DOI issue:
Nr. 232 (June 1915)
DOI article:Interior decoration and personality
DOI article:Hawthorne memorial
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43461#0418
Interior Decoration and Personality
If we but recall that personality native to styles
is the one and only vital generative factor that gave
them their own peculiar artistic investiture, we
readily see that any appreciation of them that
falls short of this richest significance is nothing
more than a correspondingly crude bungling or
less skilful handling of our finer and more deli-
cate pigments of decorative interpretation.
I only wish I might amplify my thesis with a
detailed reference to the characteristic pervading
spirit or symbolic significance with which time
and good usage have endowed each of the past
periods of decoration. Time has transformed
them all into rich and beautiful words in our
decorative language. With them we may tell a
modern tale all the more flexibly and charmingly.
I wish I might show how people wilfully misuse
the aptness and force of this language.
Perhaps in so brief a space the idea may be best
grasped by a popular understanding of what I
alluded to a few paragraphs back as aesthetic
efficiency, since our age is so alert to the principle
of efficiency in every other line. Most anyone
will admit that to place violets in a house pervaded
with the odour of stewing turnips is a simple mat-
ter of aesthetic inefficiency. Sure, people see that,
all right. It has nothing to do with dust, dura-
bility, duty or the price of putty. Sure—just
simon pure aesthetics. Well, just so surely is
there the factor of aesthetic efficiency in the rela-
tion of personality to indoor surroundings. In
every one of us there is something just our own—
something native, characteristic, deep and per-
manent, which has a distinct polarity for some
aesthetic counterpart.
Since our rooms will express, whether we wish
them to or no, they might as well express our-
selves. And when we consider the modern facili-
ties of our best shops and factories, aiming ex-
pressly to furnish the veriest niceties for interpre-
tation at the minimum of cost to the consumer,
we must see that our individual failure to seek
out that which will best draw out and enrich our
personality, is but rubbing art the wrong way,
lowering our aesthetic efficiency.
Not long ago, in a discussion of this growing
factor of individualized personality in interior
decoration, the question was asked at a congenial
gathering what was the leading personal quality
that most distinguished an absent acquaintance
of all present. Opinions were so similar that
they were all epitomized, by hearty concur-
rence, in one person’s apt phrase—“Somehow he
always reminds me of that mystic grandeur of a
Gothic cathedral.” And, think of it! This man
is housed in bachelor apartments done in what
mightbewell termed “Early Pullman.” Thesame
experiment was made of several other persons.
One characterization I recall—“A dainty bit of
Dresden”—pertained to a woman who is cruelly
surrounded by Mission appointments.
Indeed, I may add that the very place we held
forth that evening was the home of a public ac-
countant and high efficiency expert and his wife,
whose specialty is domestic science. Now she, by
the way, will tell me truly, as to my diet, just how
many calories of heat I should reckon for whether
I am to negotiate the Third Avenue “el” at rush
hour or merely propose for myself a stroll up the
Matterhorn. Together they have studied all
domestic problems on a scientific basis and hope
in years to come to eliminate what then shall be
proven to have been all the lost motion (and I
am only too afraid, the lost art) of living. The
house is decorated in what might be termed
Americanized modern Viennese—“ with not a stick
of mahogany”—declared the enthusiastic hus-
band, “to remind us of our grandparents, or a
single design to obtrude upon our wedded life the
intranquillizing associations of celibacy. We mar-
ried and started a new existence. We hope our
home interprets us.” It did.
J JAWTHORNE MEMORIAL
The disastrous Salem fire of 1914 sud-
denly stopped the movement for collecting funds
to erect a memorial to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Salem is rapidly recovering from this disaster and
is building a much finer and more beautiful city.
The Directors of the Hawthorne Memorial Asso-
ciation therefore feel it is time to take up and
complete the fund of twenty-five thousand dol-
lars necessary to erect a fine portrait statue of
Hawthorne by Bela L. Pratt, the noted Boston
sculptor. Hawthorne does not belong to Salem
alone but to the whole country and the world.
