42 
House 
r 
& Garden 
D O YOU NEGLECT THE CEILING? 
Treated with Molded Plaster, Paint or Open Beams It Is as Capable of Adding 
to the Richness of a Room as the M'Alls and Floors 
COSTEN FITZ-GIBBON 
T he average domestic plastered ceiling al¬ 
most invariably represents a neglected op- 
jjortunity or else is a puzzling bug-bear to 
those who feel that something ought to be 
done with it, but are not quite sure what. 
As a matter of fact, the ceiling is just as 
integral and necessary a part of any room as 
are its walls and floor and it is altogether 
logical, therefore, that it should be made or 
allowed to fulfill its share in the decorative 
scheme quite as well as 
the walls and floor do 
theirs. Indeed, we can¬ 
not any more afford to 
neglect or ignore the ceil¬ 
ing in a complete decora¬ 
tive scheme than a painter 
can afford to ignore the 
sky in a landscape. 
The Victorian Atrocities 
It is quite as illogical 
to be deterred from giving 
the ceiling due decorative 
consideration by the poi¬ 
sonous memories of the 
atrocities the Victorians 
wrought upon it as it 
would be to shrink from 
heeding our walls and 
floors because.of our vivid 
recollection that the same 
agencies had there, too, 
perpetrated numberless 
grotesque horrors. Because 
the misguided’paper-hang- 
ers and fresco-painters of 
the 19th Century made 
the ceilings , hideous with 
splurgy, borders and cor¬ 
ner-pieces composed of 
cranes, spatter-docks, zig¬ 
zag lines, chimerical 
l)easts and > Watant-hued 
fruits and flowers, or be¬ 
cause the plasterers of the 
same period encrusted the 
mid-ceilings - with fear¬ 
some molded compositions 
from which depended the 
omnipresent elaborate gas- 
olier, is no reason why we 
have to follow suit if we 
essay decoration in the 
same quarter. Nor need 
we have recourse to the 
pressed metal diaperings 
of small country hotels 
and barber shops. To ad¬ 
mit that the aforemen¬ 
tioned episodes had exliausted the possibili¬ 
ties of ceiling enlivenment would be to confess 
ourselves singularly lacking in invention 
Ceiling Responsibility 
The ceiling is a material resj)onsibility on 
our hands—perhaps we had better say, upon 
our heads. We cannot arbitrarily set it be- 
A'ond the pale of decorative endeavor. It will 
assuredly punish us in the long run in its own 
quiet but persistent and enduring way if we 
this very thing than is supplied by some of 
the 18th Century plain-walled arid elegantly 
but restrainedly furnished rooms with ceilings 
designed by Adam or Richardson upon which 
low relief or color, or both together, were lav¬ 
ishly employed, all the details being kept 
small in scale and of exquisite refinement. 
Take away from such rooms their ceiling em¬ 
bellishment and we at once destroy a large 
part of their charm. The emptiness of the 
area becomes the aching 
void of incompleteness. 
A Point of Interest 
There are rooms, of 
course, in which the com¬ 
plexity of the wall treat¬ 
ment and of the furnish¬ 
ings makes one sigh with 
relief and thankfulness at 
an empty ceiling as the 
one bit of restful space 
that is not “busy,” like a 
strip of clear blue heaven 
above a canyon of sky¬ 
scrapers. But the whole 
scheme and execution of 
such rooms must be radi¬ 
cally wrong so to cloy the 
eye and mind. 
It is a source of unend¬ 
ing and simple satisfac¬ 
tion to let the eye wander 
and explore the mysteries 
of an open timber roof, 
even though it lack any 
adornment save the com¬ 
bination of its structural 
members; in scarcely less 
degree a raftered farm¬ 
house ceiling yields an 
agreeable diversion to the 
eye by contrast to the plain 
walls beneath. The more 
pretentious beamed ceil¬ 
ing above plain walls af¬ 
fords a like welcome re¬ 
lief. In the same way the 
plastered “tray” ceilings 
of Bermuda, severely 
plain as they generally 
are, nevertheless furnish 
an appreciable interest by 
their contour. 
The Two Treatments 
The means by which 
such ceiling decoration 
may be made are of two 
sorts —- relief and flat. 
(1) Relief decoration of a flat plaster ceiling 
already in place must necessarily be applique, 
and the most practicable way of doing it is 
to use wooden molded ribs and, if desirable, 
also of carved or molded wood. 
The design of such ribs and bosses and the 
manner of their arrangement will necessarily 
depend upon the character of the room and 
the nature of the scheme contrived for it. They 
may be finished as occasion requires. If pre- 
(Coutinued on page 70) 
attempt to do so. In all the great decorative 
periods of history the ceiling claimed its share 
of attention and was adequately dealt with. 
When the wall treatment is deliberately 
plain and severe the ceiling may appropri¬ 
ately maintain a like degree of simplicity and 
remain without any' touch of adornment. Un¬ 
der such conditions it would be thoroughly 
consistent with the general scheme. No sane 
person would urge the elaborate embellishment 
True and false beams can be combined to form a beam-panel ceiling. The crossings 
are marked bv molded rosettes. The intervening spaces can be painted or, as in this 
library, filled 'with low relief molded ribs. Tins scyle requires a room equally heavy 
in the scale of walls, windows and furniture 
of ceilings, for instance, in an unpretentious 
counti')' dwelling of simple farmhouse type, 
where the walls were perfectly^ plain and all 
the furnishings of the most unassuming and 
even austere character. 
But where absolutely jflain walls serve as 
a background and foil for furnishings of great 
distinction and elegance, even though that 
elegance be of studied austerity, then may the 
ceiling with equal propriety bear an embel¬ 
lishment. One cannot find a better example of 
