Edgar Allan Poe

“ The people naturally imitate the nobles, and the result is a thorough diffusion of a right feeling. But, in America, dollars being the supreme insignia of aristocracy, their display may be said, in general terms, to be the sole means of aristocratic distinction; and the populace, looking up for models, are insensibly led to confound the two entirely separate ideas of magnificence and beauty. In short, the cost of an article of furniture has, at length, come to be, with us, nearly the sole test of its merit in a decorative point of view. ”

“ The veriest bumpkin, not addle-headed, upon entering an apartment so bedizened, would be instantly aware of something wrong, although he might be altogether unable to assign a cause for his dissatisfaction. But let the same individual be led into a room tastefully furnished, and he would be startled into an exclamation of surprise and of pleasure.
It is an evil growing out of our republican institutions, that here a man of large purse has usually a very little soul which he keeps in it. The corruption of taste is a portion and a pendant of the dollar-manufacture. ”

“ Diminutive paintings give that spotty look to a room which is the blemish of so many a fine work of art overtouched. The frames are broad, but not deep, and richly carved, without being fillagreed. Their profuse gilding gives them the whole lustre of gold. They lie flat upon the walls, and do not hang off with cords. ”

“ The huge and unmeaning glass chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-litten, and without shade, which dangle by night in our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of false taste, as so many concentrations of preposterous folly. ”

“ In fact a room with four or five mirrors arranged at random is, for all purposes of artistical show, a room of no shape at all. If we add to this the attendant glitter upon glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing effects. ”

“ We speak of the keeping of a room as we would of the keeping of a picture; for both the picture and the room are amenable to those undeviating principles which regulate all varieties of art; and very nearly the same laws by which we decide upon the higher merits of a painting, suffice for a decision upon the adjustment of a chamber. ”

“ The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have merely a vague idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are all curtains—a nation of hangmen. The Russians no not furnish. The Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way—the Yankees alone are preposterous.
How this happens it is not difficult to see. We have no aristocracy of blood, and having, therefore, as a natural and, indeed, as an inevitable thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the display of wealth has here to take the place, and perform the office, of the heraldic display in monarchical countries. ”

“ No man having both brains and eyes will use it. A mild, or what artists term a cool light, with its consequent warm shadows, will do wonders for even an ill-furnished apartment. Never was a more lovely thought than that of the astral lamp. I mean, of course, the astral lamp proper, and do not wish to be misunderstood—the lamp of Argand with its original plain ground-glass shade, and its tempered and uniform moonlight rays. The cut-glass shade is a weak invention of the enemy. ”

“ In England, for example, no mere parade of costly appurtenances would be so likely as with us to create an impression of the beautiful in respect to the appurtenances themselves, or of taste as respects the proprietor—this for the reason, first, that wealth is not in English the loftiest object of ambition, as constituting a nobility ”

“ A want of keeping is observable sometimes in the character of the several pieces of furniture, but generally in their colors or modes of adaption to use. Very often the eye is offended by their inartistical arrangement. Straight lines are too prevalent, too uninterruptedly continued, or clumsily interrupted at right angles. If curved lines occur, they are repeated into unpleasant uniformity. Undue precision spoils the appearance of many a room.
Curtains are rarely well disposed, or well chosen, in respect to the other decoration. ”

“ Flickering, unquiet lights are sometimes pleasing—to children and idiots always so—but in the embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth even strong steady lights are inadmissible. ”

“ Glare is a leading error in the philosophy of American household decoration—an error easily recognized as deduced from the perversion of taste just specified. We are violently enamoured of gas and of glass. ”

“ There could be scarcely any thing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist than the interior of what is termed, in the United States, a well furnished apartment. Its most usual defect is a preposterous want of keeping. ”

“ We line our dwellings with great British plates, and then imagine we have done a fine thing. Now the slightest thought will be sufficient to convince any one who has an eye at all, of the ill effect of numerous looking-glasses, and especially of large ones. ”

“ In France meliora probant, deteriora sequuntur—the people are too much a race of gad-abouts to study and maintain those household proprieties, of which indeed they have a delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The Chinese, and most of the Eastern races, have a warm but inappropriate fancy. ”

“ Considered as a reflector it is potent in producing a monstrous and odious uniformity—and the evil is here aggravated in no direct proportion with the augmentation of its sources, but in a ratio constantly increasing. ”

“ Yet I have heard fellows discourse of carpets with the visage of a sheep in a reverie—"d'un mouton qui rêve"—who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their own mustachios. Every one knows that a large floor should have a covering of large figures, and a small one of small ”