His fame as a writer is fixed, and while Salem is
noted for many historical things, perhaps its chief
interest to the country at large is connected to
the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Subscriptions towards this very worthy pur-
pose may be forwarded to Salem, to the Secretary
of the Association, Mr. Harlan P. Kelsey.
cxxxi
If we but recall that personality native to styles
is the one and only vital generative factor that gave
them their own peculiar artistic investiture, we
readily see that any appreciation of them that
falls short of this richest significance is nothing
more than a correspondingly crude bungling or
less skilful handling of our finer and more deli-
cate pigments of decorative interpretation.
I only wish I might amplify my thesis with a
detailed reference to the characteristic pervading
spirit or symbolic significance with which time
and good usage have endowed each of the past
periods of decoration. Time has transformed
them all into rich and beautiful words in our
decorative language. With them we may tell a
modern tale all the more flexibly and charmingly.
I wish I might show how people wilfully misuse
the aptness and force of this language.
Perhaps in so brief a space the idea may be best
grasped by a popular understanding of what I
alluded to a few paragraphs back as aesthetic
efficiency, since our age is so alert to the principle
of efficiency in every other line. Most anyone
will admit that to place violets in a house pervaded
with the odour of stewing turnips is a simple mat-
ter of aesthetic inefficiency. Sure, people see that,
all right. It has nothing to do with dust, dura-
bility, duty or the price of putty. Sure—just
simon pure aesthetics. Well, just so surely is
there the factor of aesthetic efficiency in the rela-
tion of personality to indoor surroundings. In
every one of us there is something just our own—
something native, characteristic, deep and per-
manent, which has a distinct polarity for some
aesthetic counterpart.
Since our rooms will express, whether we wish
them to or no, they might as well express our-
selves. And when we consider the modern facili-
ties of our best shops and factories, aiming ex-
pressly to furnish the veriest niceties for interpre-
tation at the minimum of cost to the consumer,
we must see that our individual failure to seek
out that which will best draw out and enrich our
personality, is but rubbing art the wrong way,
lowering our aesthetic efficiency.
Not long ago, in a discussion of this growing
factor of individualized personality in interior
decoration, the question was asked at a congenial
gathering what was the leading personal quality
that most distinguished an absent acquaintance
of all present. Opinions were so similar that
they were all epitomized, by hearty concur-
rence, in one person’s apt phrase—“Somehow he
always reminds me of that mystic grandeur of a
Gothic cathedral.” And, think of it! This man
is housed in bachelor apartments done in what
mightbewell termed “Early Pullman.” Thesame
experiment was made of several other persons.
One characterization I recall—“A dainty bit of
Dresden”—pertained to a woman who is cruelly
surrounded by Mission appointments.
Indeed, I may add that the very place we held
forth that evening was the home of a public ac-
countant and high efficiency expert and his wife,
whose specialty is domestic science. Now she, by
the way, will tell me truly, as to my diet, just how
many calories of heat I should reckon for whether
I am to negotiate the Third Avenue “el” at rush
hour or merely propose for myself a stroll up the
Matterhorn. Together they have studied all
domestic problems on a scientific basis and hope
in years to come to eliminate what then shall be
proven to have been all the lost motion (and I
am only too afraid, the lost art) of living. The
house is decorated in what might be termed
Americanized modern Viennese—“ with not a stick
of mahogany”—declared the enthusiastic hus-
band, “to remind us of our grandparents, or a
single design to obtrude upon our wedded life the
intranquillizing associations of celibacy. We mar-
ried and started a new existence. We hope our
home interprets us.” It did.
J JAWTHORNE MEMORIAL
The disastrous Salem fire of 1914 sud-
denly stopped the movement for collecting funds
to erect a memorial to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Salem is rapidly recovering from this disaster and
is building a much finer and more beautiful city.
The Directors of the Hawthorne Memorial Asso-
ciation therefore feel it is time to take up and
complete the fund of twenty-five thousand dol-
lars necessary to erect a fine portrait statue of
Hawthorne by Bela L. Pratt, the noted Boston
sculptor. Hawthorne does not belong to Salem
alone but to the whole country and the world.
His fame as a writer is fixed, and while Salem is
noted for many historical things, perhaps its chief
interest to the country at large is connected to
the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Subscriptions towards this very worthy pur-
pose may be forwarded to Salem, to the Secretary
of the Association, Mr. Harlan P. Kelsey.
cxxxi