House decoration is in all countries subject to divers influences. There are in the first place the architects, who in designing the residence not only shape its plan, construction and ex terior, but also give to certain parts of its in terior a definite architectural character by the treatment of walls and ceilings, window-trim and door-trim, wainscots, chimney-pieces and cornices. Generally their work stops there, and the householder calls in a to make the empty architectural shell more ornate and more habitable. The decorator directs the painting and gilding of certain parts, devises a color-scheme for each room and selects fur niture and draperies, rugs and tapestries to complete the scheme. The owner may or may not have a voice in the production of the ensemble. He may be himself an art con noisseur, possessing fine furniture, rugs, hang ings, bronzes and bric-a-brac which the deco rator must work into his scheme. Or be may be a nonveau-riche with plenty of money and no artistic training, in which case he gives the decorator a free hand. It is largely to this latter sort of householders that we owe the rise of a large class of commercial decorating concerns, which take contracts fcr the entire decoration of a great house; and also of another large class of individual decorators who combine a keen sense of commercial ad vantage and acquaintance with market costs, with just enough artistic knowledge to impress their clients. It is rarely that a discriminating client, distrustful of his own taste and judg ment, has the courage to call in a truly great artist to beautify his house. Such an artist may generally be trusted to seek his client's inter est, to . work in sympathy with his particular problem and to subordinate questions of mere personal gain to the higher artistic ends of his work. If the house be one of great archi tectural importance, he will work in conjunc tion with the architect. It is always desirable to establish some such collaboration at the very outset of any important architectural undertak ing, whether public or private. The only hope of suppressing the charlatanism and the com mercialism that infest the practice of house decoration to-day lies in the gradual raising of the popular standards of taste. In this respect there has been undoubted progress in the last 20 years and further progress may be looked for in the future. The greatest enemy of good taste in the home is in all countries the love of luxury and display, and the constant desire to imitate the splendors of houses more costly than one's own. The passion for 'period" rooms —that is for rooms each decorated in the fashion and style of some bygone art period —is evidence of a common misdirection of taste; it is an affectation which, it is true, may in competent hands produce highly artistic results; but it more often converts the home into a sort of museum of imitations. Simplic ity and restraint are too often sacrificed to dis play; but there is observable in the best do mestic interiors of our time, both in this coun try and abroad, an increasing recognition of the value of simplicity, of quiet dignity and of that harmony of form and color which gives the impression of restful domesticity.
The most frequently employed in elaborate house interiors are four from the French Renaissance and four from the English Renaissance. The Louis Quatorze style is that which was developed under Louis XIV (1643 1710) in the palaces of Fontainebleau and Versailles and in the many sumptuous resi dences of the nobility of France. White and gold predominate; the walls are paneled in gilt framing-moldings; a richly ornamented coving, with or without a bracket-cornice, frames the ceiling; the doors and wainscot in rectangular paneling are adorned with delicate painted ornaments. The marble fireplace supports a huge mirror in a sumptuous gilded frame. The seat-furniture of gilded wood is upholstered with specially woven tapestries, and the cabi nets, tables, etc., are of mahogany or other dark wood inlaid with brass and tortoise-shell orna ments. The tapestries, curtains and hangings are of richly patterned materials of formal design. In the Louis Quince style (under Louis XV, 1715-74) all rectangular and formal lines disappear; curves predominate in all panels, in the and in all the lines of the furniture. Paintings of Cupids and of pastoral scenes occupy panels in covings and sometimes on walls, and the ornaments are of shells, scrolls and foliage of singularly ragged and contorted forms, yet (in the best examples) so delicate in execution and so playful in line as frequently to disarm criticism. The style wholly lacks structural expression and dignified restraint, but lends itself to the intimacy of a lady's boudoir or the abandon of a ballroom.
The style of Louis Seise (Louis XVI, 1774-89) represents a reaction from these extravagances. The swaying curves disappear, structural pro priety reasserts its claims; a delicately-refined severity of line is observed. Nearly all the furniture is of gilded wood with specially. woven upholstery, the gilded brasswork trim of the larger furniture is almost Greek in its purity of detail, and wreaths of flowers replact the restless foliage and scrolls of the, preceding style. The Empire style followed, with dark, almost sombre draperies and'inassive furniture of dark wood, built on Roman lines.
The two earlier English periods— the Elisabethian and Jacobean are not always easy. to distinguish. Both employ high wainscoting in wood, flat relief gstrapwork,D open work wooden balustrades, flat plaster ceilings with paneling and ornaments in relief. But the Jacobean has none of the Gothic reminiscences that are met with in the Eliza bethan; it employs pilasters and other classic details and especially the gaine or sheath-shaped pilaster, and the Jacobean chimney-pieces and furniture are more elaborate than the Eliza bethan. The Georgian styles are those various phases of the English classic Renaissance whidi were outgrowths of the Italian Palladian in fluence of Inigo Jones, Wren and Gibbs; they are specially notable for a certain sober dignity and formality of detail, with richly carved woodwork, and constitute the parent style of our own Colonial. The Adam style, named from the Adam brothers, Robert and James, belonged to the closing period of the 18th cen tury, and is the counterpart of the French Louis Seize; notable for delicate detail particularly in the plaster work and furniture.
Interior Decoration in the United States. — During the Colonial and early Republican periods the interior decoration of our few public buildings followed Georgian and Adam precedents, depending almost wholly on painted wood and white plaster. There was almost no color employed, and we possessed no mural artists capable of monumental decorative paint ing. There -followed in the 30's and 40's a period of Greek revival, producing cold but dignified interior effects in some cases, but al ways without the aid of color. The earliest efforts at decorative color in public buildings seem to have been in New Orleans, where a nephew of Canova adorned the rotunda of the Hotel Saint Louis with colored panels and medallions in painted stucco-relief, and a French artist decorated the Opera House in rather staring colors which still remain. Shortly after this Brumidi, a second-rate Italian mural painter, with an assistant, Castigini, was employed in 1855 to decorate the drum and dome of the National Capitol with allegorical paintings, and continued to labor on this com mission until his death in 1880. But the real beginnings of American decorative painting date from 1876, when the late John La Farge was entrusted with the interior decoration of Trinity Church in Boston, then approaching comple tion under the direction of its chief architect, Mr. H. H. Richardson. La Fargc's work con sisted in the designing of the entire color scheme of the interior, including the flat color ing and the conventional ornament, as well as the mural paintings of religious subjects. Assem bling a small corps of enthusiastic young artists —many of them since then famous— all inex perienced like himself in such work, and com pelled to work in a hurry under every possible embarrassment, he achieved a triumphantly suc cessful result, which profoundly influenced decorative art in America. His groups of