ART IN BASEMENT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18552, 26 April 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

ART IN BASEMENT

WIVES OF AMERICANS. The wives of American delegates have been commenting unfavourably upon the dingy and drab exteriors of many of the Mayfair mansions, with beautiful and luxurious interiors, which they visited dyring their stay. The Hon. Mrs. Gordon-Ives, a sister of Lord Ridley, is to change all this by his discovery for brightening the blank walls that are the only outlook of so many London rooms, states a writer. Mrs Gordon-Ives is a pupil at the Slade School. One day she discovered that she could make designs with ordinary oil paint, such as is used by house decorators upon rough brick walls, which, when varnished, would resist the effect of the weather. One of here first completed works was a 30ft. high wall at the back of Colonel Dodge’s house in Connaught Street, upon which every window on that side of the house looked directly. This was painted by Mrs Gordon-Ives with a realistic design of a cottage, an inland sea with mountains, ships and a little wood, in tones or orange, brown-blue and green. At present she is designing a garden scene for the wall at the back of the Hon. Mrs Lionel Guest’s new house in Stanhope Street. This is to consist of wisteria and roses, with birds in flight. “I think that mural painting is going to be the solution of many of the problems of the London basement,” Mrs. Gordon-Ives told an acquaintance. “Dark kitchens can be lightened by cheerful painting on the basement wall in front of the window, in colours which throw back the light into the kitchen.

“Garden country scenes and flowers are most suitable. “I have treated my bathroom walls in this manner, with paintings of fishes.”