Delphi complete works of.., p.194
Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated), page 194
If one cannot build in marble or coloured stones, there remains red brick or wood. Red brick is warm and delightful to look at and is the most beautiful and simple form of those who have not much to spend. In England we build of red brick, and the stately homes from the reign of the Tudors down to that of George II give good designs for brick houses. Cut brick gives you the opportunity of working in terracotta ornamentation, the most beautiful of all exterior decorations – the old Lombard’s special prize, and an art we are trying to revive in England.
Wood is the universal material. Wood buildings I like, but wish to see them painted in a better way. You must have warmer colours: there is far too much white and that cold grey colour used; they never look well in large bodies and are dreary in wet weather and glaring in fine weather; imitate rather the rich browns and olive-greens found in nature. The frame house could be made more joyous to look upon with the air of the carver. Every child should be taught woodcarving, and I recommend the establishment in this city of a school of design for the sole purpose of teaching woodcarving. Even the poor Swiss shepherd boy spends his leisure time doing beautiful carving instead of reading detestable novels. Americans might carve as well, and I am sadly disappointed that you do not develop this art more.
All ornaments should be carved, and have no cast-iron ornaments, nor any of those ugly things made by machinery. You should not have cast-iron railings fixed outside the house, which boys are always knocking down, and very rightly too, for they always look cheap and shabby. If possible have beaten ironwork; of all the metal works in this country, so far as it relates to cast iron, it is a shame that none are nobly or beautifully wrought like the beaten globes of even the poorest Italian cities. The old iron ornaments of Verona that were worked by hand out of the noble metal into beautiful figures are as beautiful and strong now as when wrought three or four hundred years ago by artistic handicraftsmen. Finally, your black-leaded knocker should give way to a bright brass one.
Within the house: the hall should not be papered, since the walls are exposed more or less to the elements by the frequent opening and closing of the door; it could be wainscoted with some of America’s beautiful woods, such as the maple, or distempered with ordinary paint. Wainscoting makes the house warm, it is easily done by any carpenter, and it will admit of fine work in panel painting, which is a style of decoration most desirable, and one that is growing greatly in favour.
Don’t carpet the floor: ordinary red brick tiles make a warm and beautiful floor, and I prefer it to the geometrically arranged tiles of the present day. There should be no pictures in the hall, for it is no place for a good picture, and a poor one should be put nowhere. It is a mere passageway, except in stately mansions, and no picture should be placed where you have not time to sit down and reverence and admire and study it.
Hat racks are, I suppose, necessary. I have never seen a really nice hat rack; the ordinary one is more like some horrible instrument of torture than anything useful or graceful, and it is perhaps the ugliest thing in the house. A large painted oak chest is the best stand for cloaks; for hats, a pretty rack in wood to hang on the wall in light wood or bamboo would be best. A few large chairs would complete the furniture in the hallway. Have none of those gloomy horrors, stuffed animals or stuffed birds, in the hall, or anywhere else under glass cases. Plain marble tables, such as I have seen in America in such number, should not be tolerated unless the marble is beautifully inlaid and the wood carved.
As regards rooms generally: in America the great fault in decoration is the entire want of harmony or a definite scheme in colour; there is generally a collection of a great many things individually pretty but which do not combine to make a harmonious whole. Colours resemble musical notes: a single false colour or false note destroys the whole. Therefore, in decorating a room one keynote of colour should predominate; it must be decided before hand what scheme of colour is desired and have all else adapted to it, like the answering calls in a symphony of music; otherwise, your room will be a museum of colours. With regard to choice of colour, the disciples of the new school of decorative art are said to be very fond of gloomy colours. Well, we set great value on toned or secondary colours, because all decoration means gradually ascending colours, while bright colours should be kept for ornament. On the walls secondary colours should be used, and the ceiling should never be painted in bright colours; the best Eastern embroidery, for instance, is filled with light colours. Start with a low tone as the keynote, and then you get the real value of primary colours by having little bits of colour, beautiful embroidery, and artwork set like precious gems in the more sombre colours. If you have the whole room and things generally in bright colours, the capabilities of the room are exhausted for all other colour effects, and you would have to have fireworks for ornaments to set it off. All depends upon the graduation of colour; look at the rose and see how all its beauty depends upon its exquisite gradations of colour, one answering to the other.
Mr Whistler has recently done two rooms in London which are marvels of beauty. One is the famous Peacock Room, which I regard as the finest thing in colour and art decoration that the world has ever known since Correggio painted that wonderful room in Italy where the little children are dancing on the walls; everything is of the colours in peacocks’ feathers, and each part so coloured with regard to the whole that the room, when lighted up, seems like a great peacock tail spread out. It cost £3,000. Mr Whistler finished the other room just before I came away – a breakfast room in blue and yellow, and costing only £30. The walls are distempered in blue, the ceiling is a light and warm yellow; the floor is laid with a richly painted matting in light yellow, with a light line or leaf here and there of blue. The woodwork is all caneyellow, and the shelves are filled with blue and white china; the curtains of white serge have a yellow border tastefully worked in, and hang in careless but graceful folds. When the breakfast-table is laid in this apartment, with its light cloth and its dainty blue and white china, with a cluster of red and yellow chrysanthemums in an old Nankin vase in the centre, it is a charming room, catching all the warm light and taking on of all surrounding beauty, and giving to the guest a sense of joyousness, comfort, and rest. Nothing could be simpler, it costs little, and it shows what a great effect might be realised with a little and simple colour.
