January, 1916 
15 
“ONLY A MATTER OF TASTE” 
An Instance in Which Appreciation, Discrimination and Elimination Were Applied to a 
City Apartment With Obvious Results 
HENRY BLACKMAN SELL 
Author of “Good Taste in House Furnishing” 
B ACK of every 
truly fine deco¬ 
rative scheme— 
it matters nothing 
how simple nor how 
elaborate—stands the 
inflexible and 
unvarying law of 
fitness, and the foun¬ 
dations of that law. 
are genuineness, sin¬ 
cerity and under¬ 
standing. That this 
is the basis of all 
good taste and that its 
antipode, bad taste, is 
the inevitable result 
of the unstudied and 
insincere use of forms 
and colors not under¬ 
stood and not loved, is 
a matter well appre¬ 
ciated by the intelli¬ 
gent. For when these 
elements of the home 
are not a sympathetic 
part of the lives they 
serve, they are lost, 
the empty shells of 
grace and charm. 
Cheap Imitations 
And though these 
matters are accepted 
in theory, we seem yet 
too young in artistic 
life to have crystal¬ 
lized our theories into 
practice. Therein lies 
the error of many of 
our American homes. 
We are the artistic 
heirs of all the golden 
ages past, and, like the 
heirs of many a vast 
fortune, our oppor¬ 
tunity has proved our 
dilemma. We have 
found our place in the 
scheme of things alto¬ 
gether too comfort¬ 
able ; we have been 
content to take the 
path of least resist¬ 
ance, and to fill our 
homes with an incon¬ 
sistent hodge-podge 
of imitations and soul¬ 
less forms, cheaper 
than the genuine, not 
in money perhaps, but 
in spirit and person¬ 
ality, and our excuse 
—when we are called 
to account and ac¬ 
cused of inconsistencies—has all too often been, “Oh, well, 
you know that is only a matter of taste.’’ On that flimsy in¬ 
sincerity we have grown to be a nation of imitators. 
Our masters of commerce and invention, our scholars and 
our men of business are also the heirs of a mighty past, but 
for them it has been truth to be accepted and error to be re¬ 
jected, and never a 
gullible acceptance of 
the whole. 
No, it is not “a 
matter of taste” when 
we accept for our 
home’s decoration 
those forms of beauty 
which we do not sym¬ 
pathetically under¬ 
stand ; it is a matter 
of intellectual lazi¬ 
ness. We take what 
is smart for the mo¬ 
ment without a ques¬ 
tion of its fitness and 
adaptability for our 
individual needs, and 
in so doing we lose 
that greater delight, 
which is the soul of 
art and which is ours 
only through sincere 
study and search of 
the decorative funda¬ 
mentals upon which 
the artists and lovers 
of the beautiful have 
built. 
True, we cannot all 
live in mansions fitted 
for the most elabo¬ 
rated achievements of 
our artistic forefath¬ 
ers, but we can all sur¬ 
round ourselves with 
a true and lasting 
beauty based firmly 
on that genuine qual¬ 
ity which fits our in¬ 
dividual e (1 u c ation 
and pocket-book, no 
matter with what dif¬ 
ficulties we are sur¬ 
rounded. Then, and 
then only, is the final 
working out of our 
decorative scheme 
“only a matter of 
taste.” 
Bachelors’ Taste 
With a deep under¬ 
standing of these 
facts of artistic life, 
and with that com¬ 
plete disregard of the 
difficulties of annoy¬ 
ing and inharmonious 
externalities that 
comes with such an 
understanding, two 
bachelors recently 
took a most ordinary 
apartment in the old 
collegiate residence district of Chicago and proceeded to work 
out quarters fitted to their culture and their sincere sympathy 
with the best artistic thought. 
The one, Burgess Staford, is a mural painter and designer 
of splendid interiors; the other, William Steiger, is a cosmopo¬ 
lite, whose life work, as an actor and musician of the better 
Thus appeared the spacious front bedroom before the change was 
made that transformed it into a living-room of rare elegance and 
dignity. Among other things the stock lighting fixtures were removed 
Apart from the simple Adam mantel which took the place of the over- 
ornate gas-logs and the graceful candelabra, no structural changes 
were made. These two views are from opposite ends of the room 
