28 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
FURNITURE AND ITS ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND 
Showing the Relation Between the Walls and 
Ceiling and the Furniture of the Stuart Period 
ABBOTT McCLURE and HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN 
This is the first of a series of three articles devoted to the relation between the architec¬ 
ture of a room and its furnishings. It is an invaluable study for those who would decorate 
correctly. The next article will be on the Pre-Georgian and Early Georgian Phases .— Editor. 
Architecture That Comes 
Through 
There was a time in our archi¬ 
tectural history — and we still 
have on every hand numerous 
houses dating from that period 
—when analogies between in¬ 
terior architecture and furniture 
had no significance, for the very 
best of reasons: there was no in- 
W HEN architecture “comes all the way 
through” from the outside and plainly 
shows inside a room we must obviously pay 
some heed to it in choosing and placing 
the furniture. The successful appearance 
of that room depends upon how well we 
analyse its architectural character, how 
plainly we perceive the underlying cor¬ 
respondences between furniture 
design and architecture and how 
intelligently we observe them in 
our work. This does not at all 
mean that if a room’s architecture 
is of a certain clearly defined 
style and date its appointments, 
in order to satisfy the canons of 
good taste, must inevitably be car¬ 
ried out in the precise mobiliary 
fashion that obtained at the same 
date and in the same country. 
House furnishing and decorating 
would then be merely a matter of 
correct archaeology. There would 
be neither occasion nor room for 
personal originality, preference, 
judgment or even common sense. 
Fortunately, we are eclectic 
enough in our architectural 
tastes to adapt when architec¬ 
tural adaptation is expedient or 
legitimately desirable. 
In this Stuart grouping architectural back¬ 
ground and lines of furniture correspond per¬ 
fectly—rectangular contour, identity of decora¬ 
tive motifs and color of wood. The wood is oak 
Another view of the same room shows the con¬ 
tinued correspondence. Late Stuart caned chairs 
are in dark old walnut. Carved overmantel and 
refectory table are similarly treated here 
terior architecture. A room was just a room. 
It had four ugly, plain, plastered walls 
pierced with door and window openings, 
of no particular character, and the full ex- 
flected in the table leg repeated in a table leg cabinet work panels applied to a cabinet produced on a cupboard 
