STENCILLING.
Some of the methods by which the embellishment of walls and ceilings can be achieved by means of stencilling are extremely simple, and their effectiveness when finished is far out of proportion to the smallness of the time, the labor, and the cost involved. Some of these methods it is intended briefly to indicate in this article, and the reader
Fig. 88.
will find no difficulty in following out the directions which follow.
Fig. 88 shows a simple treatment in ashlar work suited for ornamenting a dado. Stencils have been arranged with a particular aim to their use for a drawing-room or parlor, and as giving a sensation of more decided elegance and delicacy of environment than does wall paper or paint. We have a deep frieze (Fig. 89), a base and scroll-pattern border (Fig. 90), and an ornament for the ceiling (Fig. 91). It will be seen that the frieze design will require much more care in enlarging than the one shown by Fig. 88, and also that it cannot be extended in the same manner as the latter. Some alteration in depth may be effected with the dark border-band on top. This may be omitted or, to gain width, may be repeated as a base-band to the frieze.
It will be noticed that two ground colors are suggested in the base-border (Fig. 90). On this feature much of
Fig. 89.
the charm of the effect will depend, and it well repays the trouble of first painting in the upper half with a darker or contrasting color.
The chief danger, and one that must be avoided at all cost of color prettiness, lies in the colors and tones not being balanced—that is to say, the design must be kept equally distinct and plain throughout, and not dying away into the wall in some portions. The blending of stencil ornament is scarcely a task for the novice, and perhaps the best results will be met with when the color-charm is present in the contrasting masses of color, and the designs kept full in contrast and pleasing by reason of their form and arrangement of line and curve.
A deep Gobelin or greenish blue may be used for stencilling the frieze design, or a marone brown. The base (Fig. 92) should be stencilled with similar color, upon grounds of medium Gobelin blue (upper) and wall color (lower portion). If the frieze design is done in blue, use
Fig. 90.
marone brown for the margin band, which is, of course, put in with a small separate stencil. The cornice will be in old gold and creams, in tone with wall filling, the ceiling gray, and the ceiling stencil in blue and marone brown upon a margin having old gold ground. The woodwork of room should be nut-brown and fawns, with a little gilding.
Stencil brushes, as shown in Figs. 93 and 94, specially made for this work are to be bought at the dealers. They are of short hair, flattened across the end for the purpose of dabbing, fixed in round handles bound in tin or brass.
Stencilling has a perfect legitimate use as a help in laying in decorations which are afterwards to be finished by hand pencilling. When stencilling is thus made only a
Fig. 91.
preliminary process, the design may be treated freely. Breadth and simplicity are no longer essentials, and in making the plates ties may be put in at random, or wherever they will give greatest strength, for all traces of them can be removed, as before said, with the pencil, yet a difficult
Fig. 92.
matter in purely stencilled work, as the pencil will not give precisely the same texture as the stencil brush. Thus used stencilling becomes an invaluable aid to an indifferent decorator, who by this means gets in all the main details leaving only unimportant parts to be made good afterwards by hand work.
Used as a decorative process, stencilling has a character of its own, and an interest in proportion as it is characteristic.
The design drawn, method of producing a stencil from it will be described. Stencils may be cut in vellum, paper, parchment, lead foil, and thin brass, the two latter are unsuitable to the requirements of the decorator, the lead foil being used principally by glass writers and embossers. Having prepared the paper, the process of cutting out will be found to demand the greatest care, and, above all, well ground and sharpened tools. Have an oil-stone within reach, therefore, and use it frequently. It is quite useless going to work with a blunt knife. There is much
Fig. 93.
diversity of opinion as to the most suitable blade for stencil cutting. The ordinary penknife blade is scarcely graduated enough for the purpose, for sweeping round the curve in the pattern shape.
In cutting, the knife should be held firmly between the forefinger and thumb, the thicker part of the blade resting lightly against the tip of the second finger. The stencil paper should be held in its position by the left hand. In cutting a curve draw the paper gently but steadily away from the body, and consequently against the cutting blade in the direction required by the degree of curvature shown in the design. A square of plate glass is the best material for cutting on. Perforations of a circular form are made by the use of a leather-punch, procurable at any tool warehouse. These punches are made in various sizes, and are so constructed that the pieces cut out of the stencil paper by the cutting edge pass into the body of the punch, whence they are easily removed at the opening in the upper portion of the implement. It is not necessary to strike the punch, a firm pressure of the hand is generally sufficient for the purpose required, slightly turning the wrist at the same moment.
A sheet of tin might, and probably does, answer for the time, but the repeated indentations of the surface and the deep cuts or scratches it receives beneath the pressure to
Fig. 94.
which it must of necessity be subjected, militate against its use. The edge of the knife may not be so much injured, but the point may at any moment slip into one of the scratches, and that simple deviation from the direction in which it was intended it should have gone would not improbably ruin an early completed stencil-plate.
It is, again, a frequent mistake to make a stencil on too stout a paper. The strength of paper does not depend upon its stoutness, a closely woven thin paper often possesses greater tenacity than much more bulky specimens. Heavy drawing paper may be used for almost every purpose.