International studio (58.1916)

Interior Decoration and Personality

I am, of course, treating a somewhat delicate
phase of interior decoration, since without being
very personal, readers have no means of measur-
ing the success or lack of success with which tem-
peramental individuality has been interpreted.
But I want to show what is actually and increas-
ingly being practised; and my hope is that my
readers may be interested and encouraged in self-
expression.
The vital significance of individualized or tem-
peramental personality in decorative treatment
is, indeed, just this. When you come to consider
the fact that virtually all the elements we have
to deal with in interior decoration—the particular
forms all objects of furnishment assume, even
within the restrictions of their purpose, are but
the embodiments of entirely unseen ideals, and
that all our standards of taste in using them are
but deductions from past externalizations of
these ideals that have stood the test of time, you
see that, obviously, whatever approaches imper-
sonality, deals in corresponding degree with only
the dry bones of interior decoration, but whatever
approaches individual interpretation, with its
vital, first-hand source of expression.
We read much in books and magazines that is
of uncompromising, class-room savour—of how
architecture should always “go through” into
the interior fitments, of certain requisite “thema-
tic correspondences” between the “mobiliary
appointments” and fixed lines of structure, of
decorative restraint and nicety of balance. But
how shall we reconcile this with conditions wherein
the individual tastes and requirements of clients,
apparently by no means born of whims, of flip-
pancy, or of immaturity in an appreciation of
the eternal fitness of things, reach beyond the
artistic sympathies and riper discretions of the
usual architect or decorator—or should I more
justly say, reach beyond his limitations—into
more or less pronounced superlatives of one kind
or another? These latter may, for example, imply
a certain “nimiety” or comparative extravagance
or superficiality, or temperamental daring in
taste; and yet, so complete and happy is the
resulting sense of personal adaptation, that the
means is quite justified, aesthetically, by the end.
For just as it is to be remembered that some
of the rarest harmonies in colour or in music are
those that approach nearest to discord, so it must
be acknowledged that some of the most expressive
and individual examples of interior decoration

are those exhibiting certain licenses that appear
to transcend rules and precedence.
I have in mind a beautiful home which has been
evolved entirely out of certain predilections—
vanity some might choose to call it—on the part
of the owner, for sable and sapphire. Indeed,
colour was the ruling genius of the whole creation
from the stones of foundation to the silk of mi-
lady’s boudoir lamp shades. The interior colour
fundamentals rise into harmonious gradations of
pomegranate, soft old reds, and flaunting splotches
of tawny yellows, with complementary accentua-
tions of brilliance in blue-greens, yet all mellowed
and refined in relation to the whole. The archi-
tecture was chosen entirely from personal tem-
peramental combinations of imagination, a most
engaging mysticism, an almost barbaric passion
for colour, yet a balancing sense for stability,
conventional fitness, tradition, concrete order.
What more natural, then, than that the selec-
tion of a general style should look for a prototype
among the elements of earlier French examples?
For do not the French, in their blending of Gallic
and Latin blood, reflect in their art a like ele-
mental fusion? They have that love of symbol-
ism, mysticism, superstition and romance that in
the thirteenth century reared lofty cathedrals,
and that love of the concrete, of decorative fit-
ness and decorum, of material splendour and plen-
itude of imported formalism in motif and line
which in 1500 came with the Italian Renaissance,
and by combinations and permutations stamped
French art with classicism.
Thus it seems in this case as if the result, so
superbly successful, not only in personal inter-
pretation but in every way, has been achieved
by a reversal of the usual order of things in build-
ing a home, wherein architecture so often dic-
tates the character of our indoor surroundings.
Yet does this not exemplify what should more
often be the case? For interior decoration deal-
ing with those more intimate and habitable quali-
ties, by far the most purposive factor in a struc-
ture’s existence, why should it not in a large
measure govern the entire procedure of building?
A decorator comes in contact with so many
sides of human nature, so many types of client
and customer, that it seems to me these could be
classified into very interesting categories as to
character, tastes, personal traits. There are those
who turn everything over to the hands of a deco-
rator and those who would rather do the entire

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