The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Theory Of Decoration

Athens, the center of culture of the ancient world, was not a great commercial city. Phoenicia and Carthage, the great traders of antiquity, have failed to leave their mark upon the history of culture. Ancient Rome, the greatest political power of antiquity, never reached as high an artistic plane as the small city-states of Greece.

The greatest art of all, the Gothic, developed at a period when enormous power and enthusiasm was centralized in the church. Later French art reached its greatest glory under Louis XIV, when the masses were down-trodden. In America, taste and culture have developed with the political fortunes of our inhabitants. What is known as our Colonial style was much influenced hy England. A certain independence was established hy the wealthier classes in our early days, and the hest of the English designs of the period were imported and reproduced, first hy English workmen, hut gradually hy natives, who, influenced by local conditions, developed a truly native style. This is more true of architecture than of decoration. The cheapness and abundance of pine wood were largely responsible for the development of the wooden houses of our early days.

During the Revolution a short period of stagnation occurred, and although the first decade of the nineteenth century shows numerous examples of the Colonial and Georgian styles, we were approaching the end of this artistic period. The last century, remarkable for its great industrial development, was not favorable to aesthetic appreciation, and the civil war and the following reconstruction period were particularly unfortunate in this respect.

This was the period when Eastlake was one of the chief influences, and the country was flooded with reproductions of his work and other work of even less merit. It was not until the Philadelphia Exposition of 1870 that a small group of art enthusiasts began to realize the lack of beauty in American productions, and the Columbian Exposition of 185)2 was another great step in the artistic development of the nation.

It is true that foreign architects and decorators visited Chicago and expressed themselves as highly disappointed that they found nothing new, that everything had the distinct earmarks of European inspiration. They had expected to find designs of Indian or other native origin, but they did not realize that our culture itself was not of Indian origin, but that our people were of European descent, and that naturally our products would show European influence.

It was about 1805 that the wealthy classes of Americans began to invite and employ European decorators to enrich their homes, particularly the French. The younger and most promising of the American architects began to go to France for their studies, and upon their return introduced a revival of some of the French Renaissance styles. They had a host of imitators, particularly in the East, who failed to grasp the finesse of these styles, and produced a debased imitation of the Louis XV and Louis XVT, that lacked all the qualities of which these styles are capable.