The House in Good Taste

Wooden staircases with carved wooden balustrades were used oftenest in England, while in the French châteaux marble stairs with wrought-iron stair-rails are generally found. The perfection to which the art of iron work may be carried is familiar to everyone who knows the fairy-like iron work of Jean L'Amour in the Stanislas Palace at Nancy. This staircase in the Hôtel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects. Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century. The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath their dignity and talent to devote themselves to designing the knobs of doors, the handles of commodes, the bronzes for the decorations of fireplaces, the shaping of hinges and locks. They were careful of details, and that is the secret of their supremacy. Nowadays, we may find a house with a beautiful hall, but the chances are it is spoiled by crudely designed fittings. I have written somewhat at length of the magnificent staircases of older countries and older times than our own, because somehow the subject is one that cannot be considered apart from its beginnings. All our halls and stairs, pretentious or not, have come to us from these superb efforts of masterly workmen, and perhaps that is why we feel instinctively that they must suggest a certain formality, and restraint. This feeling is indirectly a tribute to the architects who gave us such notable examples.