PRINCESS MARY’S BEDROOM SUITE

Northern Advocate, 16 February 1926, Page 6

PRINCESS MARY’S BEDROOM SUITE

MARVELLOUS FURNITURE. A wonderful seven-piece bedroom suite of cream lacquered Honduras mahogany is being made for Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles, by a former porter, waiter, market gardener, farm labourer, and others. A reporter from the London “Daily Mail” saw the progress of the massive suite in the hands of the disabled workers of the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops, Fulham Road, London; not one of whom had any knowledge before the war, in which he was .wounded, of the trade he is now working at. One man has lost two limbs, and the others have either only one leg or one arm.

Tlie suite, which was ordered by Lord Lascelles, is one of the most marvellous pieces cf furniture-.produced during this generation.

The Tift, wardrobe, and the dressing table, washstand, two bedside tables, and other articles in the suite will soon be ready for the lacquer. The foreman lilcquerer was before the war a market gardener. There are more than a dozen big panels to be lacquered, and much of it will be done by an ex-waiter, who is the most remarkable man in the department.

'“About a year ago he came to us for a job,” said an official. ‘“He was 50 per cent (disabled, and we followed our usual course of trying him in every department until we could find something that suited. He seemed to be failing, and at last I said, ‘can you draw?’ He said he had never tried, but was willing to do so. So we handed him over to our artists, who first made him do pot-hooks until he was nearly dizzy, and then persevered with him until he is one of the best painters of lacquer pictures in London.”