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COLOUR AND DECOR
"What you see on paper and what you see
unfold may not be what you envisage it to be,"
notes city director general Bruce St. Louis. "With
the restoration of the Findlay building there were
some very critical elements such as colour."
Here, the architectural firm of Gersovitz Moss
was brought in to help with the decorating and
furnishing.
"Findlay did a very interesting thing when he
built the library," Julia Gersovitz says. "He very
skilfully blended the Romanesque style, which we
see in the arches and free-standing columns, with
the new wave of the neoclassic influence which is
apparent in the sense of order he gave to the
building.
"The way we proceeded with the interior design
was to select a colour palette that is quite accurate
to the period, but the colour scheme is lighter and
softer in tone. The original would have been quite
dark. We used a lot of reds and greens, harmony
through contrast, that was quite typical." Deep
forest greens and deep wines predominate along
with creams, yellows and taupes.
Bands of colour on the walls of the north and
south reading rooms, always darker at the bottom,
are reversed between the two rooms: wine in the
north room and green in the south. It's a subtle, yet
interesting, way of unifying the two rooms as one
catches a glimpse of one from the other through the
arches and colonnade.
"I'm quite happy with how the colours work in
reality," she says.
Around both rooms, a double band of sten-
cilling by decorative artist Jean Laurin captures the
spirit of the original designs that had been covered
over by many layers of paint. The lower band
depicting columns and panels is quite accurate, she
says. The upper band is an interpretation of the Arts
and Crafts movement of the period that incorpo-
rates the apple and book of the library's new logo
along with the rose of England and the fleur-de-lys
of France. Achieving a pleasing colouring proved to
be one of the more tricky aspects, architect Gerso-
vitz says. "A stencil in its repetition seems to
change." Starting out in several colours, the lower
one ended up as an ochre band, "toned down to
one tone on another."
Decorative artist Irene Marconi marbleized the
columns, retaining their original colours: a red on
the base with a warm gold above. From the gold,
came the choice of yellow for the walls of the
lobby and the two shades of yellow (harmony by
resemblance) in the Cube Room.
a,-
ww
(left top and bottom)
Stencilling designs.
(above)
Wallpaper
pattern in
Westmount Room.
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