FUTURE FURNITURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17234, 9 August 1919, Page 4 (Supplement)

FUTURE FURNITURE.

It occurs to us all to-day that we have suffered much ugliness and inconvenience

far too gladly, just because we are all so apt to accept what other people insist upon our liking rather than make efforts to obtain what we really desire to possess. Bid anybody ever really and truly feel an insatiable desire for a small mahogany chiffonier, with a minute front cupboard and a whole series of silly little sideshelves and brackets that would hold dust to a miracle and prove a precarious shelter even to a shell upon a woolly mat? Perhaps long ago we did, but now? We are less content with shoddy ornament and more desirous of a combination of beauty and utility. If that is not'true, why did every visitor who went to sea the painted furniture at Shoreditch immediately inquire where it could -be bought? The sad tiling b that, for the moment, it cannot be bought, but it was made by London boys at the Shoreditch Institute School of Carpentry, designed by the head of the schools, Mr. Wells, a member of the Design and Industries Association, and painted by pupils of the L.C.C. School of Building at Brixton. The furniture is no example of how beautiful hand-made things may be, or how unattainable to the average purse, but it is an almost perfect illustration of the effect of good design carried out in the cheapest material available, machine cut and well put together, strong and excellent. Today we know all about the beauty of proportion, and the furniture when it was at Shoreditch was arranged in a little flat used in domestic science teaching at the institute, to which H. was entirely suited. Some of it was stained and polished, some was of two kinds of wood, but what arrested the attention of everybody were the painted pieces. Here was a deal set for a bedroom, pointed deep blue, overlaid with an astonishing green, and while moist this was " combed" with a painter's comb, not in the orthodox manner, but in circles, which revealed the blue beneath. Not content with that effect, here was a touch of yellow to emphasise the brilliancy; or in another case upon the panels of a simple match-boarding cupboard the paint* had pulled his comb downwards with a quiver at intervals,, with astonishing results, and had painted the grooves of the boarding with a line of contrasting colour.

The " trade** may use the designs if the source is acknowledged, and judging by the crowds it was recognised that monotony has had its day and that uselessness goes with it. There ought to be another exhibition in London soon, because this is the gay furnishing wanted for the new houses, and when Manchester has had its view may it come back again to some central hall, where London may see what London boys can make for them at a very moderate outlay, though not at the price perhaps of " mahogany" crudities. Colour is coming into its own.