Personal Pieces Make Individual Character

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31776, 5 September 1968, Page 14

Personal Pieces Make Individual Character

Next time you see an attractive room setting in a shop window, pause and consider what makes it different from a room in a private home. The window display is probably beautifully decorated by a professional interior designer. The furniture is well chosen, the colour scheme harmonious and the lighting well planned. But you will notice an impersonal atmosphere, a lack of warmth and intimacy ... in other words, something is missing.

Beautifully designed rooms, be they modem or traditional, mean nothing without the personal bits and pieces that reveal the character and interests of the owner.

Home furnishing magazines call them “decorative accessories.” They are simply - any interior object that catches the eye, gives pleasure or adds to the general decor. They can be paintings or clocks, plaques or plates, a mirror or a planter, a piece of pottery or glass, a sculpture or a vase of flowers.

Decorative accessories can be chosen consciously or unconsciously, but everyone has some in their homes. They can do so much for a room that it is worth spending as much time on choosing them as you would on choosing your carpet and furniture. Don’t ruin an attractive room with poor accessories. Even such commonplace objects as ashtrays and fireirons can be well designed.

Although we all like different shapes and styles, there are still such things as good taste and good design, poor taste and poor design. Good taste isn’t dependent on money. In every town you will see at least one big extravagant house with expensive vulgar decorations. There is bad taste at every price level. All the old rules about Interior decorating are going. Nowadays, you can cover a Victorian chair with a modern cotton print or add an antique rocking chair to a contemporary room setting.

So how are you to know what is good taste and what is bad?

Good taste is based on a trained judgment. It’s the ability to distinguish between well-designed, distinctive objects and those that are commonplace and downright ugly. Learn to give everything a long, cool look. This includes windows of furnishing shops, home decorating magazines, room settings in television programes. The most uninteresting things can be made to look glamourous and beautiful by the clever use of lighting and background. Don’t let the photographers, window dressers and set designers fool you.

The first principle of good taste is good performance. Is the chair comfortable? Is the candlestick firm or wobbly? Is the wastepaper basket big enough to be useful? Would the clean lines of the sideboard look better without the elaborate handles. Window shop this way, and gradually you learn to distinguish between good and bad, fashion and fad, the bargain and the shoddy. The plain walls of the Now Decor are the perfect foil for pictures. When you choose a painting, it’s what you yourself like that counts, not what is fashionable.

Avoid over-familiar pictures that you’ll see in a dozen houses in your town. Beware, too, of reproductions of old masters that reduce size terrifically. The original beauty may have relied largely on attention to detail which is lost when the size is brought down.

For the price of a wellknown reproduction you may be able to buy an original by a young painter. Apart from the pleasure you get from looking at it, there Is a heartwarming feeling to know that you are helping someone who is struggling against great odds in one of the hardest professions in the world. There is a thrill, too, in wondering whether you have picked a winner, an unknown who will become one of our most famous painters In a few years’ time.

It’s not only what you have in your home that counts. The way things are done mean a lot, too. The way the pictures are hung, the plants are arranged and the ornaments are grouped. There are two views about hanging art One is that each work should be solo, so it can be enjoyed without distractions. The other is that art can be grouped for mass effect with each piece forming a point of interest Much depends upon the size of the picture. Small pieces look better in groups rather than scattered around a room. This applies equally to china, pottery and glassware as to small prints and paintings. Alone they get lost Together they have impact and draw attention. Pictures change their appearance If hung in different lights or at different levels.

Sculpture can be placed on a shelf where it throws interesting shadows on a wail, or placed close at hand where it can be touched and the richness of the surface appreciated. After some time of daily contact, even the best art becomes taken for granted and disappears into its setting. Then is the time to give it a rest. The system of rotating pictures has the advantage of preserving the freshness of eye which custom stales. Of course, there are practical difficulties. You need a safe cupboard to store the unused pictures. But the pleasure you get from looking at an old favourite after an absence of time is worth it