FURNITURE STYLES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 73, 23 February 1938, Page 13

FURNITURE STYLES.

IMPRESSIONS OVERSEAS. PALMERSTON NORTH BUSINESSMAN. , After an extended tour overseas, Mr 1 • B. Hutchins has returned to Palmerston. North from a trip which euabled him to study furniture styles, while also giving him the opportunity of touring the British Isles to the extent of 7QOO miles and visiting 13 countries in Europe. He was accompanied by Mrs Hutchins and has come home with a fund of reminiscences of places, styles and customs. “I found the furniture styles in the Old Country very much like our own, but the European countries seem to be very much ahead in the modernistic—they have much more modern treatment—while in America-they are drifting back to period designs,” said Mr Hutchins. Interior decorating in New Zealand was not very much different from that in England. The windows, however, were quite different from those in New Zealand bungalow homes. America was more advanced in that regard, while there was employed balled fringing for curtains, which was very effective. Oak and walnut veneers, very much after the style of those used on New Zealand furitnure, were employed in England, and in America a wood was used to a great degree which gave an effect like rimu, the speaker continued. The steel type of furniture had been seen, but not so much in homes as in offices and waiting-rooms on the railways. - Two and a-lialf months were spent by Mr and Mrs Hutchins in touring England, Scotland and' 'Wales by car. A visit was also paid .to Ireland and three visits to the Continent, in which tours were made of Russia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark. Germany, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Italy and France. Seven weeks were spent in America on the journey home.