design, admirable in workmanship. The “vargueîio” or cabinet, an inheritance from the Moors, is almost enough to furnish a room, and it varies in style from pure Arabic to the subtle Renaissance of Berruguete. Velvet, damask, tapestry, Cordovan leather are used for upholstery, giving wonderful notes of color, and frequently great chests and the fronts of vargueflos are covered with blue or scarlet velvet bound and laced with steel or brass or gilded iron.
The balance between plain whitewashed walls, tiled floors and splendid “artesonado” ceiling, and the strong rich furniture, always moderate in amount and ranged along the walls, is quite perfect. Indeed it is only necessary to enter a great Spanish room, to feel like a gentleman, whether one is that or not.
I have laid stress on the indigenous type of more modest Spanish house for this has more for ns I imagine than the great palaces, though the manner in which such palaces are multiplying in America today would seem to argue otherwise.
For those who search for such models there is a plentiful supply. Seville has many of the Mudejar sort, such as the Casa de Pilatos built by the Riberas early in the XVIth century, the pseudo Moorish Royal Palace of the Alcazar and the Palace of the Duke of Alba, the Casa de Duenas. The palaces of Madrid are more of the imported styles which became popular in the XVIIIth century, while Aranjuez contains in the Casa de Labrador some of the most exquisite pure
French Empire interiors to be found anywhere.
It is the veritably Spanish work that counts, however,, and I commend this to curious architects as a notable example of how the thing should be done. It has just the right balance of simplicity and directness on the one hand, and noble richness on the other. It has grown without selfconsciousness out of wholesome requirements and local conditions. It has just the right blending of tradition and modernism ; it strives for no purity of style, hardly for any particular style at all, and above everything it realizes that a house
THE PATIO, CASA DEL GRECO, TOLEDO
RESTORATION OF A XVITH CENTURY MUDEJAR DWELLING
(From “Spanish Interiors and Furniture.” By permission of William Helburn, Inc.)
The balance between plain whitewashed walls, tiled floors and splendid “artesonado” ceiling, and the strong rich furniture, always moderate in amount and ranged along the walls, is quite perfect. Indeed it is only necessary to enter a great Spanish room, to feel like a gentleman, whether one is that or not.
I have laid stress on the indigenous type of more modest Spanish house for this has more for ns I imagine than the great palaces, though the manner in which such palaces are multiplying in America today would seem to argue otherwise.
For those who search for such models there is a plentiful supply. Seville has many of the Mudejar sort, such as the Casa de Pilatos built by the Riberas early in the XVIth century, the pseudo Moorish Royal Palace of the Alcazar and the Palace of the Duke of Alba, the Casa de Duenas. The palaces of Madrid are more of the imported styles which became popular in the XVIIIth century, while Aranjuez contains in the Casa de Labrador some of the most exquisite pure
French Empire interiors to be found anywhere.
It is the veritably Spanish work that counts, however,, and I commend this to curious architects as a notable example of how the thing should be done. It has just the right balance of simplicity and directness on the one hand, and noble richness on the other. It has grown without selfconsciousness out of wholesome requirements and local conditions. It has just the right blending of tradition and modernism ; it strives for no purity of style, hardly for any particular style at all, and above everything it realizes that a house
THE PATIO, CASA DEL GRECO, TOLEDO
RESTORATION OF A XVITH CENTURY MUDEJAR DWELLING
(From “Spanish Interiors and Furniture.” By permission of William Helburn, Inc.)