A designer must imagine in colour, must think in colour, must see in colour. Your workmen should be taught to work more freely in colours, and this can only be done by accustoming them to beautiful ones. Even in imaginative art predominance must now be given to colour: a picture is primarily a flat surface coloured to produce a delightful effect upon the beholder, and if it fails of that, it is surely a bad picture. The aim of all art is simply to make life more joyous.
You should have such men as Whistler among you to teach you the beauty and joy of colour. When he paints a picture, he paints by reference not to the subject, which is merely intellectual, but to colour. I was speaking to Mr Whistler once, before a great critic, of what could be done with one colour. The critic chose white as the colour offering fewest tones; Mr Whistler painted his beautiful Symphony in White, which you no doubt have imagined to be something quite bizarre. It is nothing of the sort. Think of a cool grey sky with white clouds, a grey sea flecked with the crests of white-capped waves; a grey balcony on which are two little girls clad in pure white leaning over the railing; an almond tree covered in white blossoms is by the side of the balcony, from which one of the girls is idly plucking with white hands the petals which flutter across the picture. Such pictures as this one are of infinitely more value than horrible pictures of historical scenes; here are no extensive intellectual schemes to trouble you and no metaphysics, of which we have had quite enough in art. If the simple and unaided colour strikes the right keynote, the whole conception is made clear. I doubt not that our Aesthetic movement has given to the world an increased sense of the value of colour, and that in time a new science of the art of dealing in colour will be evolved.
But to return to our room. If there is much, or heavy furniture, the design on the walls should be rich; if the furniture is limited, or light, the design should be light and simple. The walls cannot often in this country be hung with tapestry; therefore, they should be papered. However, do not use white and gold paper; divide the wall into two uneven parts, either with a dado and paper from it to the cornice, or with a frieze and paper from it downwards; I do not advise the use of both unless the walls are very high. You will want a joyous paper on the wall, full of flowers and pleasing designs, but the dado should not be of paper, but either of woods or some of the beautiful Japanese mattings which come to this country, so as to carry out the principles of utility, that is, to protect the lower and more exposed part of the wall from being scratched or marred by the furniture coming in contact with it. Nor should the frieze be of paper; it should be painted, and the remainder of the wall papered.
About the ceiling: the ceiling is a great problem always – what to do with that great expanse of white plaster. Don’t paper it; that gives one the sensation of living in a paper box, which is not pleasant. The ceiling should be broken up in texture, so that the light may constantly play upon it, and not lie in a dead way. If you are having a house built, contract with the builder to leave the main rafters of the ceiling exposed in outline; this conveys a sense of solidity and support, and there may be worked out the most delightful effects in finishing between the rafters, as is done in panel work or plaster decorations. For ceiling decoration, the old style of plaster may be used, but not the modern plaster – it dries almost immediately and is a glaring glossy white; the beautiful old plaster of the Queen Anne period, often so beautifully designed, was of a finer, more plastic texture, it took a long time to dry, and one had time to mould it. If you cannot use plaster, the ceiling might be panelled in wood, with paintings or stamped leather in the centres. If you cannot have the cross-beams or woodwork, then have it painted in a colour which predominates in the room, but do not in any event paper it; on papered ceilings the light falls dull and lifeless and sodden.
Have no great flaring gas-chandelier in the middle of the room; if you have, it does not make much difference how you adorn and beautify the room, or whether it is done at all, for in six months’ time the gas will discolour and ruin all you do. Also, no light should shine directly in one’s eyes; the room shall be lit by reflection of the light rather than by direct light. If you must have gas, let the room be lighted from side-brackets on the wall, and each jet of flame should be covered with delicate shades or hidden by screens so that the light may be reflected from the walls and ceiling. Lamps and wax candles are still better as they give a softer light, are best to read by, do not destroy any other decoration, and are very much prettier and healthier than gas.
As regards the floor: don’t carpet it all over, as nothing is more unhealthy or inartistic than modern carpets; carpets absorb the dust, and it is impossible to keep them as perfectly clean as anything about us should be. In this, as in all things, art and sanitary regulations go hand in hand. It is better to use a parquetry flooring around the sides and rugs in the centre; if inlaid or stained floors are not practical, have them laid with pretty matting and strewn with those very handsome and economical rugs from China, Persia, and Japan.
