If you’ve been to Chapters in the last month, you may have noticed a stack of small orange and yellow striped books on one of the allée tables leading you to the bestseller wall.  Rizzoli books of New York (www.rizzoliusa.com) has used their imprint to reproduce a classic book of decorating, Elsie de Wolfe’s “The House in Good Taste”.  If you are not already familiar with Ms. De Wolfe, she is known as the First Lady of Interior Decoration.  Her taste and style informed North American Society how to escape the dark velvet clutches of heavy Victorian decoration.  Her 1913 book was a compilation of her articles and observations first published in the magazine, “The Delineator” at 15 cents a copy.  While Elsie de Wolfe has been credited with the introduction of beige, chintz, trellised interior walls, and exterior mirrors, it is one of her quips that echoes for me today:  “Suitability, suitability, SUITABILITY!”  I try to apply that concept to the interior styles of our own South Shore.

“This is what I am always fighting in people’s houses:  the unsuitability of things.  The foolish person goes about from shop to shop and buys as their fancy directs.  They see something “pretty” and buy it, though it has no reference either in form or color to the scheme of their house.  Haven’t you been in rooms where there was a jumble of mission furniture, satinwood, fine old mahogany and gilt-legged chairs?  And it is the same with color.  Someone says ‘Oh, I love blue, let’s have blue!’ regardless of the exposure of their room and the furnishings they have already collected.  And then, when they have treated each one of their rooms in a different color, and with a different floor covering, they wonder why they always fret going from one room to another.” 

“We are sure to judge a person in whose house we find ourselves for the first time, by their surroundings.  We judge their temperament, their habits, their inclinations, by the interior of their home.  We may talk of the weather, but we are looking at the furniture.”

“A person’s environment will speak for their life, whether they like it or not.  How can we believe that a person of sincerity of purpose will hang fake “works of art” on their walls…How much better to have plain furniture that is comfortable, simple chintzes printed from old blocks, a few good prints, than all the sham things in the world?  A house is a dead giveaway, anyhow, so you should arrange it so that the person who sees your personality in it will be reassured, not disconcerted.”

And so it goes.  Elsie de Wolfe entertains and educates in this tome.  There are chapters on wall treatments (faux or painted finishes), the use of colour, and all the rooms of the house.  She delivers an exposition on the delights of Washington Irving’s home (famed author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”) in New York as well as her own Villa Trianon in Versailles down the road from Louis XIV’s little abode.  Pick up a copy for yourself or remember it for a holiday/hostess gift.  Cheers!