CONSIDERING THE PERIOD OF ADAM—DIGNITY, DELICACY AND DRYNESS—THE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS 
OF AN ADAM REPRODUCTION—THE PURELY ORNAMENTAL USE OF FURNITURE 
Alfred Morton Githens 
Corner of a room after manner of Robert Adam—Mantel of white marble, colored inlay, or of white wood; 
gilt mirror-frame and window-cornice; gray, pale green or dull, yellow walls, relieving the white chair-rail, base, 
door frame and picture framing; ceiling, pale colors, with plaster cornice, mouldings and arabesque in white, 
and inserted circular paintings; mahogany door, painted panels; dark wood floor with carpet of special design; 
all furniture of Hepplewhite or Sheraton type 
TF we have any claim to approbation, we found it on this 
A alone: that we flatter ourselves we have been able to 
seize with some degree of success the beautiful spirit of an¬ 
tiquity, and to inform it with novelty and variety through all our 
numerous wavs.” 
So Robert Adam wrote a hundred and fifty years ago. His 
work in general, and particularly the decoration of his rooms, 
seem to me close in spirit to the old Roman work. His arrange¬ 
ments are always of the highest dignity, his outlines pure and 
delicate. Dignity, Delicacy: these are the chief attributes; must 
we admit at times a certain dryness? His rooms are lofty, en¬ 
nobling, inspiring; but conventional to the last degree, with the 
rigidity of a formal age. 
His was the last great period of English architecture; after it 
came the “church warden” and all the confused abortions that 
culminated in the Mid-Victorian. The great cabinetmakers, Hep- 
pelwhite, Shearer and Sheraton, were bis contemporaries; under 
bis influence their furniture developed the characteristically deli¬ 
cate purity of outline and modeling we 
know so well. Robert Adam was the 
central figure, dominating these men and 
his three brothers; we see Robert Adam 
in the delicate classic Wedgwood figures, 
white on a dull blue, gray, pink or choco¬ 
late ground; for Wedgwood was a con¬ 
temporary and copied Adam’s architectu¬ 
ral decoration in porcelain. This cameo¬ 
like treatment was first popularized by 
Adam. Nearly all his walls and ceilings 
show fine white decorations on a pale 
tinted ground, whereas his immediate 
predecessors, as far as I know, never col¬ 
ored their ceilings except for a sparing 
use of gold on certain parts of the orna¬ 
ment ; on the walls they used oak or white 
painted wainscoting whenever they could. 
He himself explains his scheme in de¬ 
scribing his work at Kenwood: 
“The grounds of the panels and 
friezes are colored with light tints of 
pink and green, so as to take off the 
glare of the white, so common in every 
ceiling till of late. This always appeared 
to me so cold and unfinished that I ven¬ 
tured this variety of grounds to relieve 
the ornaments, to remove the crudeness 
of the white and to create a harmony 
with the ceiling and the side walls with 
their hanging decorations.” 
Wainscoting he seldom used ; nothing 
heavy or clumsy; such a thing as a 
beamed ceiling never occurs. His deco¬ 
ration is invariably in plaster in low re¬ 
lief, with rectangular or circular painted 
panels inserted over doors or in other 
places in wall or ceiling where they composed in the general 
arrangement; these, with the deep-toned wood of the doors, 
formed the dark notes. His mantels were generally of white 
marble (he was the first to introduce marble mantels in England), 
with sometimes a colored marble inlaid in flutes or as a background 
in the decorated panels; he used wooden mantels at times, as in 
Sir Joshua Reynolds’ house, but he preferred marble. Over the 
mantel was a painting of one of his curious mirrors with its 
strange, elaborate frame. 
He took under his charge the complete decoration of a room, 
designing the carpet, the window hangings, all the furniture, even 
the ornaments. There was nothing whatever left to chance; 
there could not be, with a room pitched in such a high and deli¬ 
cate key. A Jacobean room, with its dark oak wainscot, is of a 
burlier, heartier type and can assimilate many a monstrosity 
without being much the worse; but not so this exotic from the 
South, as certain manor houses in England testify, whose owners 
have furnished their Adam rooms without discrimination. 
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