NOTES.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19112, 22 September 1927, Page 4

NOTES.

Tenders will be received at the Public. Works Office, Christchurch, up to 4 p.m., on Tuesday next for painting and renovating the Rakaia Post Office. The work ol' remodelling the Bromley school will commence at the beginning of next week, the preliminary work having been started. While the alterations aro being made the pupils will be accommodated in marquees. The work.is expected to occupy about two months. The contract for the erection of new premises for tho Dunlop Ilubber (Jo., at the corner of Madras and Lichfield streets, has been signed by Mr F. Williamson, and the work- will be commenced immediately. The contract price is close on £P2-,000 and the completion time is nine months hence. The new premises will be of three storeys and will be built of concrete. Tenders are invited up -to 4p. 111 today for the erection, in reinforced concrete, of new offices' at the corner of Cashel and Liverpool streets, for the N.Z. Loan and Mercantile Agency Co., Ltd. Messrs Cecil Wood and Harman, and Messrs England Bros, aro the associated architects.

All good housewives shut out any light above the • average eye level of people in the room. This refusal, by means of blinds, light coloured or •dark, to allow any top light to enter the room is the despair of the decorator; the window blind is to him an abomination. There is 110 relief tor this trouble in the sliding double hung windows now in almost universal vogue, but the single hung window offers a partial cure. With it a Jiglit putsido shutter, similarly hung, can be used to regulate the lijzht and so do away with the roller blind.—"Australian Home Beautiful."

Economy in homo building is not •confined to the consideration of the lowest price for which a house can be built. The plans should be studied to see if the home can be economically lived in. Here the services of the architect are of the distinct advantage. Building companies and banks provide easy finance, but their plans of houses are naturally boiled to standardised designs to save in every way possible on the first cost of construction. The individual taste of the client is scarcely considered at all. Yet It is possible to build a house cheaply and of sound material and workmanship, while having due regard for the taste and requirements'of tlio destined occupant.

It has long been recognised that wood plays an important part in softening the tone of musical instruments; witness its use in the violin, the piano, and the gramophone. In the radio cabinet, too, it produces a similar effect, and recent investigations by broadcasting experts prove that wooden housing for the radio receiving room contributes directly to case and clearness of reception while metal in ■the structure surrounding the receiving set tends to cause interference "Spend, the evening in the wpoden room" may bo the' slogan of the coming years, when every sclf-re,spcetuig houso will have a specially-designed wood-framed wood-ceilinged and wood pannelled room for radio_ reception and the veneer trade will have the opportunity of its life! —"The Craftsman," Sydney.

Doctors, baristcrs, architects, accountants' must • all take seriotis courses of training before they may practise in their professions, but one of the greatest callings of all, the direction of men's labour, can be embarked upon by any one who possesses or acquires a slice of the nation s wealth. Modern tools of production are of such a, size that they cannot be owned by ' the individual workman as in times past, and so it conies that the merest accident may place it in the power of any incompetent to misdirect men's labour. Hie outcome is not necessarily a struggle between nationalism • and individualism, either or which may and does place incompetents in charge of our economic destinies. The essential is that whichever system is adopted, the men who have Control of our economio lives should be expected to reach a standard ot efficiency for their job as rigid as the doctors who have charge of our physical lives.—"The Scottish Decorators Quarterly Review."

CHINA'S INVENTION PAPER FOR WALLS. Paper covering of walls is a comparatively modern device. It was the invention of machinery that made the manufacture of wide rolls of paper possible, and the discovery of wood pulp that brought it within the reach of those of moderate means, states a writer in the "Australian Home Beautiful." Before that paper was certainly psed, but it was in small squares, and these were painted by hand and veie hung iike pictures and were movable. So wo read of Louis XI following: the practice of feudal lords and sending his wallpapers ahead of him when touring France. China was the nito produce this form of wallpaper, and on It were executed some world-famous Wneu paper was manufactured in somewhat larger sizes, and attempts were made to glue it to the wall instead of hanging it, great difficulty was met with owing to the unstable pigments which smudged as the paper was fixed. It was not till the adven of the wide printing press and the invention of fast printing colours that paper similar to what is in use to-day was manufactured. A great deal of the c-harm of tne early papers lay in tneir simplicity, though, as a matter ot' fact, that simplicity was due to the lack of tools and the difficulties under which the artisan worked.

Tin wallpapers of the early nineteenth century were fearfully and wonderfully elaborate: they were overornate: but there was very little furniture in" the great halls and very fesr pictures, so that the paper was a decoration in itself In a very flamboyant period the designs were naturally elaborate. Thev would imitate tapestry and brocades and satins even to reproducing the stitches.