MAKING NEW ZEALAND

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23132, 23 September 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

MAKING NEW ZEALAND

NEW PICTORIAL SURVEYS

“Communications,” “Houses,” “Public Buildings,” and “Furniture” are the subjects of the latest issues of the “Making New Zealand” series of pictorial ' surveys produced by the Centennial branch of the Department of Internal Affairs. Like others of the series, they are a thorough justification of the pictorial method of exposition in giving a summary of the development of various aspects of New Zealand life. «

Houses and public buildings are particularly well presented by Mr Paul Pascoe. It is interesting to trace the changes in style in the homes of New Zealanders from the first temporary huts, through the plain, well-propor-tioned early cottages, to the unnecessarily decorated and falsely pretentious houses that became the fashion after the eighties,, to the newer plain styles that are now establishing themselves. It is apparent here, as in the public buildings, that New Zealand was unfortunate that its people began to become prosperous at a time when English taste in domestic and public architecture was at its lowest Victorian ebb. The newer buildings and designs show a growing realisation that considerations of use or purpose are more important in building than mere decoration or the desire to make a brave show.

The illustrations of interiors’ of New Zealand homes in the furniture number have been well chosen by Mr G. L. Gabites. They are interesting not only as showing changes in taste, but as helping to understand the surroundmgs in which New Zealanders have Jived their daily lives in the last 100 years. It is a great change frdm the rough assemblage of essentials in pioneer huts to the profusion of the late Victorian suburban drawing-room, and as great a change again to the modern examples. But some (not all) of these examples of modern rooms seem to have been chosen as artistic arrangements to be looked at rather than as rooms to be lived in The communications number, nreMr P. N. Cryer, has less early pictorial material to depend on, but it grapl ? IC form the developcaTage.of mails b y sailin ? -“P at sed and . P ac k-horse on land, to modern air mails and telegraphs, telephone, and radio services.