INTERIOR DECORATING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22352, 25 February 1936, Page 3

INTERIOR DECORATING

A GROWING PROFESSION POPULARITY IN AMERICA An insight into what has brought, to women especially, an ever-widening scope for artistic ability, that of interior decorating, was given by Miss Olive Stewart, of New York, who is on a short visit to New Zealand. Miss Stewart, who has had considerable experience in this work, has a large studio in New York and has designed and personally supervised the interior decoration of the homes of many well-known American citizens, including those of several famous Hollywood film actresses. She is visiting New Zealand for the first time. Miss Stewart said she thought people in the "United States treated the interior decoration of their homes more seriously than did people in other countries. The English furnished their homes naturally and as they wanted them, very often without definite planning, and yet achieving a harmonising effect of comfort and elegance. They were, however, very fond of "bits." ''Bits" of valuable Chippendale, and of the Louis periods, the Second Empire and the Directoire periods, nearly always managed to find their way in somewhere, often side by side. The French, on the other hand, were definitely "period" decorators, their furniture for the most part being less massive, more elegant and often less comfortable than that of the English. The Americans, before the serious advent of the interior decorator, had managed somehow, in glorious confusion, to mingle the massive comfort of the English with the comfortless eleganco of the French and their own ideas of modern furniture, without achieving the dignity of any. Origin of the Art Miss Stewart said interior decorating first became widely known in the United States in 1905, when a group of women in New York decided to found a women's club called the Colony Club, the first of many clubs of a similar nature to rise all over the country. A site was chosen in Madison Avenue and sufficient money raised to build a clubhouse. It was then that Miss Ellie de Wolfe became the pioneer of interior decoration in the United With the co-operation of the committee she personally planned and supervised the complete furnishing of the clubhouse. In Miss Stewart's opinion the interior decorators of the United States, as well as the people with whose homes they assisted, owed a great deal to Miss de Wolfe, who opened up a new career for women with artistic leanings. Surprisingly, it was seen that chintz could produce just that desired effect of friendliness and comfort, both formally and informally. Comfort and elegance, beauty and suitability, were no longer worlds part, but meetfng happily in a single room. An Artistic Achievement Describing a drawing room which she had recently decorated for Miss Una Merkel in her Beverley Hills home, Miss Stewart said she counted it as one of her artistic achievements. It was a large, airy room with three ceiling-high French windows. The walls she papered in cream with a delicate pattern in silver, so slight that the paper looked faintly dusty with silver. The high ceiling was cream and the carpet a deeper shade of cream, almost fawn. In this cream frame she placed two low settees and four low chairs upholstered in navy blue, heavy navy blue curtains drawn back from the windows, a small occasional table in dark bluedyed wood, a few light chairs upholstered in navy and a piano and stool, all in the bluc-dved wood. "The whole secret lies in knowing beforehand the effect you are aiming at,"'Miss Stewart said. "As an artist chooses his colours, so must the interior decorator, with the shape, size, colour and lighting of the room playing an important part.