January, 1923 
73 
THE PROGRESS OF DECORATION 
Having Arrived At A Human Attitude Toward The Traditional Styles 
Our Rooms Become More Livable 
T HE viewpoint in interior decoration 
and furnishing began to shift a few 
years ago with the coming of age of 
our own generation. Though we are using 
the same forms and drawing upon the same 
historic sources that supplied the prototypes 
for the room treatments of the 19th Century 
and the earlier years of the present century, 
though we have not created a “modem 
style”, a change that is revolutionary is well 
under way. It is profound, a thing of the 
spirit, a natural and necessary manifesta¬ 
tion of our attitude towards life. 
The period from the end of the Civil War 
to the opening of the World’s Fair at 
Chicago in 1893, was one of industrial and 
business development, but was marked by 
bad taste and general ignorance of the art 
of the past. The World’s Fair was a 
revelation of really worthy art to hundreds 
of thousands of our people; it marked the 
beginning of an era of academic study in 
art, with very little genuine understanding 
or appreciation. 
Refusal to follow in the footsteps of our 
elders along the path of academic dullness, 
has placed us in such a position that it is 
wise for us to define our aims and to con¬ 
sider how we can best use the wealth of 
decorative precedent that has come down to 
us from the past. 
For the meticulous observance of a nar¬ 
row interpretation of “purity of style”, and 
a mortal dread of anachronisms, we are sub¬ 
stituting a more intelligent and sympathetic 
use of the period styles. Having acquired 
knowledge, we are now gaining freedom. 
Instead of accepting pronouncements on 
“good taste” we are substituting a will to 
express character in decoration. Instead of 
cut-and-dried schemes, we want rooms that 
have the breath of life. 
With this change of viewpoint, a kind 
of interior decorator that is different from 
most of those that flourished in the last gen¬ 
eration has come to the front. Men and 
women who know how to use old furniture 
and furnishings in a new way and to em¬ 
ploy with understanding present-day furni¬ 
ture and fabric designs inspired by old 
work are making real their client’s con¬ 
ceptions of suitable home surroundings. 
Let us try to visualize some of the old 
interiors and the life of which each served 
as an expression. 
A MONG the most attractive of pres¬ 
ent-day interiors are those inspired 
by the rooms of the cottages built by 
the early Colonists. This simple kind of 
cottage and its prototype, the old English 
EUGENE CLUTE 
cottage, will repay study. Some of the ex¬ 
isting cottages in New England have been 
preserved or restored and refurnished with 
old pieces so that they give us a fairly 
trustworthy impression. 
The adze-hewn beams of the low ceiling, 
the big, broad fireplace, the simple mantel, 
the quaint, hand-wrought crane and the 
roomy settle are features that we may well 
employ to give to a living room of today 
the air of peace and contentment that 
reigned in the homes of the men and women 
who built their houses on the edge of the 
wilderness in Colonial days. 
Every detail of the room that often served 
both as living room and kitchen in the early 
American cottage, gives forth the spirit of 
the family circle that gathered nightly 
about its cheery fire—the children and 
their elders, a white-haired grandparent, 
perhaps, in the warmest corner. 
The flint-lock resting on pegs over the 
fireplace, where it was ready at hand for 
either hunting or defense, gave a sense of 
security to the room, while the spinning 
wheel at the fireside supplied the compli¬ 
mentary feminine note by suggesting domes¬ 
tic industry. Whether the flint-lock and 
the spinning wheel should ever have a place 
in a living room of today, since their use¬ 
fulness has passed, is an open question. 
Their inclusion is likely to seem a bit 
forced. 
I F we would have the spirit of the old 
cottage living room in a room of 
ours, we must avoid all pretense and 
all ostentation. It is well to remember that 
the early American cottage was a very differ¬ 
ent kind of home from the Georgian mansion 
and that the furnishings and the details of 
the one are, in general, out of place in the 
other. A few fine pieces of furniture, fine 
in line and proportion but not ornate, may 
well be used in the cottage interior. Such 
pieces were sometimes the prized pos¬ 
sessions of a family that lived in a very 
simple way. They occasionally give a note 
of refinement and they afford relief from 
the monotony of furnishings all strictly of 
a kind, for a certain amount of variety 
suggests life, prevents the unpleasant im¬ 
pression of a room furnished all at one 
time, and never subjected to natural 
changes. 
The greater part of the furnishings of the 
cottage were, of course, of the simpler sort. 
Chairs of the Windsor type and straight- 
backed chairs are in the picture, so is the 
gate-leg table, but elaborately carved Geor¬ 
gian chairs are most certainly not. 
As for wall treatment, we find in the exist¬ 
ing cottages, walls of vertical boarding and 
walls covered with hand-printed papers that 
show scenic designs in a repeating frame¬ 
work and other quaint designs of moderate 
size. Fortunately a number of these papers 
found on the walls of old houses have been 
reproduced faithfully by an American 
maker of wall papers and are available for 
our use. White-painted, wooden paneling, 
if very simple, provides a suitable wall 
treatment for a living room of the early 
American cottage type. 
A floor of wide boards, a few rag rugs, 
some pewter and brass, about complete the 
(ensemble. If throughout the decorating and 
furnishing of an interior in this manner 
we keep in sympathy with the life that was 
lived in the old-time cottage, we may be 
fortunate enough to light the fire on our 
hearth from that of the early Colonist and 
come to know the full meaning of the word 
home. 
S HIPS laden with valuable cargoes 
passed in and out of our New Eng¬ 
land ports in Georgian times, sail¬ 
ing distant seas and piling up wealth for 
their owners, who built themselves mansions 
fashioned after the homes of the well-to-do 
in the mother country. Other men of im¬ 
portance in a business or official way did 
likewise. The carpenter-architect was 
busy. He drew upon a small stock of ideas 
gleaned from books and upon a large re¬ 
serve of native ability. There is evidence 
in many an old house that some of his kind 
occasionally did weird things in experi¬ 
menting with combinations of moldings and 
in other ways. On the whole, however, the 
work of the carpenter-architect was won¬ 
derfully good. We must not, of course, 
overlook the influence of the men of educa¬ 
tion who, though they were not architects 
by profession, gave us buildings that com¬ 
mand our respectful admiration. 
Whenever we attempt a room in the man¬ 
ner of the Georgian mansion, let us keep in 
mind the restraint, the dignity and the 
tenderness that are such prominent char¬ 
acteristics of the type. Let us picture the 
social life for which these rooms formed 
the setting, the assemblages of men and 
women of refinement, dressed in the latest 
fashions of the day. Let us keep in mind 
the substantial domesticity of the family 
life. We shall then see that the wall panel¬ 
ing, the wonderful Chinese papers and the 
fine French hand-blocked scenic papers 
were admirable backgrounds for the life of 
(Continued on page 100) 
