Dining Room Decor: Frieze Decoration 1892

Print PDF

An effective design for the frieze of a dining room, whose walls and ceiling are of a light soft red inclining to a creamy red, is a decoratively drawn grapevine with life-sized branches, stems, leaves and grape clusters. The room referred to was colored with powder colors mixed with a very thin paste.

The colors employed formed, for the leaves, soft browns and yellows with touches of dull red, reddish brown for branches and stems, and soft reds for the fruit clusters. Some leaves show yellow-greens, as seen in the autumnal coloring of the vine. The treatment is decorative, hence the fruit is not colored to imitate nature, nor are the leaves, except insofar as the autumnal colorings harmonize with the gray ground of the frieze, and the soft yellowish old-red of the walls. The characteristics of the grape vine are retained, but the vine is arranged to conform to the limits of the frieze space and the octagonal shape of the room.

A departure from the strictly conventional is made in this special room to meet a special need, namely, to conceal a large water stain on the ceiling at one end of the room. Here the vine is carried up from the frieze to spread over the large stained area in a mass of foliage and stems, and as the coloring of the leaves and vine are soft, and blend harmoniously with the ceiling color, the effect is pleasant and artistic.

The colors for painting the frieze are the ordinary powder colors such as the one you can buy in a paint shop, Spanish-brown, Indian-red, yellow-ochre and ultramarine-blue. The medium for their mixing is a thin gum-arabic solution, in which they must be ground patiently with a palette knife until they are very smooth indeed. An excellent way, however, to grind them well is to put the colors and gum in a porcelain mortar and pestle, working it in the mortar with a circular motion.

To test the color dab some on a piece of stout, white paper and dry it. If on rubbing the dried colored surface with the finger the colors come off, there is not enough medium, so you must add more gum-arabic solution. If the color flakes off in patches, there is too little color and too much gum. By drying the color one can also test whether it is too light, too dark, the color you desire or something unsuitable for your purpose.

Originally published in a Ladies magazine 1892

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Antique Decor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.