The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-11-17
The Ideal Home.

Beck's Journal of Decorative Art.
The ideal home beautiful is attained rather by
avoiding errors of taste than by the adoption Of
special dogmas of art For my own part, if
have any dogmas to preach they may fairly be
condensed in this one rule: Avoid shams and
affectations of all kinds"
Don't mistake mere prettiness for beauty. Mil
lnery. for instance, is out of place in the home
beautiful
Don't attach to your chairs and sofa cushions
meaning ess bows of ribbon which tie nothing.
Don't dress up your toilet tables in muslin
pettceats stifened with crinoline or colored
calico.
Don't scatter startling white "tidies" about
chairs and sofas as on so many bushes, as if you
were hanging out the wash to dry.
Don't display on your walls china plates and
dishes. They were never meant 10 go there
An exception may be made now and then in
favor of piece of fine color to help light up the
room, where delicate china painting wor-
thy of careful examination. But hang up ordi-
nary domestic chinal Don'u
Don't hang small pictures so that their beauty
is lost to any one under eight feet high. If q
picture is not seen from the same position that
me artist saw it when he painted it, the draw
Jog will appear foreshortened and the general
effect consequently falsi6ed.
Don't hang any picture in the home which has
not the mpress Of elegance, purity and cheer
fulness.
Don't give place to representations of corpses
tortured saints, or anything occasioning painful
emotlonS. Ana An0Ve ali, having Sucn pictures,
and not wanting them down stairs, don't Danish
them to the nursery, school room or bedroom
Some things | would relegate to the bedroom
out OF the way somewhere-iD locked drawers
for instance; mean mementoes Of seaweed and
dried ferns or flowers, and wretched daubs on
china, canvas paper, the crude efforts of
youthful members of the family No true lover
of the home beautiful will infct these ON his
family and friends, and compel them 90 violate
truth by pretending TO like them.
Don't buy your carpet or your wafl-pape be-
cause it looks pretty in the roll when you see it
in the store. But think of the fitness of each
with its ultimate surroundings. Remember that
the carpet is to be background for your furni-
ure, and the wa-paper-unless it is to be the
actual decoration OF the walls-is to be merely a
background for your pictures
Don't admit into the home beautiful any piece
of furniture or implement of everyday life
which does not honestly serve its purpose-no
light, limsy chairs which an able bodied man
dare not sit upon; puffy. debilitated sofas. all
wind and springs; no FURNISHED, brass sheeted
fire irons, bought only to be looked at and give
place to the ugly little black poker and shovel
when coal is TO be broken ashes are to be re-
moved.
There is no reason why an object should not be
useful as well ornamental. Indeed, there can
be no beauty without fitness. Nature every.
where teaches US the compatibility of the highest
utility with the greatest beauty.
And SO with beauty and truth. There NAV be
truth without beauty; but there is no beauty
without truth. Truth. beauty, and utility are
the inseparabe trinity of the ideal home Let
US then write them upon the portals of the hon. q
as the epitome OF all that is most admirable in
religion. In art, and in every day life.