"Girls' Rooms"

by Antoinette R. Perkett, May 2010

How many young women, I wonder, would want to decorate their rooms based on the principles stated here?

Early in her teens, a girl feels the impulse to add cheer and beauty to her surroundings, to make her room the interpreter of her higher life, and to fashion joy or contentment out of the things that serve her daily needs. There is an art and a high art in giving a soul to things and in realizing the beauty that is fitting to the place that belongs to us. Sometimes a girl thinks that riches bring beauty to a home. That is not true. Knowledge and appreciation, good taste and imagination, and a willing spirit, these are the helpers. Do not mistake luxury, as young people often do, for beauty. Learn to look deeper into the heart of things. I often think that the great thing that I learned at college, the best lesson of all my studies, of languages and history, of mathematics, of chemistry and astronomy, of music, was just this: that the universe is a universe of laws. The sweetest melody, as well as the orbits of the planets, and the conjugations of the verbs, is governed by laws.

And with the beauty of our own four walls there are laws of proportion, of composition, of color, of design. As you feel and understand these laws, you will gain a power far greater than riches to transform your surroundings. You will have ever at your beck and call the handmaidens who will help you to express the growing world of your imagination in the familiar scenes of your daily life.

There can be beauty in the color of a tinted wall as well as in the richness of brocade, but there cannot be beauty in an inexpensive roll of wall-paper that seeks to imitate brocade. In the ready distinction between sincerity and sham, between naturalness and pretense, lies one of the very foundations of good taste.

THE ATTIC SITTING-ROOM

A rug may be a modern floor-covering from a Western loom, but it cannot hide the effect of ages nor forget its Eastern influence. The rug in the attic sitting-room is a design from Feraghan, where the scarlet poppies and red anemones, the yellow snapdragons and the white henna, the carnation, iris, tulip, and narcissus grow upon the hillsides among the pasturage of the flocks. The rug has patterned this wealth of flowers in its close all-over design and in its richness and harmony of color. The background is a deep blue. There is some white, some yellow, and some pale French blue. But the rose-color seems to have blended all these into its own subtle self.

The walls of the sitting-room are tinted a dull buff, a kind of old yellow. What wall would dare to be spotted with flowers or pattern in the face of a Persian rug with its wonderful feeling for color and marvelous skill in design! Plain surfaces through their very contrast give value to ornament. You sometimes have to cultivate an acquaintance with Spartan simplicity, to make artistic sacrifices, for the sake of artistic successes. Beauty lies, not in lavishness nor in bareness, but in a thoughtful moderation.

The first form of long seat in this country was the high-backed fireside "settle." Since then it has assumed various forms and has been called by various names, such as settee, couch, double chair, and sofa. Still its popularity remains, and it is growing in usefulness and variety as our homes grow in taste and charm. A cozy seat is always an attractive piece of furniture for a girl's room. It invites confidences as well as sociability. The settee in the attic room has a certain girlish lightness in its posts and in the space-divisions of its arms and back. It is wonderful how a piece of furniture can express the ages and the moods of people. In the girl's small boudoir there is a white painted bench with a paneled back. In the girl's studio there is an upholstered corner seat that helps to give the room, with its heavy oak easel and its modeling-bench, a suggestion of feminine comfort. Who can resist the invitation of the tea-nook? Who does not love its party spirit and gaiety in the gloaming of a winter afternoon? The tea-pot is such a warm busybody. It makes the world seem full of happy nothings. It has such a good-natured rotundity of form, it almost looks rollicking by the side of the precise little cream-pitcher. The tea-table in the studio has two lower shelves, one for the extra cups and one for the tray.

