A house by its style’s rules
A house planned and built by the rules of its period, as the Design a Building app plans one: its rooms, its front, its roof and chimneys; or cut open to show its plan, furnished.
The rules it illustrates
Three couches round the table. Dine lying on couches: set three couches round three sides of a low table, the fourth side left open for serving, each couch taking up to three diners propped on the left elbow; the room is named for its three couches, the triclinium.
The furniture made with the room. Design the furniture of a principal room with the room: the chairs, settees and stools covered in the stuff of the walls or the bed, the tables and glasses drawn to the architecture of the piers and the chimneypiece, so that the room and its furniture are of one manner and one date.
The state bed. At the end of the apartment of state, in the bedchamber of state, set the state bed: the richest piece in the house, its tester high under the ceiling, its curtains, valances and headcloth of the richest stuff, with the chairs and stools of the room covered to match; it is a bed of honour more than of sleep.
The formal room: the furniture against the walls. In the formal room, stand the furniture against the walls and leave the middle of the room clear: a pier table (with its glass above) between each pair of windows, the sofa facing the fire, a chair either side of the chimneypiece, the chairs ranged round the walls in a line with the dado, to be brought out when wanted and put back after; and keep each wall symmetrical about its middle, its chimneypiece or its windows.
The Regency room: the furniture in groups. In the room of the Regency and after, bring the furniture out into the room in groups for the occupations of the company: a sofa by the fire with a sofa table before it, a round table in the middle with chairs round it, the pianoforte, a work table, a couch; leave the walls for the pier tables, the cabinets and the bookcases.
The size of a chair. Make a chair about 20 inches wide in front, the seat about 17 inches deep and the seat frame 17 inches high, the whole back about 3 feet 1 inch high; a sofa 6 to 7 feet long, about 30 inches deep and its seat 14 inches high.
The sideboard and its pedestals. In a spacious dining room, stand the sideboard on the end wall, 5½ to 7 feet long, 3 feet high and 28 to 32 inches deep, and set a pedestal at each end of it carrying a vase: the one pedestal lined to warm the plates, the other a cupboard, the vases holding water or knives.
Chippendale’s three tastes, each in its room. Furnish each room in the taste that suits it: the modern (French) taste, carved and on cabriole legs, in the drawing room; the Chinese, with fretted backs on straight legs, in the bedchamber and the lady’s dressing room, especially one hung with Chinese paper; the Gothic in the library.
Where it appears in the book
In the styles Tudor, Georgian and Colonial, Victorian, Craftsman, Edwardian.
In the chapters The House in England and America.