As regards windows: builders do not realise that there is a difference between light and glare; most modern windows are much too large and glaring, and are made as if you only wanted them to look out of; they annihilate light and let in a glare that is destructive to all sense of repose, and by which one cannot write or work or enjoy any comfort; you are obliged to pull down the shutters whenever you enter a room. The small, old windows just let in light enough. If you have big windows in your house, let a portion of them be filled with stained glass – of course, I do not mean such stained glass representations as are seen in churches and cathedrals – I advise merely the use of toned green or grey glass with little bright spots of pure colour which give a more subdued light, a pleasing blending of colours, and a sense of quiet and repose.
As regards style of furniture: avoid the ‘early English’ or Gothic furniture; the Gothic, now so much thought of in this country, though honestly made and better than modern styles, is really so heavy and massive that it is out of place when surrounded with the pretty things which we of this age love to gather around us; it is very well for those who lived in castles and who needed occasionally to use it as a means of defence or as a weapon of war. A lighter and more graceful style of furniture is more suitable for our peaceful times. Eastlake furniture is more rational than much that is modern: it is economical, substantial, and enduring, and carried out Mr Eastlake’s idea of showing the work of the craftsman. However, it is a little bare and cold, has no delicate lines, and does not look like refined work for refined people; Eastlake furniture is Gothic without the joyous colour of the Gothic, and pretty ornaments of glass are out of place in a Gothic room for they would be an anachronism. The furniture of the Italian Renaissance is too costly, and French furniture, gilt and gaudy, is very vulgar, monstrous, and unserviceable.
The style most liked in England, and the one which is the most suitable in every way for you, is that known as Queen Anne furniture. Why it goes by the name of Queen Anne I do not know; it was designed and used one hundred years before the reign of that monarch, but there is no reason why we should not use that name as well as any other, so long as we are not deceived as to its meaning. This furniture is beautiful without being gaudy, so delicate in appearance and yet so strong. It is good furniture made by refined people for refined people, and is so well adapted to our styles of crockery, to our light decorations, and our system of ornamentation, and it is as beautiful as any that can be found in Italy. It is a furniture which will last a very long time; pieces of very old furniture of this kind are to be seen in a great many houses in England and which are still as sound as they ever were. It is most comfortable too: what seem to be stiff and straight lines are really very delicately curved lines, exquisite in their symmetry, and while the cushion of the modern chair is a monster of iron springs, that of the Queen Anne period slopes back and is made to fit the figure, which gives great ease and thereby combines comfort and beauty. It is most beautiful, too, in colour: the rich colour of the mahogany and the bright brass catches all the warm lights, and is the most cheerful of all designs. Modern furniture should be better than the old, with all our improved machinery and our great variety of woods to choose from, but it is not.
When I advise you to have Queen Anne furniture, I do not want you to send to Chippendale in England for it; it could be made here, and to that end a good school of design should be established. In your school of design let the pupils, instead of painting pictures, work at decoration and designs, and their work will soon be in all your houses. Young designers should begin by painting on furniture, which they could really learn to do well in six months and soon be able to give delight by their work. In Bavaria the furniture is beautiful because of the colour alone. The people of Switzerland adorn their own houses, and there is no reason why as great excellence in making all these things should not be reached by the people of this country as by any other part of the world. But pottery takes more knowledge to secure good results; you have to know a great deal about the potters’ wheel: you have to understand practically the results of burning, of overglazing and underglazing, and other processes.
An invaluable school of art would be a museum, which, instead of showing stuffed giraffes and other horrible objects which scientific men wish to see gathered together, would contain all kinds of simple decorative work, different styles of furniture, dress, etc., made in different periods, and especially in the periods when English artists made beautiful things, and where local artisans and handicraftsmen could go and study the styles and patterns of the noble designers and artisans who worked before them. Such efforts at cultivation would be appreciated by the working people, as witnessed by the scene in the South Kensington museum in London on Saturday night, where artisans are to be seen, notebook in hand, gathering ideas to be used in their next week’s work. A good museum would teach your artisans more in one year than they would learn by means of books or lectures in ten years.
You are probably provided with a mantelpiece, about which you were not consulted; it is probably dreary, and cold white marble with machine-made ornamentation that is always so coarse and heavy. In that case there is nothing for it but to hide it as you best can: you might do it with matting, or you might cover it with carved wood and build your mantel up to the ceiling with little shelves on which you may place your rare china or ornaments; at the back of the shelves Spanish leather may be placed, or panels which you can paint yourself; in the centre of the shelves a space might be left for a little circular mirror. The great gilt mirrors of today are not only costly, but destroy all attempts at decoration; mirrors were meant to concentrate light in a room, which is the beauty of the little circular mirrors.
Your fireplace should not be of highly polished steel, nor should there ever be a cast-iron grate which, as a rule, is heavy and coarse. The porcelain stoves used in Holland are beautiful, and I am glad always to see the healthy, old-English open fireplace; but you should have red tiles, an iron basket, and bright brass tongs and shovel. The amount of colour which one can get into a fireplace is simply incalculable: the fire, the red tiles, the brass work – everything is full of colour.