THE STUDIO

In this studio, the high rounded window with its small panes of glass and its paneled back of oak is the architectural feature, as the window of a studio should be. The grayish-green walls and the weathered green woodwork give the room its color restfulness. A studio naturally lends itself to decoration. The wall-shelf has a collection of simple pottery shapes that a girl can mold herself. When it comes to pictures, I think it a mistake for a student to follow an artist's example in surrounding herself with her own work. There are many things a master may do with impunity and success that a student does not profit by. It looks unambitious, at least, for a girl to surround herself with her own sketches, when the world is full of masterpieces that can be daily an inspiration to her. Every student has her own favorites. It is by decorating her walls with the pictures she loves that a girl can best give her room the individual touch that a room should have.

In the studio are prints of "The Butterfly" and "A Quiet Hour," by J. W. Alexander, portraits effective and graceful, full of a modern poetry. The girl putting on the hat is by Frank W. Benson. The picture on the side wall is "The First Music Lesson," by Francis Day.

THE ALCOVE NOOK

In the alcove nook, over the fireplace, is "The Castle of the Maidens," by Edwin Abbey, which forms part of the frieze decoration "The Quest of the Holy Grail" in the Boston Public Library. Its row of beautiful maidens makes it peculiarly appropriate for a gir^s room, while the long, low composition makes it an excellent space-division over the mantel-shelf.

The problem of pictures in a room is not only a problem of pictures. It is a problem of spacefilling. Of course this problem of space-filling concerns doors and windows, fireplaces and lighting-fixtures, and wall-paneling even more than it does pictures. We hang a picture in a certain position without being able to explain why we feel satisfied when we hang it so. In the studio, along the window wall, for instance, we hung four portrait studies of equal size and felt content. But why? I think it was because they helped to emphasize the horizontal line of the shelf, an emphasis that was needed because of the very interest aroused by the window with its long vertical lines and rounded top. On the side wall, on the other hand, two pictures of equal size looked strangely unsatisfactory. They gave to the wall-space above the seat something that was at variance with the feeling of completeness • that helps to make the charm of a cozy corner. In the attic sitting-room, the oval frame balances the lighting-bracket. Here you will notice the sewing-table. It was selected not only because it has quaint pockets and a girlish lightness of construction, but because its oval top relieves the long, narrow lines of the casement window through the introduction of a curve. In the girl's alcove nook, the long, low picture gives a spacemeaning that no other shape would have expressed as well. Two high, narrow panels, for instance, would have increased not only the height of the mantel, but the very height of the walls. That may be exactly the effect you need in some rooms. But here the mantel-shelf is high. What it needs is the broadening effect that the frieze gives it. Over the desk, the candlesconce takes part with the photographs of girl friends in a triangular arrangement.

THE BOUDOIR

In the boudoir there is another problem.

This room is a small room in front of the upper hall, with which it is connected by double doors paneled with small panes of glass. The walls are not wainscoted, because wood paneling is too expensive. But the general line effect of wainscoting is expressed in an inexpensive way through the use of wooden strips and fabric paper. The wall-space has been divided horizontally into three parts by a chair-rail on a line with the window-apron and by another wooden strip continuing the line of the top of the window. There are three vertical strips making small upper and lower panels. Then there are the triple windows, the doors, and the broad panels against which the desk and the dressing-table have been placed. The dressing-table mirror fills the upper panel on the left side, but the panel above the desk needed an added space-division. To have used several small pictures would have broken the dignified wainscoted look that the strips are meant to give, but a single large picture of importance emphasizes this intention.

The picture chosen for this position of honor is by Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is a portrait group of the three beautiful daughters of Sir William Montgomery. It is a picture full of youth and grace, and it reveals not only a world of fashion, but a world of taste and refinement. It reveals the world of the Chippendale chair. The Chippendale chair stands idly shoved back from the desk. Perhaps you have overlooked it. But a Chippendale chair is the English aristocrat of chair history, the culmination of beauty in English chairdom. Its every part is full of meaning and history.

In these four illustrations our aim has been to show you that your own four walls will respond to your dreams and longings; to show you that a room is an art product, rich in thought and in all those qualities and possibilities that make for culture and happiness through all your life.