The Decoration of HousesThe Decoration of Houses was a manual that changed the way Americans viewed the decor and use of rooms in their homes. It criticized the heavy, overstuffed opulence of Victorian decor and suggested that space to move through a room be considered as part of the plan and design. Wharton and Codman present space as an element of beauty to be enjoyed as a comfort, rather than an area that needs to be filled. They emphasize decorating with architectural elements such as beautiful ceiling, wall and window treatments. Their focus is on classical architectural design principles such as balance, symmetry and simplicity. Another element of interest to this book is that it may aid readers in understanding Wharton's fictional characters; she often used architecture to communicate her characters' states of consciousness in her fiction. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
American houses antechamber apartments arabesques architects architectural architrave artistic ball-room beauty bedroom bookcases boudoir bronze built carpet carved ceiling chairs chimney-breast color comfortable composition concealed contain cornice curtains dado deco detail dimensions dining-room door doorway drawing-room ducal palace EASTON NESTON effect eighteenth century England English entablature examples fact fireplace floor France furniture gala rooms gallery gilding hall hangings house-decoration house-planning hung Inigo Jones interior iron Italian Italian palaces Italy lines Louis XIV LOUIS XV PERIOD mantel mantel-pieces MANTUA marquetry ment modern mouldings never objects of art old French ormolu ornament over-door over-mantel painted PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU PALACE OF VERSAILLES panelling plain plaster Plate portière produced proportion regarded Renaissance saloon scheme of decoration seen seldom sense seventeenth stair-rail staircase stairs stucco suited tapestry taste tion ugly usually vaulted Vaux-le-Vicomte VERTEMATI vestibule Villa wall-decoration wall-paper wall-space walls well-designed wood wooden XVI CENTURY
Popular passages
Page 22 - Each room in a house has its individual uses: some are made to sleep in, others are for dressing, eating, study, or conversation; but whatever the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not preserved as a small world by itself.
Page 10 - ... accepted as the necessary laws of the various forms of art. Thus, in reasoning, originality, lies not in discarding the necessary laws of thought, but in using them to express new intellectual conceptions ; in poetry, originality consists not in discarding the necessary laws of rhythm, but in finding new rhythms within the limits of those laws. Most of the features of architecture that have persisted through various fluctuations of taste, owe their preservation to the fact that they have been...
Page 2 - Houses, that architecture and decoration could be set right "only by a close study of the best models"— and these, she made plain, were "chiefly to be found in buildings erected in Italy after the beginning of the sixteenth century, and in other European countries after the full assimilation of the Italian influence.
Page xiii - Choix des plus célèbres Maisons de Plaisance de Rome et de ses environs, mesurées et dessinées par CP et PFLF Paris, 1809.
Page 188 - Modern civilization has been called a varnished barbarism: a definition that might well be applied to the superficial graces of much modern decoration. Only a return to architectural principles can raise the decoration of houses to the level of the...
Page xiii - HISTOIRE de la vie et des ouvrages des plus célèbres Architectes du XI.
Page 13 - ... that none of them precludes the exercise of individual taste, any more than the acceptance of the syllogism or of the laws of rhythm prevents new thinkers and poets from saying what has never been said before. * * * All good architecture and good decoration must be based on rhythm and logic. * * * To conform to a style then is to accept those rules of proportion which the artistic experience of centuries has established as the best, while within those limits allowing free scope to the individual...
Page 31 - Proportion is the good breeding of architecture. It is that something, indefinable to the unprofessional eye, which gives repose and distinction to a room ... in its effects as intangible as that all-pervading essence which the ancients called the soul.
Page 5 - This rule naturally holds good of house-planning, and it is for this reason that the origin of modern house-planning should be sought rather in the prince's...
Page xxii - When the rich man demands good architecture his neighbors will get it too. The vulgarity of current decoration has its source in the indifference of the wealthy to architectural fitness. Every good moulding, every carefully studied detail, exacted by those who can afford to indulge their taste, will in time find its way to the carpenter-built cottage. Once the right precedent is established, it costs less to follow than to oppose it.