FILL FOR FURNITURE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 311, 30 November 1936, Page 8

FILL FOR FURNITURE.

LOAV FIGURE IN BRITAIN. A survey of furnishing styles in Britain and on the Continent was given at Manchester Art Gallery by Miss Elizabeth Denby consultant on low rental housing schemes. Miss Denby said that 3,000,000 new houses had been built during the past eighteen years, and while between 1924 and 1927 an average of £16,000,000 was spent a year in Great Britain on furniture, to-day the figure was between £25,000,000 and £30,000,000. This represented between £2 and £2 10s per family spent on furniture in a year. This was a low figure. Nevertheless a revolution had taken place in standards of living, and certain indispensable characteristics must be found in furniture if we were to get value for money. It must be liardwearing, easy to use, easy to clean easy to move, and “easy to look at.’ The speaker called, attention to the advantages of some kinds of Continental furniture and room planning, commending in particular the complete kitchens supplied by Swedish manufacturers, the light woods used by Finland, and some of the workmen’s dwellings in Germany which included study bedrooms where children could do homework away from the rest of tho family. She added that English comfort was the Continental criterion, that some of our best chair designs had been adopted over there and might now with advantage be “copied back.”