Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/282

 2.58 COTTAGE, FARM, AND VILLA ARCHITECTURE. Chap. III. Designs and Directions for Exterior and Interior Finishing, as connected with Furnishing, and for the Fittings-up, Fixtures, and Furniture of Cottage Dwellings, 517. Exterior Finishing is the term applied to stuccoing, roughcasting, and plastering ; and to whitewashing, colouring, painting, and similar processes, for exterior walls, and timber-work. It also includes troughs, gutters to projecting roofs, rain-water pipes, exterior window shutters and window blinds ; and the application of exterior ornaments, such as barge-boards, canopies, ornamental chimney-pots, balconies, verandas, vases, trelliswork, and a variety of similar appendages. 518. Bg Interior Finishing is here to be understood the covering of the walls with various materials, partly with a view to use, and partly to ornament ; such as affixing cornices, whitewashing, colouring, painting, stenciling, papering, &c. Architects include under the term finishing, all such portions of the joiner's work as are fixed, after the ceilings, walls, &c., are plastered; also locks, bolts, bars, and springs, to shutters and doors; and water-closets, baths, chimney-pieces, &c. : but, in this portion of our work, we have thought it best to confine ourselves chiefly to such parts of finishing as have not before come under our review. 519. By Fittings-up are commonly implied the putting up of wooden closets; the fixing of shelves ; of seats and basins in water-closets ; of cisterns ; and of pipes and cocks to supply the different parts of the house with water ; the hanging of bells ; and the putting up of such other articles in a house, as cannot be taken down without deranging in some way or other the finishing of the apartments. 520. Bg Fixtures are meant stoves, grates, boilers, coppers, dressers, and sometimes bookcases and corner cupboards ; all of which are more or less fixed to the walls, and, like the fittings-up, cannot be taken down without, in some degree, injuring or disfiguring the apartment. 521. Furniture includes all the portable articles introduced into apartments, for the purpose of rendering them habitable, comfortable, and agreeable : such as seats of dif- ferent kinds, tables, beds, carpets, and curtains ; wardrobes, and other portable receptacles for clothes, books, &c. ; musical instruments ; and also ornaments, such as pictures, sculptures, curiosities, &c. 522. These different departments of the art of completing a house are not alike susceptible of being illustrated by designs, which cannot, for example, be made to include painting, colouring, papering, &c. For this reason we intend to blend some general directions with our graphical illustrations, deferring the details of the processes of the painter, plasterer, paperhanger, &c., till we treat of these arts in a subsequent part of the work. 523. In all that relates to finishing and furnishing, the artist must be directed by the same general principles as those which were his guide in designing the building. These principles are as much founded on reason in the one case as in the other. The first im- pression which we ought to receive from seeing a human dwelling at a distance is that it is such ; and that it is suited for some particular class or description of family, mode of living, or state of civilisation. On a nearer view, the parts and finishing of the exterior, as they develope themselves, ought to convey to us some ideas of the taste of the occupant. As we enter the porch, these ideas ought to be confirmed by the continuation of the same general style of taste, enhanced in degree, because nearer to the eye and under the protection of a roof; and, as we proceed to the principal apartment, the train of ideas awakened ought to be maintained, and increased, till it arrives at its ultimatum in the room where the mistress of the house receives visits from her friends. This is the general result to which all finishing and furnishing is, or ought to be, directed ; and it may be reduced to two principles, unity of style, and gradation of excellence. Unity of style should pervade both the exterior and the interior ; and there ought to be a regular gradation in the labour and care employed, from the outside walls and exterior finishing and ornaments, to the most highly enriched apartment within. Another principle, subordinate to these two, is, that as every apartment in a house has, or ought to have, its particular use, so it should be characterised by some particular piece of furniture essential to that use ; and that all the subordinate articles and ornaments in such apartments should have a reference, or be appropriate, to the principal one. Thus a kitchen is characterised by the grate or kitchen range ; the dining-room, by the side- l)oard ; the library, by the bookcase ; the drawing-room, by the sofa ; and so on : the subordinate furniture must always accord with the jsrincipal article. Thus, the kitchen range should be sujiported in character by the dresser and plate-rack ; the sideboard, by the cellaret and massive dining-table ; the bookcase, by reading and writing tables and desks; and the sofa, by chimney and pier glasses, and by various descriptions of seats,