The question of placing photographs is not one to be treated lightly.  Remember, intimate photographs should be placed in intimate rooms, while photographs of artists and all celebrities are appropriate for the living room or library.  It is extremely seldom that a photograph unless of public interest is not out of place in a formal room.

To repeat, never forget that your house or flat is your home, and, that to have any charm whatever of a personal sort, it must suggest you—­not simply the taste of a professional decorator.  So work with your decorator (if you prefer to employ one) by giving your personal attention to styles and colours, and selecting those most sympathetic to your own nature.  Your architect will be grateful if you will show the same interest in the details of building your home, rather than assuming the attitude that you have engaged him in order to rid yourself of such bother.

If you are building a pretentious house and decide upon some clearly defined period of architecture, let us say, Georgian (English eighteenth century) we would advise keeping your first floor mainly in that period as to furniture and hangings, but upstairs let yourself go, that is, make your rooms any style you like.  Go in for a gay riot of colour, such combinations as are known as Bakst colouring,—­if that happens to be your fancy.  This Russian painter and designer was fortunate in having the theatre in which to demonstrate his experiments in vivid colour combinations, and sometimes we quite forget that he was but one of many who have used sunset palettes.

PLATE IV

Here we have a man’s office in Wall Street, New York, showing how a lawyer with large interests surrounds himself with necessities which contribute to his comfort, sense of beauty and art instincts.

     The desk is big, solid and commodious, yet artistically unusual.

[Illustration:  A Man’s Office in Wall Street]

Recently the fair butterfly daughters of a mother whose taste has grown sophisticated, complained—­“But, Mother, we dislike periods, and here you are building a Tudor house!” forgetting, by the way, that the so-called Bakst interiors, adored by them, are equally a period.

This home, a very wonderful one, is being worked out on the plan suggested, that is, the first floor is decorated in the period of the exterior of the house, while the personal rooms on the upper floors reflect, to a certain extent, the personality of their occupants.  Remember there must always be a certain relationship between all the rooms in one suite, the relationship indicated by lines and a background of the same, or a harmonising colour-scheme.

CHAPTER II

HOW TO CREATE A ROOM

One so often hears the complaint, “I could not possibly set out alone to furnish a room!  I don’t know anything about periods.  Why, a Louis XVI chair and an Empire chair are quite the same to me.  Then the question of antiques and reproductions—­why any one could mislead me!”