AFA 18th Anniversary

forward even in the face of the powerful towers of glass we pass by daily. I’m especially pleased to see my younger colleagues at Jayne Design Studio steeped in the great decorating traditions and using them brilliantly today. We are grateful too for the patronage that makes this possible. I hope that this book will be a modest connection point through the generations and down to historically informed practitioners of the present. I have come to see that my work, like Wharton and Codman’s book, exists to empower people to live well and comfortably. In Classical Principles , I hope that I can make a new case for traditional design with the same “irrefutable freshness” (a phrase from one of Wharton’s novels) that I still find in The Decoration of Houses . I like to say that tradition is not about what was. Tradition is an active word—tradition is now . This is an adapted excerpt from Classical Principles for Modern Design: Lessons from Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman’s The Decoration of Houses by Thomas Jayne, published by The Monacelli Press, 2018. 2 Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Classical Principles for Modern Design is on sale January 2018 online and at independent bookstores everywhere. Chapter topics include decorative elements, rooms of a house, and color. Thomas Jayne is principle at Jayne Design Studio (jaynedesignstudio.com ). 2018 Antiques & Fine Art 111 rhythm and logic. A house, or room, must be planned as it is because it could not, in reason, be otherwise; must be decorated as it is because no other decoration would harmonize as well with the plan. And how far away, really, is the Wharton era? The influence of The Decoration of Houses is potent, and I see it vividly in the work of Jayne Design Studio. In my passion for order and organization, my love for historic forms, and my appreciation for the power of discrete spaces, Wharton and Codman’s wise words are reflected and amplified. It may surprise people to know I was born in a cradle of modernism —Los Angeles in the 1950s. I have always found it odd that I am fascinated with classical design. But it’s a tradition that takes great surety and confidence, and I also like the challenge of instilling order on irregular situations. When I was about twelve years old and really starting to look at things, I became fascinated by the way light and shadow fall on shapes and how shapes are abstracted by light. I love the atmospheric effects of traditional design. Anyone who has ever looked at the moldings on a classical building as the light hits them, creating entirely new forms, knows how this can transport the viewer. Parallel to my personal fascination was, in the general culture, a renewed interest in classical and vernacular architecture beginning in the 1970s, particularly by practicing architects and schools of architecture. Art history began to be reemphasized in the study of architecture—I experienced this when I was a student at Oregon University’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts. In our studio work and in the classroom, there was a new and ardent interest in historic buildings led by the pioneering architectural historians Marion Ross, Marian C. Donnelly, and Leland Roth. This was furthered in my graduate fellowship at the Winterthur Museum, where for two years I was surrounded by outstanding examples of historic American rooms. All that was solid groundwork for my first interior decorating job at the august firm Parish-Hadley, which was known for making traditional interiors with modern elements, giving all of decoration new vigor. Of course, I admire modernism, and indeed it has informed my appreciation of the classical. But my heart resonates with traditional design, in its emphasis on subtle layering instead of stark contrasts and in its literal expression of function. As Wharton and Codman so ably advocated, people should feel at ease and comfortable, both visually and physically. Maintaining the flame for traditional design and carrying on that legacy, I have also added my own contribution along the way. It’s gratifying to see the traditional design continuum stretching All images courtesy Monacelli Press and Jayne Design Studio. 1. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), “Ornament to Private Buildings,” in The Art of Building in Ten Books , vol. 9 (London: Edward Owen, 1755; reprint, MIT Press, 1988), 293. The original Latin volumes were written in 1452 and first printed in 1485. 2. An online edition of The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897; reprint 1914) is available at http://www.gutenberg.org.