A LONDON EXHIBITION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19924, 18 April 1928, Page 7

A LONDON EXHIBITION.

FURNITURE FOR THE NEW ERA

Am exhibition of modern furniture (the first of its kind ever held) was held recently in four salons at a well-known Tottenham Court Road furnishing house, states a London exchar.ge. Thirty rooms, most artistically appointed were shown, and the whole was an education in up-to-date decorative and yet restrained dignify of outline and design in furnishing.

Tho director of the exhibition considered that modern furniture had artistic merit which the old styles did not possess and that the whole exhibition emphasised the trend of progress and tasto in 1928. He held that every type should accord with its own era.

The squaro "line" is pre-eminent, and there was also a good deal of ovalshaped outlines as regards suites and furnishing schemes. One bedroom suite, of fine figured mahogany, had handles inlaid with gold; another handsome walnut suite had a beautiful cut-out design of butterflies hand-painted on the wood in natural tints.

Cheval looking-glasses are being revived. Some are made with drawers at each side, others have a low curved base in harmony with the general outline. Oxidised silver is very fashionable for forming delicate frame-work, for graceful mirrors, small and large. A lovely cocktail cabinet made of shagreen mounted on a base of white wood had oxidised silver door clasps, and glass shelves, and was beautifully translucently green in hue. A dome-top cutlery cabinet, of French walnut, and some quaint, high-backed narrow dining-room chairs (to match a suite) of Canadian birch, were also distinctive; and so was a dainty bedroom suite of bright crocus-yellow enamel, picked out delicately in colour with two slender cut-crystal candlesticks, topped with orange snaded lights, on the dress-ing-table. Oxidised silver "tassels" gave the finishing touch to a lovely mirror, framed in oxidised silver, exquisitely designed. A French walnut bedroom suite was beautifiod by a carved design of fruit and flowers, cut 'out of the wood and hand-coloured in realistic shades. There were oval dressing-tables and square tables for the dining-room. One delightful example of a modern dining-room suite was of English brown oak, and a barrel-shaped bedroom suite, in light French walnut, had ornamentations of carved gilt and inlaid mother-o'-pearl and coloured woods.

. Quaint and charming was a silk-uphol-stered chair of yellow lacquer. - Carved ivory handles, like wee doorknockers, distinguished a handsome suite of Brazilian bingwood and burr walnut, and exotic indeed would he the bedroom appointed in green nacrolaque with carved oxidised silver decorations, which was another exhibit.

In the French salon I noticed buffets which do duty across the Channel, instead of our sideboards, states this writer. And I also saw a specimen cocktail bar, :'n scarlet and beige, with quaint vermilion-tipped, high stools arid scarlet shelves for the bottles.,

"Many of our clients want, private cocktail bars, especially in the South of Franco," 1 was told by the expert in charge. "In the villas they want them so that, between dances or card-playing, they may make their own cocktn.ils." I saw "two-way" bookshelves hero and an electrically-lit long mirror of beautiful design. There was, too, an artistic revival of the '-Vis-a-vis" seat complete each side with a tiny tablc]efljre—a concession to modern smokers' needs! "We never have exterior mirrors in Franco," I was told, as the mirrors inside tho doors of a great wardrobe were displayed. "We break the line of monotony in furniture design where possible." and my attention was drawn to a space in the centre of this wardrobe to serve as a stand for an ornament or some definite object to give point to the general outline. * Bands of contrasting woods are often used to introduce variety into a design, as in the case of a li.anasomo marquetry screen, carried out in different woods, introduced in a futuristic design; irregular and yet ' artistic. A Chinese junk-like divan also on view was an example of one mado recently to fill in a panel between two pillars in a big hall in a French mansion. It was upholstered in black velvet, banded (in the same spirit of happy irregularity) With grey velvet. The lighting methods displayed in the exhibition indicate, modern French illumination. Plain satin-finished glass in shutter and aeroplane-liko shapes, some finished with tassels of gun-metal silk, and others of moulded glass with bronze mounts, were handsome examples.