The Wall Street Journal - 19.10.2019 - 20.10.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, October 19 - 20, 2019 |D5

IN THE EARLY20th century,

the Bloomsbury group of art-

ists and writers decamped

from their namesake London

neighborhood to stay in a

farmhouse in the English

countryside. Among them

were postimpressionist

painter Vanessa Bell (Virginia

Woolf’s sister) and her hus-

band. For this month’s floral

inspiration, I looked to her

“Mrs St John Hutchinson”

(1915), a less-than-flattering

portrait of her husband’s mis-

tress. The Bloomsbury group’s

ethos did not encompass mo-

nogamy, and Bell was well

aware of her husband’s extra-

marital relations but perhaps

not so keen on this one.

I selected New York ce-

ramic artist Tracie Hervy’s

simple matte-white vessels

in two different heights and

widths to block out a shape

akin to the sitter’s listing

body. To pick up on the

painting’s colors, I stuck to

unshowy seasonal blooms:

flesh-toned China asters,

periwinkle Russian sage, pale

pink spiked celosia and the

dripping vibrant rouge of

Kiss-me-over-the-garden-

gate. A bunch of Artemisia

‘Sweet Annie’ and globular

seed heads of Rattlesnake

Master, cut short in the

wider lower vessel, reference

the greens of the mistress’s

dress. I intentionally left

dramatic green grasses a

touch too long to nod to the

arch of her raised eye-

brow and her sharply

penetrating, suspicious

gaze. I kept the arrange-

ment tightly grouped and

vertical to play up the

shape and energy of the

canvas, but I also wanted

a casual, naturalistic

feel—as if the bouquet

had been picked from a

wildflower plot that ig-

nored traditional garden

rules as the group flouted

bourgeois mores.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DÉCOR/ MICHELLE SLATALLA

THE OTHER DAYwhen we were

excavating the terrifying cellar

where we store all the things we

should have thrown away, my hus-

band opened a musty cardboard

box. Inside he found a pile of

moldy severed limbs, a human

skull and a nest of bloody rats

suckling their mother.

Cradling a veiny gray brain in

his hand, my husband smiled

wistfully. “Good times,” he said.

It seemed a shame to throw

away this old box of Halloween

décor. But with our three daugh-

ters grown, I wasn’t sure I

wanted to change the look and

feel of my house to attract other

children this year. As people of a

certain age, would we seem

creepy decking out our house in

Halloween décor?

When I was a kid in the Mid-

west, I thought that some houses

that went all out for Halloween

were truly scary. Maybe your

neighborhood had one too: a shut-

tered hulk at the end of the block

with a dim porch light that was

particularly scary when the “old

people” who lived there decorated

their front hallway with cobwebs

and dressed up like a warty old

witch and warlock. When they

handed out sticky homemade pop-

corn balls, we assumed they were

trying to poison us.

These days, I sympathize more

than I ever expected to with the

warty old witch. Perhaps in our

case the best Halloween décor

would be no décor. My husband is

all for turning off the porch light

and hiding in the back room to

watch TV until the holiday is over.

So why make the effort?

“Because it’s a terrible thing if

you don’t decorate,” said Dr. An-

drea F. Polard, a Los Angeles psy-

chologist who studies the symbol-

ism of Halloween, and whom I

called for a second opinion. “We

have had this holiday for 3,000

years, and the reason that it’s

stuck is not because of the candy.”

“It’s because of the holiday dé-

cor?” I asked.

“It’s because it’s a time when

children—actually, all of us—learn

to face fears of ghosts and death

and let go of the eeriness that can

come from the darkness,” Dr. Po-

lard said.

Halloween, with its origins in

to send the wrong signals.”

Halloween décor seems to con-

vey a strong message, and I don’t

want mine to remind the neigh-

borhood of the witch’s cottage in

“Hansel and Gretel.” In my town

in Northern California, blocks

where the littlest children live

tend to have houses decked out

with smiling jack-o'-lanterns and

friendly ghosts. But in a wild zone

near the middle school, front-yard

tombstones and displays of Dracu-

las rising from their creaking cof-

fins attract the tween crowd (and

their raw eggs).

I would like my décor to send a

signal that I welcome trick-or-

treaters but don’t want to lure

them indoors to eat them.

“Just take the middle ground

when you decorate,” Dr. Polard

advised. But how, exactly? For

advice, I phoned decorating ex-

pert Devin Shaffer, a lead de-

signer at the online decorating

firm Decorilla.

