The French Interior

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 303, 14 March 1928, Page 7

The French Interior

AN EMPHASIS ON LINE

Modern House Decoration

MODERN house decoration and furniture in Prance have reached a stage where they are beginning to be taken for granted. A house may be furnished in the Chinese style or that of Louis Quinze, but the ordinary house which is furnished from the big shops—the house designed for a newly married couple who are unencumbered with their ancestors’ taste—is very definitely of the present. That is to say, it is geometrical, sparse, definite in colour, with the emphasis laid on line as opposed to ornament.

On© of the signs of the present deco - rative art is the abolition of the picture as an end in itself. There are a few pictures, and they are as much a part of the colour scheme as the carpet or the bureau. The special designer, therefore, who is called in to decorate a whole house, or even one room, starts nowadays with a number of axioms. He does not need to be eccentric in order to emphasise his point. He can take those elements at his disposal and can develop his own taste very much more freely than was the case two or three years ago.

House decoration in Paris may be said to begin with the entrance and the staircase. A typical Paris entrance, such as that designed by Mile. Kinsbourg, has the stairs and the walls of warm white stone. The new flats are nearly all built on this recipe, even if the entrance and staircase be only dressed to look like stone. The warm, creamy colouring is the thing that matters. Against this is contrasted a balustrade of ironwork, generally black, and worked with a lightness and delicacy which shall contrast with the solidity of the stone. The window frames are made of the ironwork, and many windows have tracery, also in ironwork, in an ultra-modern design. This tones in with the staircase, and has some of the charm of the stained glass window. Staircases of this kind have various accessories. Sometimes the floor is tiled in red. Sometimes it also is of white stone, with a carpet in grey, black and beige. The staircase, especially where the iron shows its natural colouring, is sometimes finished with a solid pillar in marble to tone with the iron and contrasted with a carved figure in black marble. In this connection composition marble has helped greatly in the new colour schemes. Fireplaces are made of creamy, composition marble, mixed with gold and highly polished. These are sometimes used over radiators to hide the pipes. Equally they are used for staircase ends. One marked feature of the staircase is the tendency to let it, like the parquet floor, rely upon its own qualities for beauty, instead of ornamenting it with a carpet. Carpets are used, but very often there is none at all. The next decoration of importance is that of the walls, and here also may be included the lighting. Mile. Kinsbourg has a rather typical room in which the walls are coloured softly in zones of pale yellow, pinkish-yellow, and violet. These colours only catch the eye in connection with a piece of furniture. Some of the upholstery is in rather bright purple, and so is suited to the walls, or the walls to it. The yellow tones pick up the creamy lacquer of the bureau and the panels within an archway leading into another room. The pinkish tones are also found in the carpet, which is in harmonious beiges, blues, reddish tints, and black.. And these colours balance as well in the daytime as at night,

since the lighting, which .is concealed round the cornice, gives, as far as possible, the effect of daylight. With regard to line, the modern French room is generally Cubist in tendency, with perhaps one arch or round window to emphasise the straight lines. If the window is not actually round it may give this effect by means of a circular design in the iron tracery. In colouring a great deal of cream and brown is used together. At the Salon beautiful pieces of furniture were made with cream lacquer and rich, dark brown wood contrasted. Palissander wood, which is very much like dark mahogany, is freely used, and the cream lacquer may be varied by engraving it in colour. Much of the harshness and crudeness of colouring of the first Cubist rooms has disappeared. Everywhere the* tendency is to give softness —even if the colour be vivid—as far as is compatible with line. Rich, deep colours are used with dark wood. Carpets are mostly in the soft beige—rosebeige and .grey-beige tints with strong lines of black, and perhaps a darker border to give them point. Furniture is inclined to be massive. Its decoration lies in its colouring. The bureau and the solid table are conspicuous. Table legs are at a discount, and many dining room tables are supported by a block in the middle, or by a St. Andrew’s cross of wood, set on its side.