THE MODERN HOME

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19945, 1 November 1934, Page 12

THE MODERN HOME

HISTORY OF ITS DEVELOPMENT

ARCHITECTURAL PERIODS “Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” In those words of William Morris, the furniture designer, Mr P. W. Rule commenced an address on “The Evolution of the Home” to the half-yearly council meeting of the South Canterbury Federation of Women’s Institutes at Temuka on Tuesday afternoon. Tracing the development of the home from the Stone Age to the present day, Mr Rule said that the cave men had dwelt in the rough caves hollowed out by nature, from which they had driven the bears and lions. Even at that early period man had his permanent inventions, comprising sculpture, painting, wall-decorating and engraving. The earliest caves belonged to the mammoth age and, the fact that in them home life went on until the coming of the Romans, showed clearly that that form of dwelling could not have been disliked by certain types of mankind. Even to-day there were hundreds of people living in caves near Sydney harbour, just outside the city. A later phase of home-making was the penn-pit—at first a round hole in the ground from seven to 10 feet deep with a roof of laced boughs plastered with clay, and later of two-storied design, the lower division forming a store room for food and the upper a living portion. In Ireland and Italy some of the pennpits were joined together with narrow passages, along which the inmates crawled on their stomachs. From these later designs were picked up two permanent traditions —connecting passages and storeys. Some prehistoric man had also evolved a long shape of dwelling with square corners, the shape to which the Saxon hall, the beginning of our home as we know it today, developed . In about the thirteenth century the better class of English yeomen had timbered houses built on bent trees and a frame, the spaces being either lathed and plastered inside and out, or filled with mud and clay mixed with chopped straw. A floor of beaten earth was littered with reeds. or grasses and from a central hob of clay the smoke rose from a wood fire. Chimneys were unknown, except in manor houses and castles, and the smoke got away through whatever aperture it could reach. A chest or two stood by the walls where spades and other implements hung from pegs together witn herbs, while from the ceiling there usually dangled a bacon rack. Above, under the thatched roof, was a loft where the inmates slept, although rats squeaked in the thatch. In the reign of Henry 111. people began to take an interest in comfort and convenience; open drains were replaced with pipes, and fresh water was conducted into houses. Manor Houses of Norman Days. Still later the massive, battlementcd | castles of Norman days gave place to manor houses. The great hall was still the chief part of the house, the family and all dependents spending most of their time there. At one end was the dais, or raised portion of the floor, on which stood the master’s table, usually a heavy affair carved ouc of solid oak. At the other end was a screen, cutting off from the hall the passages and doors which led to the kitchen. Between the dais and the screen the servants took their meals, ranging in importance from the dais down the long trestle tables. In the evening the master and his family retired to a small room behind the dais and the tables were cleared from the hall so that the beds of the servants could be laid on the floor around the walls.

The fifteenth century brought about another change, during the Renaissance, in which the reign of Gothic architecture came to an end. Early in the sixteenth century Tudor styles of architecture, involving to a certain extent the old Gothic style, came into being. In Elizabeth’s reign, Dutch and Italian artists introduced some Renaissance detail. The great country houses built at that time were irregular but full of romance and charm. They retained the lofty pannelled hall with gallery and dais of Gothic times but introduced many classic details so skilfully that the result was a happy expression of themselves. Many of the houses were so picturesque that they stand out to-day as great achievements in English architecture. In the seventeenth century the Classic style was introduced to England by Inigo Jones, who numbers among the great architects of England. However early attempts at Classic construction were not successful. Houses built under this style were dignified and magnificent, but they were neither comfortable nor convenient. Most of them boasted fine porticoes which gave them a “grand” air but -which made the ground floor rooms dark and cold. The houses were badly planned, the kitchen in one being 180 feet from the dining-room along draughty corridors. After the death of Sir Christopher Wren, Classic styles were modified and adapted more to the needs of England. The style that developed out of that age was a combination of Classic and Gothic and is termed Queen Anne. By the nineteenth century Classic architecture was losing its hold on the English people and there being no life or originality among the architects and builders, they were reduced to copying the earlier styles, with the result that out of the period there evolved a curious medley that left everyone unsatisfied. “Poorest Period.” Thus commenced the great Victorian period, probably the poorest period in the history of art, said Mr Rule. Its follies, shams and bad art had been held up to ridicule by- % many writers and its antimacassars. Congestion cf ornaments and confusion of styles had produced nothing. Everything was curved to a ridiculous state, and nothing angular was left. The Victorian liked his garden paths curved his furniture curved and his wife curved. The cause of the over romanticising of the domestic and civic architecture in the ninteenth century had been the wealth of that period. England became the manufacturing nation of the world and Victorian architecture exactly reflected the middle-class, the backbone of England. Men turned away from

the ugliness of the industrial revolution and sought solace in the past. With this interest came the collector of ancient objects and every drawing room became a depository for as much miscellaneous “junk” as could be inconveniently crowded into the small space. The Victorian house-owner rose from her Elizabethan bed to eat muffins off a pewter plate, which in turn reclined on a butch tablecloth hiding the nakedness of a refectory table. Her feet pressed carefully on a Savonnerie carpet and she gazed across the room at an Arundel print of Raphael. She could flatter herself that she had nothing in the room savouring of the time.

Into the “stuffy” and inartistic age came William Morris, like a healthy breeze. Although he had a social and literary message for his generation it ’s as the supreme craftsman of the time that he is best remembered. Calling in the services of many of his friends to assist in the designing and producing of furniture and decorations for his home in a manner that suited his artistic mind, the idea grew that the time was ripe for a resuscitation in England in the lesser arts of decoration. So, together with others, he formed a company in 1861 -which was destined to achieve great things. He was a supreme designer and would undertake the designing and furnishing of a whole house. Modern Architecture. The present day style of architecture, the first to make an appeal to the twentieth century directly, was associated with the name of M. Le Corbusier, the famous French architect. He invented the saying. “A house is a machine to live in,” and many architects all over the world to-day were following on that line of thought. The doctrine of to-day, applied to every detail in every street, building and home, was “What is this for?” There was a new word for that—“functionalism”—and those who practiced it were functionalists. They believed that beauty and function were twins and they recognised no beauty but tha A which came from perfect adaptation of an object to the function for which it existed. The idea still persisted that the word “design” meant putting on decoration, whereas it meant knowing how much of it to take away. Functionalism might have been said to have reached its extreme of starkness in 1929 when buildings and interiors were simplified to the extreme. Now, however the theoretic crudities of functionalism were being softened and collected in something of aesthetic significance. The “jazz” period might be said to be over and just as music was becoming more tuneful, women more feminine and interest developed in the dress of pre-war days, so was decorative art finding a more decorous and refined style then had been prevalent for some time. In conclusion, Mr Rule said that in fact a rational architecture was being evolved. As minds were purged of dark corners, so were houses cleansed of them. Accustomed to fresh air, exercise and innumerable small advantages of hygiene, people did not take easily to darkness, cramped space, and useless and cumbersome furniture. So they were making a clean sweep of their houses to have, if they could, plain surfaces, labour-saving contrivances and large window spaces. The ornamentation w’hich once was thought refined was now rejected as no use and so, beginning with the first principles of the rationalist, the people of to-day were creating a distinctive style.