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Show fSi THE CRIME OF UGLINESS i Breeding fM By ELEANOR RICHARDS ShJ Friezes I " ' : - , I EDUCATIONAL IMPORTANCE 0? SEAUTY IN THE HOME Harmonious Surroundings of Tremendous Moral Value, Especially Espe-cially in the Rearing of Children ons, is tlic wronc; vv 1 set about dec-I dec-I crating and furni-h.ng a house. The chief problem of, interior decoration may be summed up in its perioral outlines out-lines as follows: to maintain proper relations re-lations between walls, furniture and drapcriev To secure the be.-t results these elements should he approached in the following order: First, treatment of the walls; second, lloor coverings; third, furniture. Atid there arc two words that should always be kept in mind : "proportion" and "balance." Some writers on aesthetics think that interior decoration should form a part canon. If this is being done properly and the children are well grounded in what they are taught, there seems no reason why they should not also learn how to apply these canons to their home environment. "Proportion is the good breeding of architecture." This certainly applies also to interior decoration, and in this connection proportion may be defined more exactly as the proper balance of licht and shade, the correct adjustment I of large and important objects with small and unimportant ones. ' The task is much easier, of course, in the coun- j niture and dark oak woodwork, or golden oak with white paint. The pre-' pre-' vailing fashion of the day tends towards seventy. This is a good tad, as it not, frequently "make mistakes simply because they don't know what to get that is both cheap and beautiful. Scotch wool rugs, for insLmcc, arc despised of those who don't know what can be done with them by the judicious use of dyes. They arc inexpensive and mo:-t durable. If you. can't afford a waxed or varnished lloor, plain wood stains cost very little money, can be applied by anybody without with-out the slightest experience and can be bought in all colors. Floors treated this way ire much easier to keep clean, and as for the rugs well, almost everybody now knows how vastly preferable they arc to carpets, which are always harbors har-bors for dust and germs, no matter how frequently they arc swept, whereas a rug can be taken up every day, if necessary, nec-essary, and hung out on the line. The trouble with too many American homes is that the owners have tried to express too many ideas. Every room should express just one. When one room has to serve for living room, library li-brary and parlor, the result frequently is a cluttered up mess, that is quite uncomfortable, un-comfortable, and none of the inhabitants inhab-itants can tell why. In such a case, one should keep the living room idea uppermost upper-most all the time. The mistake usually made is to make a living room, then do it over again as a library, then again as a parlor, superimposing one stratum on the other. Pictures, too, arc a frequent source of error. The prevailing custom is just to select pictures without any relation to each other or to anything else, whereas they ought to harmoni.e with the general gen-eral scheme of "the room they are to go in and each one ought to have an exact relation to the other and to the whole arrangement of furniture in order to preserve the harmony of line and color. The frames must harmonize also not only with the pictures they surround but with the woodwork, furniture and wallpaper. Furthermore, there arc not enough people who understand the difference dif-ference between the words "harmonize" and "match." Many brides have started out with the best intentions of having rooms that were harmonious. The results re-sults they achieved were simply monotonous, monot-onous, because they had nearly everything every-thing matching, instead of a proper balance bal-ance of color If you have a couple of oils, don't think they must go in gilt frames. Gilt is out of place except in a regular gallery. Oak frames arc far more suitable if your pictures are just to be hung in a living room or library. For photographs Circassian walnut makes admirable framing. When choosing choos-ing frames it is well to consult with the dealer and tell him the color scheme and arrangement of the room they arc to go in. Picture-frame makers, it they are any good at all, have had much experience ex-perience in this sort of thing, and arc far better qualified to advise you than you arc to act independently of their judgment. TO many people it it rather hard to understand why, in spite of the multitude of text Nwks now published on art and taught in the elementary schools, there is still such an amazing amount of ugliness ugli-ness in the home. Various foolish reasons rea-sons are given, such as "lack of time," "too busy," and sometimes "can't afford it." Those arc very easily knocked on the head by pointing out that rooms which arc a perfect marvel of hideous-ncss hideous-ncss have been brought to that state by a great deal of pains far more than would hac been necessary to make the place really ornamental. As for "can't afford it,'' I have stood in department stores and watched people deliberately scorn really nice looking furniture and pay more for things that were a regular eyesore. The truth is, that many people arc still rather afraid of I 'no word "artistic." "artis-tic." And those who aren't don't know what it really means, consequently it comes to