November, 1915 
11 
PERIOD STYLES IN THE MODERN ROOM 
A Study of Line, Form, Color and Texture in Decoration—What Constitutes a Period Room—-The 
Purpose of Curves—General Rules to Follow in Mixing Periods 
WILLIAM M. ODOM 
Director, Department of Interior Architecture and Decoration. The New York School of Fine and Applied Art. 
T HE various epochs of decorative art that have been termed 
the periods, each has decorative qualities that are great 
forces in the composition of the modern room. These forces 
are represented to the student of design in line, form, color 
and texture, and these design qualities which historic period 
furniture and decoration embody the student must seek to 
understand and use with appreciation. They must be seen as 
active forces. Every design is composed of these elements 
■or forces, and they should be used in proportion as they are 
required to express the dominating idea of the composition. 
Aside from the psychological and historical expression of the 
political, religious and social customs of the times, these period 
designs possess the purely artistic and esthetic values that are 
often overlooked, we being too strongly prejudiced by the as¬ 
sociation of the object with either the congenial or unresponsive 
social or religious idea. 
The greatest work done in interior decoration to-day is 
not the copying of historical rooms, but the using and combin¬ 
ing of the styles of the 
past to express the 
function and person¬ 
ality of the modern 
room. A strictly copied 
historic room is at its 
best an artificial and 
lifeless result, losing all 
that vitality and indi¬ 
viduality which is the 
very essential of crea¬ 
tive art. 
The Italian Room 
The perfect Italian 
room may be the most 
completely esthetic 
room, especially the 
Quatro Centro, but a 
purely Italian room 
would be very insin¬ 
cere and artificial in 
many environments 
and as a room express¬ 
ive of a certain person¬ 
ality. However, an 
Italian note of this 
period, if its technical 
and esthetic values 
are understood, may 
do much to bring great 
dignity and charm to 
A good example of a well-treated 1 8th Century background with Italian and 
English furnishings. The treatment of the background has related the 18th 
Century architecture to the earlier furnishings 
many rooms that have no claim whatever to a period design. 
Some modern decorators and cabinet makers, like some 
fanatical architects, have been dominated by the desire for 
originality only. This has resulted in some of the atrocities 
that are known as I’art nouveau, its chief merit being it origin¬ 
ality. This has proven so disastrous that we have become more 
cautious and more fully realize that all the fine problems 
worked out by the masters of the past are not to be discarded 
for mere originality. All of the best art of the past has been 
a gradual evolution or a rearrangement of materials to fit new 
conditions. Even Gothic art is a gradual development from 
the early Christian, which was a style (if it may be so termed) 
that was created out of Roman architectural and decorative 
fragments. 
The Renaissance is a more obvious example. Here the 
classic was used with more artistic understanding, but with all 
the strict adherence to and the close study of classic art, 
the masterpieces of this epoch are decidedly original creations 
when compared with 
the classic examples. 
The social, religious 
and political require¬ 
ments were so different 
from the classic age 
that an exact copy 
would have produced 
an insincere and theat¬ 
rical result. Some of 
the works of the school 
of Palladio illustrate 
how too strict copying 
can produce a cold and 
lifeless result. 
The early historic 
expressions were more 
concerned with archi¬ 
tectural and decorative 
problems ; to - day we 
have the problem of 
the required comforts 
of the time, many of 
which were unheard of 
in some of the finest 
epochs of art. Versail¬ 
les with all its luxury 
of decorations and its 
total absence of mod¬ 
ern comforts and con¬ 
veniences is an ex¬ 
ample. The laws of 
