THE IDEAL HOME

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 196, 16 May 1930, Page 7

THE IDEAL HOME

EXHIBITION IN LONDON A PAVILION OF LIGHT Dominion Special Service. (By Nellie M. Scanlan.) London, March 24. We all know the House that Jack Built—the house designed by a man. It has often been said that the houses would be much more convenient to live in if women applied their brains and experience to domestic architecture. This morning the “Ideal Home Exhibition” opened its doors at Olympia, and the acres of “Homeage” (if one may coin a word) that pack this vast building, leave one quite bewildered. When I saw a modern nursery, I was glad to have been born last century. And as I crept through the House thaf Jill built, I, for one, am prepared to leave architecture to the men, if this is the best that women can do, though this design did receive the “Daily Mail’s” £250 prize. It was a rabbit warren of little rooms and recesses. Elimination has become an obsession. Fireplaces and mantlepieces have come under the ban, leaving the room as characterless as a face without eyebrows. Beds are banished to suffocating corners, and one feels the restricting environment of a ship’s cabin. There are, however, many useful useful phases of home development, some fantastic, some extremely practical, to be found in the exhibition. Revolutionary Lighting. Lighting is one of the most’ revolutionary factors. When one thinks of the old chandelier, or the blazing centre lamp, and the first, fierce glare of electricity, today’s lighting Is quite revolutionary. Some rooms were lit by diffused lights behind ledges and under eaves. Long cylinders of frosted glass were illuminated from within and threw a oft radiance, or perhaps the lights were secreted in odd corners behind panels of ornate glass. Over one bed, the light shone from a tiny cupboard, with open double doors like a miniature shrine. In many rooms the lamp looked like anything but a lamp, electricity lending itself to varied deceptive devices. The glass towel rail in the bathroom might suddenly become luminous, nd a flock of lesser illuminations, like candles lying flat, or suspended in the manner or horizontal bars, hung high or low, and octagonals of glass tubes in the ceiling, and other similarly strange designs leapt from a harmless and unsuspected ornament into ’full radiance.’ Touch the button and a vivid glass parrot lights up within, or a porcelain pup develops bulging eyes like headlamps. Ariadne’s Bath was a glamorous and futuristic room of artificial sunlight, where a scant-clad Ariadue, the sweetest young girl, lay on a tiger-skin and invited the pressing crowd around her to come and bask in the sunlight. Modern Dining-Room. The dining-room in this Pavilion of Light, was extraordinarily modern. The ceilings and walls were of black glass, and prehistoric plants stood statuesquely in niches. These plants diffused a gleaming ray that redeemed the sombre tone from any funereal suggestion. The dining-table was of mirror glass, and rested on a glass tank in which goldfish swam. In this group, the bedroom was the most exquisite of all. The low divan bed was on a. dais, the coverlet of pale pink silk, the arched hanging of pale blue lined with white, the secreted light making it all glow mistily. The circular wall was palest green, the carpet like a blush rose, and soft as down, and the glass base of a standard lamp gave warmth to the room. A large circle of ground glass was set in the floor, through which light glowed upwards, and a round stool of sofet pink velvet was set in the centre of this, in front of a large unmounted six-foot mirror. Overhead a silk ruebed shade, six feet in circumference, threw down a soft blush light. At either side, within range of hand, were low-set cabinets in black and silver. The room was large and spacious, sparsely furnished, and it glowed like a vast pink pearl. That modern upstart, the bathroom, has advanced so far that its appointments now rival the reception rooms. You may have summer bathrooms, all pale green marble, cool as a mountain pool. Or your bathroom may be golden yellow, and deceive yon into believing that summer has truly come.