“There are a lot of cool ways to

decorate for Halloween that don’t

feel too theme-y or cost a lot of

money,” Mr. Shaffer said. “First,

lighting is crucial. You want light-

ing that invites trick-or-treaters

to the front door but doesn’t

make them think that you expect

them to come inside.”

For porch lighting, Mr. Shaffer

recommends Philips Hue LED

smart bulbs, whose color and tone

you can control from your phone.

“The bulb can display a pastel

flow of colors, and you can even

have a light strobe effect,” which

is not off-putting, he assured me.

“It feels safe to approach.”

Beyond lighting, the front door

treatment is the most important

element of Halloween décor, be-

cause it’s the part of your house

that everybody sees, Mr. Shaffer

said.

Decorations that look more au-

tumnal than ghoulish are on-point

but not frightening. For Decorilla

clients’ front doors, he said, “we

suggest seasonal décor that will

last beyond Halloween, all

through fall. For instance, you

could do corn stalks on each side

of a door. If the door has a glass

pane, there are a lot of great de-

cals. A silhouette of a branch will

show to great effect.”

Add a touch of mystery to the

house with vintage flea-market

finds—old typewriters, apothecary

jars, steamer trunks, feathers,

hardcover books—to tell a story,

said Mr. Shaffer, who likes to cre-

ate atmospheric vignettes in his

own house. “I like to find a speci-

men in an apothecary jar, some-

thing like a little stuffed taran-

tula,” he added. “I also bought a

pair of faux crows on Amazon.

They were, like, twenty-five dol-

lars for life-size ones you can

perch on a shelf. Faux ravens

would also be good.”

“What if you happen to have,

say, a fake severed arm?” I asked.

“How would you incorporate that

without it being too scary?”

“Have it reaching out of the lid

of an almost-closed trunk,” he

said. “Put the trunk on the front

porch, fill it with little treasures

you find at the dollar store—spi-

der rings, glow sticks, little jour-

nals, pencil toppers—and let the

trick-or-treaters each take away

one little token.”

I was taking notes—and an

idea popped into my head. On my

front stoop I’ll invite trick-or-

treaters to the door with battery-

operated candles in paper-bag lu-

minaries, which I can recycle as

Christmas décor.

“All these ideas sound a lot bet-

ter than putting cobwebs in the

hallway and handing out home-

made popcorn balls,” I said.

“Oh God, no popcorn balls—

ugh, that is the worst,” Mr. Shaf-

fer said. “My grandmother in the

rural Midwest used to do that,

and wrap them in clear Saran

wrap. I had to talk her out of it.”

“Just out of curiosity, how?” I

asked.

“I said, ‘Grandma, times have

changed,’ ” he said. “We do not

need popcorn balls. On Halloween,

we all need the comfort of other

people and a bright fire to cope

with the ghosts that we create in

the dark corners of our mind.”

centuries-old pagan autumnal fes-

tivals, harks to ancient rituals

that were important for two rea-

sons, Dr. Polard said: “The festi-

vals were to celebrate the harvest

but also to face fears of the com-

ing winter, when who knew how

many people might die because of

extreme weather.”

Nowadays, it’s a holiday that

exists for the benefit of the com-

munity, she said. “Kids need to

know that we’re all in it together,

that they can go hand in hand up

to a house and greet a friendly

neighbor,” she said. “People who

come up with reasons to boycott

Halloween are missing the point.”

“I didn’t say I was boycotting,”

I backpedaled. “I just don’t want

‘Youwantlightingthat

invitestrick-or-treaters

tothedoorbutdoesn’t

makethemthinkyou

expectthemtocomein.’

FLOWER SCHOOL

Bloomsbury

InBloom

Floral designer

Lindsey Taylorriffs

on a jaundiced

portrait by English

artist Vanessa Bell

JOHAN KESLASSY

The Inspiration

MEREDITH HEUER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, STYLING BY LINDSEY TAYLOR (ARRANGEMENT); © TATE (INSPIRATION)

Rapier-like

blades of grass

nod to the sharp

glare of ‘Mrs St

John Hutchinson’

(1915) by

Vanessa Bell.

Vessels:

stylist’s own

The Arrangement

Is It Creepy to Do Halloween

After Your Kids Are Grown?

DESIGN & DECORATING