D e c emb e r , 1915 
29 
In “Saviors," at the Bandbox Theatre, the setting was full of color: curtains, cushions and pillows being 
vivid green, save one pillow of lavender, walls and floors grey and the lamp shade bright orange 
STAGE SETTINGS FROM A DECORATOR’S STANDPOINT 
A Medium in Which Character Personality Must Be Expressed — Limitations and Possibilities— 
Creating Reality by Real Furnishings 
B. RUSSELL HERTS 
With views of settings 
A N oft-recurring regret of the interior decorator who 
attempts to beautify and render finely habitable the resi¬ 
dences or apartments of his friends is that he cannot curb the 
structural atrocities foisted upon them by unthinking archi¬ 
tects. Do what he will with color and with line, he must 
accept as a priori propositions the misplaced beams, the badly 
designed woodwork, the ill-arranged lighting fixtures and 
poorly proportioned rooms with which he is provided. Cer¬ 
tainly this is the case with the newly constructed house or 
with the average apartment, and it is only when a client per¬ 
mits architect and decorator to work together, from the draw¬ 
ing of the plans to the placing of the last porcelain vase, or 
when the architect himself possesses the rare qualities of 
knowledge, experience, originality and a deep decorative sense, 
that a first-rate result is achieved. 
All this is obviated in the designing of interiors for the 
designed by the author 
stage; and so they prove a delightful diversion to the man 
customarily devoted to the ordinary types of decoration. On 
the stage, the designer at last becomes a builder, and in his 
flights of structural imagining, he may soar the empyrean 
without that inevitable restraint which is provided ordinarily 
by the exigencies of human occupation. The stage is a thing 
of thin boards, paint and canvas, but it may suggest all the 
permanence of a Gothic cathedral, the magnificence of a 16th 
Century palace, the grace of an Adam drawing-room, or the 
verve and unrestraint of those modern manifestations which 
Germans assure us are in very fact a style. 
Architecturally our choice is almost limitless. We are given 
certain directions by the dramatist, but even these need not 
be slavishly followed. In general, we may place our doors 
and windows where we will, our ceilings at any height we 
please, our halls and staircases wherever we want them, and 
Designed by O'Kane Conwell 
The bedroom scene of “A Pair of Silk Stockings" gave the decorator an excellent opportunity for color effects in greenish blue and pink 
