While the expression of the Louis XVI style was more marked in the South, it was also noticeable in New England, particularly in the northeastern part.

A few years before the fall of the French kingdom Marie Antoinette planned to flee and make her home in the United States. A shipload of house furnishings was sent to Maine, and this, which was never used by her but which was distributed later, was the leaven which leavened the whole eastern Colonial to a less severe and more graceful expression of the later Colonial type. The drawing-room in New England was an unheard-of luxury. The parlour, with its closed blinds and drawn curtains, for use on holidays only, had taken its place. The advent of the Louis XVI idea brought with it the conception of the use of this luxurious room, and the Louis XVI expression seemed fitting for the most treasured of all the rooms in the house. A little later Hepplewhite, Sheraton and Louis XVI controlled the parlours of the upper-class New England house.

It may be well, before leaving the strictly Colonial type, to mention the clocks, pictures, woodwork, china, etc., which were accessory to this style. The grandfather's clock, for example, beloved for its sentiment, is a product of Chippendale's fertile invention. This immediately found place in the Colonial. Under some conditions it certainly has a charm and expresses the spirit of the Colonial time. On the other hand, in modern times, it is often used in such a way that it becomes the most important thing in a room in scale, in colour value and in material, thus giving to an unimportant thing the room emphasis.

The Colonial glass, the more ornate of the mirrors, and the other Queen Anne and Chippendale ornamental pieces, should be considered with great care in the modern house. Clocks were practically a new idea in England at this time, and since they were new, the cabinetmaker did not hesitate to give them an unseemly prominence. Mirrors in the days of Queen Anne were a new luxury to middle-class people, and to possess one was to have reached a degree of affluence quite desirable in those days. Presumably human nature was the same then as now. Having arrived at the place where a clock and mirror or two were possible, why not have this clock and the mirrors as important as possible that all might realize the social prominence which the owner had just attained?

Without thinking how new pieces happened to appear, there is no possibility of understanding their relative importance in the house. To be sure, there is the right of every man to choose a thing simply because he likes it, or because he regards it as beautiful, but if his aim is a room which shall be a perfect unit and which shall not only express good taste and what he personally likes, but also shall express completely the unit idea, then he must take into consideration the relative value of each piece he places in the room.

Colonial woodwork is an element which deserves some consideration. The Hepplewhite and Adam tendencies had been to colour and also to use the natural wood. Enamel was rampant in France in the days of Louis XV and XVI. The Colonial ideas, excepting the very earliest, were obtained from these sources. When the Colonial house was conceived, its exterior architectural decorative features appeared in white. Consistency alone demanded the white woodwork in the interior. The instinctive feeling for a chaste cleanliness, which was next to godliness in New England, may have been another reason for the painted white woodwork.

At any rate, the very term Colonial suggests painted white woodwork with mahogany doors and balustrades. This strong contrast of mahogany and white woodwork would be quite impossible if it were not for the purpose of tying the furniture to the wall or relating it to the background. The impossibility of this dark, heavy mahogany furniture against a white or very light background must be apparent to any one.

This was the Colonial way of harmonizing in some degree these two inconsistencies. A quite effective one it was, too, in many instances. This strong value contrast is not of the most refined nature and, if interpreted in just that way, sometimes seems crude and somewhat harsh. When white woodwork is used let it be toned to very deep old ivory. This is sufficiently yellow and is also sufficiently neutralized to key it to other elements in the room. Let the ceiling be done in exactly the same tone as the woodwork - not too light, never bright, but a deep, rich old ivory - and the Colonial idea is not disturbed while the keying of the colour relates the woodwork to the wall and room furnishings. This type of woodwork is not only good in a Colonial room, but it is often the best way to treat any room where the woodwork by its colour, its texture, or its finish is garish, crude and unpleasant. Sometimes in modern houses soft grays for wall, woodwork and ceiling are most effective.

Out of this Colonial period and out of the Victorian, which may be roughly said to begin with 1827, grew what is known as our black walnut period. This and the period immediately following in the United States are analogous to those periods in one's life that he hesitates to discuss with anybody outside the immediate family. It is perhaps only necessary to remind ourselves that we passed through such an experience which we now look back upon as excusable from only one standpoint, our youth.

The Colonial period, as we have seen, was the youth's expression of the way his father started him in life. Some time the youth must think for himself, he must do for himself, and the first results are not always all that one could desire. This is what the black walnut period really was. It was the young child's first expression of his own ideas in his own way.

The Colonial force had spent itself. The awakening nation had other and new ideals. Its own resources, its own activities, dominated expression, and black walnut, resembling somewhat the Victorian medium, was seized upon as the first wood available for such use.