The House in Good Taste

udy the people who are to live in this house, and their needs, as thoroughly as I studied my parts in the days when I was an actress. For the time-being I really am the

ireplaces should be in the right place and should balance one another t

d out and travel-stained, only to find oneself facing a mirror as far removed from the daylight as possible, with the artificial lights directly behind one, or high in the ceiling in the center of the room. In my house

control. I prefer the normal heat of sunshine and open fires. But, granted that open fires are impossible in all your rooms, do arrange in the beginning that the small rooms of your house may not be overheated. It is a distinct irritation to a person who loves clean air to go into a room where a flood of steam heat pours out of every cor

TIER INSET ABOVE

her home. We may talk of the weather, but we are looking at the furniture. We attribute vulgar qualities to those who are content to live in ugly surroundings. We endow with refinement and charm the person who welcomes us in a delightful room, where the colors blend and the proportions are as perfect as in a pictur

preciate the full balance of proportion, but we can exert our common sense and decide whether a thing is suitable; we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is simple, and we can train our eyes to recognize good and bad proportion

woman who permits paper floors and iron ceilings in her house? We are too afraid of the restful commonplaces, and yet if we live simple lives, why shouldn't we be glad our houses are comfortably commonplace? How much better to have plain furniture that is co

ht and air, and huge and frightful paintings. This style of room, with its museum-like furnishings, has been dubbed "Marie Antoinette," why, no one but the American decorator can say.

the hostess, who had evidently reserved what she considered the best for the last, threw open the doors of a large and gorgeous apartment and

e wished to be of supreme importance. In the immense salons of the Italian pal

r seems insignificant among his collections of historical furniture. Whether he collects all sorts of things of all periods in o

ited the troublous times of their fathers in their heavy oaken chests. They owned more chests than anything els

backed chairs. It was not until the Seventeenth Century that they had time to sit down and talk. We need no

ed exclusively with preserving and reproducing. We have not succeeded in creating a style adapted to our modern life. It is just as well! Our life, with its haste, its

e formal French room is very delightful in the proper place but when it is unsuited to the people who must live in it it is as bad as a sham roo

to the scheme of her house. Haven't you been in rooms where there was a jumble of mission furniture, satinwood, fine old mahogany and gilt-legged chairs? And it is the same with color. A woman says, "Oh, I love blue, let's have blue!" regardless of th

to that. It isn't at all necessary. There are old English chairs and tables of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries tha

s, in many houses of to-day under the guise of being "authentic period furniture." Only a connoisseur can ever hope to know about the furniture of every period, but all of us can easily learn the ear-marks of the furniture that is suited to our homes. I shan't talk about ear-marks here, however, because dozens of collectors have

this heterogeneous mass of ornamental "period" furniture and bric-a-brac bought to make a room "look cozy." Once cleared of these, the simplicity and dignity of the room c