred profes¬ 
sion, say, the architect’s. The architect 
goes to look at the prospective plot for 
the house. All outdoors conspire with 
him—the skyline, the infinity of blue 
above, the scattering of verdure about. 
When the decorator goes to look over 
the prospective field of her labor she 
faces four blank walls with some archi¬ 
tectural problems to include in her 
scheme, and a view from the windows. 
Moreover, she must make the room so 
express the personality of the owner 
that visitors will forthwith exclaim, 
“Oh, Mrs. Jones, I knew you would 
make your room look like yourself!” 
This is not a plea for pity on deco¬ 
rators. It is written, as the title sug¬ 
gests, in defense of them. Nor is it 
written with a view to proselyting 
among those hosts of householders who 
know what they want in their homes 
and why they want it, and are perfectly 
capable of carrying out the work. 
Decorators have come to stay. More 
and more are men and women appreci¬ 
ating the salient fact that it is as im¬ 
portant to live in a house in good taste 
as it is to live in clothes in good taste. 
Fashions come and go, but there is a 
permanency about fashions in the home 
because the fundamental laws which 
govern good taste are applicable any¬ 
where at any time. 
Good taste is a code designed to en¬ 
hance comfort, work and pleasure. It 
is one of the influences that make life 
more livable, because it makes the sur¬ 
roundings of the home in which we live 
more livable. For that influence and 
for that code the decorator stands as 
leader. She is among the vital factors 
at work in present-day life, if in this 
age of material things, we measure life 
in terms of the beautiful. 
