February, iqii 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
83 
‘ 1 ■ $ > ■ 
: U 1 "-',,., W. 
. 
A modern reception-room with Louis XVI furniture. The walls are light gray, the wood¬ 
work white, in the Adam style, showing the possibility of reconciling these periods 
of the great French periods were 
high, and often the modern house has 
very low ceilings, that would not allow 
space for the cornice, over-doors and 
correctly proportioned paneling, that 
are marked features of those times. 
The delicate beauty of Adam furniture 
would be lost in the greatness of a 
Renaissance salon. One must feel 
strongly this sense of the fitness of 
things to escape the pitfalls of period 
furnishing. Most amazing things are 
done with perfect complacency, but, 
although the French and English kings 
who gave their names to the various 
periods were far from models of vir¬ 
tue, they certainly deserved no such 
cruel punishment as to have some of 
the modern rooms, such as we have 
all seen, called after them. 
The best decorators refuse to mix 
styles in one room and they thus save 
people from many mistakes, but a 
decorator without a thorough under¬ 
standing of the subject, often leads one 
to disaster. A case in point is an 
apartment where a small Louis XV 
room opens on a narrow hall of non¬ 
descript modern style, with a wide 
archway opening into a Mission din¬ 
ing-room. As one sits in the midst 
of pink brocade and gilding and looks across to the dining-room, 
fitted out in all the heavy paraphernalia of Mission furniture, 
one's head fairly reels. No contrast could be more marked or 
more unsuitable, and yet this is by no means an uncommon case. 
If one intends to adopt a style in 
decorating one’s house, there should be 
a uniformity of treatment in all con¬ 
necting rooms, and there must be har¬ 
mony in the furniture and architecture 
and ornament, as well as harmony in 
the color scheme. The foundation 
must be right before the decoration 
is added. The proportion of doors 
and windows, for instance, is very im¬ 
portant, with the decorated over-door 
reaching to the ceiling. The over¬ 
doors and mantels were architectural 
features of the rooms, and it was not 
until wall papers came into common 
use, in the early part of the 19th cen¬ 
tury, that these decorative features 
slowly died out. Paneling is appro¬ 
priate for nearly all styles, but should 
be the correct type for the style chos¬ 
en. The paneling of a Tudor room is 
quite different from a Louis XVI 
room. In the course of a long period 
like that of Louis XV the paneling 
slowly changed its character and the 
rococo style was followed by the more 
dignified one that later became the 
style of Louis XVI. 
Both the architect and decorator 
must know what the rooms are to con¬ 
tain, as it is not fair to either to sud¬ 
denly have something bought that is quite regardless of the care¬ 
fully thought out plan of decoration. It may put the whole 
scheme out of key and spoil it. A lady whose dining-room: was 
beautifully furnished in Sheraton furniture one day saw two 
It is only in the large mansion that the elabor ate type of interior decoration bearing the name. 
of Louis XV seems appropriate 
