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Page 42
It may be suggested that we should paper our ceilings like our
walls, but I can't think that it will do. Theoretically, a paper-
hanging is so much distemper colour applied to a surface by being
printed on paper instead of being painted on plaster by the hand;
but practically, we never forget that it is paper, and a room
papered all over would be like a box to live in. Besides, the
covering a room all over with cheap recurring patterns in an
uninteresting material, is but a poor way out of our difficulty, and
one which we should soon tire of.
There remains, then, nothing but to paint our ceilings cautiously
and with as much refinement as we can, when we can afford it:
though even that simple matter is complicated by the hideousness of
the aforesaid plaster ornaments and cornices, which are so very bad
that you must ignore them by leaving them unpainted, though even
this neglect, while you paint the flat of the ceiling, makes them in
a way part of the decoration, and so is apt to beat you out of every
scheme of colour conceivable. Still, I see nothing for it but
cautious painting, or leaving the blank white space alone, to be
forgotten if possible. This painting, of course, assumes that you
know better than to use gas in your rooms, which will indeed soon
reduce all your decorations to a pretty general average.
So now we come to the walls of our room, the part which chiefly
concerns us, since no one will admit the possibility of leaving them
quite alone. And the first question is, how shall we space them out
horizontally?
If the room be small and not high, or the wall be much broken by
pictures and tall pieces of furniture, I would not divide it
horizontally. One pattern of paper, or whatever it may be, or one
tint may serve us, unless we have in hand an elaborate and
architectural scheme of decoration, as in a makeshift house is not
like to be the case; but if it be a good-sized room, and the wall be
not much broken up, some horizontal division is good, even if the
room be not very high.
How are we to divide it then? I need scarcely say not into two
equal parts; no one out of the island of Laputa could do that. For
the rest, unless again we have a very elaborate scheme of
decoration, I think dividing it once, making it into two spaces is
enough. Now there are practically two ways of doing that: you may
either have a narrow frieze below the cornice, and hang the wall
thence to the floor, or you may have a moderate dado, say 4 feet 6
inches high, and hang the wall from the cornice to the top of the
dado. Either way is good according to circumstances; the first with
the tall hanging and the narrow frieze is fittest if your wall is to
be covered with stuffs, tapestry, or panelling, in which case making
the frieze a piece of delicate painting is desirable in default of
such plaster-work as I have spoken of above; or even if the
proportions of the room very much cry out for it, you may, in
default of hand-painting, use a strip of printed paper, though this,
I must say, is a makeshift of makeshifts. The division into dado,
and wall hung from thence to the cornice, is fittest for a wall
which is to be covered with painted decoration, or its makeshift,
paper-hangings. As to these, I would earnestly dissuade you from
using more than one pattern in one room, unless one of them be but a
breaking of the surface with a pattern so insignificant as scarce to
be noticeable. I have seen a good deal of the practice of putting
pattern over pattern in paper-hangings, and it seems to me a very
unsatisfactory one, and I am, in short, convinced, as I hinted just
now, that cheap recurring patterns in a material which has no play
of light in it, and no special beauty of its own, should be employed
rather sparingly, or they destroy all refinement of decoration and
blunt our enjoyment of whatever beauty may lie in the designs of
such things.
Before I leave this subject of the spacing out of the wall for
decoration, I should say that in dealing with a very high room it is
best to put nothing that attracts the eye above a level of about
eight feet from the floor--to let everything above that be mere air
and space, as it were. I think you will find that this will tend to
take off that look of dreariness that often besets tall rooms.
So much then for the spacing out of our wall. We have now to
consider what the covering of it is to be, which subject, before we
have done with it, will take us over a great deal of ground and lead
us into the consideration of designing for flat spaces in general
with work other than picture work.
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