Philosophy of Furniture

EGGS

There is reason, it is said, in the roasting of eggs, and there is philosophy even in furniture.

In the internal decoration, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little sentiment beyond marbles and colors. In France, the people are too much a race of gadabouts to study and maintain those household properties. The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have merely a vague idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are all curtains--a nation of hang men. The Russians do not furnish. The Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone are preposterous.

APARTMENT

There could be scarcely any thing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist than the interior of what is termed in the United States, a well-furnished apartment.

DRAPERY

An excessive volume of drapery of any kind is, under any circumstance, irreconcilable with good taste.

CARPET

A carpet is the soul of the apartment. Touching pattern--a carpet should not be bedizzened out like a Riccaree Indian--all red chalk, yellow ochre and cock's feathers. The abomination of flowers, or representations of well-known objects of any kind, should not be endured within the limits of Christendom.

FURNITURE

In short, the cost of an article of furniture has at length come to be, with us, nearly the sole test of its merit in a decorative point of view.

ARABESQUE

Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or paper-hangings, or ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this nature should be rigidly Arabesque.

GLARE

Glare is a leading error in the philosophy of American household decoration--an error easily recognized as deduced from a perversion of taste. We are violently enamored of
gas and glass.

CUT-GLASS

The cut-glass shade is a weak invention of the enemy, which we have adopted partly on account of its flashiness. It is not too much to say that the deliberate employer of a cut-glass shade is either radically deficient in taste, or blindly subservient to the caprices of fashion.

GLASS

In the matter of glass, generally, we proceed upon false principles. Its leading feature is glitter.

GLITTER

The rage for glitter--because its idea has become confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract--has led us also to the exaggerated employment of mirrors.

MIRROR

Regarded apart from its reflection, the mirror presents a continuous, flat colourless, unrelieved surface,--a thing always and obviously unpleasant. Considered as a reflector, it is potent in producing a monstrous and odious uniformity and the evil is here aggravated.

BOUDOIR

As we grow rich, our ideas grow rusty. It is, therefore, not among our aristocracy that we must look for the spirituality of a British boudoir.

OBLONG

There is present to our mind's eye a small and not ostentatious chamber with whose decorations no fault can be found. It is oblong--some thirty feet in length and twenty-five in breadth--a shape affording the best (ordinary) opportunities for the adjustment of furniture.

DOOR

The room has but one door--by no means a wide one--which is at one end of the parallelogram.

VERANDA

Two windows, which are at the other end, are large, reaching down to the floor--have deep recesses--and open onto an Italian veranda.

WALLS

The walls are prepared with a glossy paper of a silver gray tint, spotted with small Arabesque devices of a fainter hue of the prevalent crimson. A broad entablature of rich gilt-work encircles the room at the junction of the ceiling and walls.

PAINTINGS

Many paintings relieve the expanse of paper. These are chiefly landscapes of an imaginative cast--such as the fairy grottoes of Stanfield, or the lake of the Dismal Swamp of Chapman. The tone of each picture is warm, but dark. Not one is of small size. Diminutive paintings give that spotty look to a room.

SOFAS

Two large low sofas of rosewood and crimson silk, gold-flowered, form the only seats, with the exception of two light conversation chairs, also of rose-wood. An octagonal table, formed altogether of the richest gold-threaded marble, is placed near one of the sofas.

BOOKS

Some light and graceful hanging shelves, with golden edges and crimson silk cords with gold tassels, sustain two or three hundred magnificently bound books.

ARGAND LAMP

An Argand lamp, with a plain crimson-tinted ground glass shade, depends from the lofty vaulted ceiling by a single slender gold chain, and throws a tranquil but magical radiance over all.