TITANIA'S PALACE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21729, 19 February 1934, Page 3

TITANIA'S PALACE

CRIPPLED CHILDREN'S FUND

After the Queen's Dolls' House, the bestknown creation in mannikin kind is Sir Nevile Wilkinson's Titania's Palace, the notion of which has just celebrated its twenty-sixth birthday, and which in the past ten years has earned no less a sum than £43,000 for crippled children. This year the palace is to make its first tour of Europe and later will visit Australia. Sir Nevile himself is at present designing a mosaic ceiling for tho Royal dining room of the palace—tho actual chair which Captain Rotlieram used at tho Battle of Trafalgar is the one which Sir Nevilo has used for many years to design his more delicate furnishings of the palace, a chair in which the back acts as a writing desk and tho elbows of which conceal inkpots and receptacles for colours.

Although Sir Nevile is 64 years of age ho still finds no difficulty in delineating such delicate work in which there are as many as 15,000 separate pieces of painted mosaic work to tho square inch. It is a remarkable process of tho miniaturist's art in which the resmt is, oddly, even more liko an actual mosaic when examined under a microscope.

"Tho newest feature of the palace of which I am extremely proud is the carillon, which I hope to play for the first time in public during the centenary celebrations at Melbourne next vear, and tho tune will bo 'God Save tho King.' Tho bells will all be of silver, and my old friend Sir Edwin Lutyens has promised to design the belfry for it. This will put the finishing touches to the chapel, which has been so much admired by everyone who has seen it," Sir Nevilo said. _ "Last summer, in Argyllshire, I had the privilege of showing tho pulaco to Dr. Helen Keller. When she came to tho chapel her fingers moved excitedly. She is, as you know, deaf and blind and speaks only with difficulty. "When she came to finger the details of the chapel she suddenly paused and then she said with a sigh of happiness, 'l've seen a church window at last.' "