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The House in Good Taste by Elsie de Wolfe
page 44 of 183 (24%)
of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.

Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.

Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
say that one woman is "so full of color," when she is alert and happy
and vividly alive. We say another woman is "colorless," because she is
bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
and--gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
of color, although often we have not that appreciation.

There is all the difference in the world between the person who
appreciates color and the person who "likes colors." The child, playing
with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads--all these
primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
subtle and intellectual quality.

Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
housefurnishing, says: "Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many
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