mean a lot oi bewildering claptrap. clap-trap. It is not generally appreciated that beautiful surroundings have- a distinct moral value. Especially is this true of children. You will find that people of trivial tastes nearly always live i:i homes cluttered up with cheap bric-a-brac, with furniture intended to be showy and succeeding in being vulgar. It is obvious ob-vious that children brought up in places where everything has been bought and arranged with a sole view to making a fictitious display of more money than the family possesses will imbibe the idea that pretending is the chief object of existence ex-istence and that the worthiest person is the most successful l::ir. And the most pitiful part of it all i- that you can buy really good furniture and decorations for less money than oii pny for the grotesque. gro-tesque. You can have a home that is really harmonious, plea-ant and restful for less money than you pay for one that is only a storehouse for conglomerate conglom-erate testimonials to foolishness. Generally speaking, there arc four kinds of furniture. There is the kind in t. ki.-ti tl... .'mi Jrnrhnn riruir mn- ' ' ' ' . ..... ' r.Y'r.'i y: v.. 'v- ; -- . " -v'".--y ' ; ; : . -Y-.' 3 ' ; K-;.; ; Y . ' k-7-; fV'' '7' : J.. y .' 7k:.'7T'-:y1-' .-r!-''-'j h ' . r i- - :-:V-y -" ,. . . ; .. - ...v -1. - i:. . , ,,. I -j' v- (;': -'7 7-: '. , 7. 7 ' ' ; ', '''''-j r'-: -..''y 7. ; - . -.J- inifiifn-niirnrrii iim-.mMMMj'imir i. ... - - Mr.-.-r..--, 1 , i m. Sho-wtnp How Holcht Hay b Ecduced "With tho Tse of Horizontal PancltDj and Stencils Thereby Prod aclnp Excellent PorspectWe. makes for simplicity and gets away from the awful mixtures and conglomerate results produced by the craze for "periods." "pe-riods." Choosing the woodwork of the rooms, while often necessary for economic rca- of every public school curriculum In many kindergarten classes the small pupils pu-pils arc taught to appreciate the beauty of Crot's early morning atmosphere arid Millct's siniplicity of form and line, with. the rudiments of certain artistic terials unreliable and the aipearancc merely showy. There is that of good design but poor materials and construction. construc-tion. There is that of good materials and execution but no real beauty, and there is the fourth kind, of good materials, mate-rials, execution and design. All these kinds are made in America; it is not necessary to buy imported furniture to secure substantial make or real beauty. Towards the end of summer this becomes be-comes a serious question for many people peo-ple who have given up their old house at the beginning of the summer, intending intend-ing to choose a new home after the long vacation. Difficult is the task of those who already have furniture and have ; decided on a new or remodeled house, for then they have to try to reconcile old furniture with new woodwork, compared com-pared with which the job of putting old wine into new bottles sounds easy. The best thing to do is to stipulate with the agent of your new home that the woodwork wood-work be painted over to suit you then you can have it match your furniture. Sometimes, however, this becomes impossible. im-possible. In this case, remember that it is comparatively easy to have your old furniture done over. Some of it can be remodeled and, if it is badly scratched, it can be scraped and revarnished or stained In any case, it should match the woodwork in shade. For half-timbered houses, with the interior finished the same way as the exterior, oak furniture fur-niture is best Mission style is also suitable, while for plaster walls old oak forms a pleasing contrast. Above all, avoid such solecisms as mahogany fur- try, where there is more space, consequently conse-quently more sunlight and aUo less dirt. There an entirely different object should be attempted. Country rooms should be cool -and restful, whereas those in the city should be wai'm, cheerful and cozy. Everything should be done to counteract counter-act the lack of light and space. To this end the wallpaper should be in light tones, pale yellows, buffs and warm grays. Some very effective papers arc being made nov "in really cheerful-looking browns of autumnal tints, like the shade of ripe fruit, such as pomegranate. pome-granate. Grayish browns and brownish grays arc both cheerful and restful to the eyes. Formerly green and red were the prevailing colors. -the former for the living room, and red, under the impression impres-sion that it was cheerful, for the dining room The results were that the living rooms were not at all cheerful, as the shades chosen were usually dense greens, very trying to the eyesight, and deep reds, which were stuffy. Burlaps and grass cloth make very suitable wall coverings and can be obtained in the prettiest shades, while calcimine and nlahastinc arc now made in all sorts of desirable colors and are very inexpensive inexpen-sive and easy to keep clean. When planning your combinations, the chief characteristics to attempt are simplicity, durability, proportion, of course, harmony of line and color, utility util-ity and repose. For those with limited incomes the first requisites arc three: simplicity, utility and repose. If you have plenty of money, floor coverings have no difficulty. Hut those who have - : ..'- : s.; -- -,: ::.;J ! !;; 71 7 0 . a 77- 777 ' a.'i n. s -7777, -A,-- r. 7 W- ' 7' '-if-K-- 7 ih.?i'-' I How a LIvlne-Room Should Kot Look Hot tho StuTneaa and Formality. ' |