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The collector of paintings and sculpture is altogether too apt to crowd his entire apartment with the works of art that have given him joy, but many of which may belong to an earlier period of his collecting and no longer express either their owner's more developed taste or the rooms in which he places them. We, as decorators, must look upon such objets d'art solely from the standpoint of their decorative value and must approve or condemn them, not according to their intrinsic artistic merit, but according to their contribution to the beauty of the interior as a whole. As
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62INTERIOR DECORATING
the collector himself cannot be expected to do this, he should be urged to set apart a special room for exhibition purposes and no attempt should be made to force this room into the bounds which govern the remainder of the apartment. Here he may go, to his heart's delight, to view the pictures for which he has expended such huge sums without fear of disfiguring his other rooms by overcrowding their walls, or detracting from their proper furnishing. The ideal collector will, of course, not even overcrowd his gallery; he will hang his paintings or place his statuary so as to give them their fullest artistic significance and will make a thing of beauty out of this as well as every other room; but at worst, it is better to have one room massed with fine and beautiful things in an undecorative way than to have every room made impossible by their distribution. As to the background suitable for such a place, one can recommend merely a fabric-covered wall, with simple window draperies to match, and probably a floor covering of the same color, and rather austere and dignified furniture. The less decoration there is here, the better.
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