The Modern Home.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 16, 20 April 1910, Page 66

The Modern Home.

BAD ART IN HOUSEHOLD LIFE—WOMEN AS ARCHITECTS. —

By

Our Lady Correspondent.

LONDON, March 11. f b-X SC IN ATI NG book indeed is ■ I Mr. XX alter Shaw Sparrow's 4 J A "Our homes, and how to make the beet of them," published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. The author is already well known in works of this kind, has written "Hints on House Furnishings." ‘ The Modern Home," “The English House.” etc., and an immense amount of information may be gleaned by lovers of art from the latest work of Mr. Shaw's pen. The book is full of chatty information, ranging from "Hindrances to Success ill Home-making" to "Furniture." "Flats," "Roofs," etc. "A good hall,” Air. Shaw thinks "is far and away better than a drawingroom, both for dancing and other amusements. It* oak floor can Ire left exposed, with loose rugs spread here and there: and instead of the fragile furniture which now fills up our wee day rooms, we need nothing more than a few oak benches and tables and ehairs with writing desks in two bonny bay windows. Such a hall may be two storeys high, and have a gallery around it for access to the upper rooms, so there is abundant scope for architectural effect. Halls of the old type have the romance which belongs to all historic traditions, and romance at the present is often connected with unuseful ideals. The public says: "Old halls, d'you sav? XX liy trudge back to the past instead of going ahead, improving the present?” As well might they ask: "Why keep the old beauty of our English tongue? Let us have with each decade a new language of vivid and picturesque slang!” Exact imitation in the matter of architecture this enthusiast does not- advocate. “Copying," he -says, "is ever a sterile energy . . . but from the past we get standards by which to judge ourselves." Jerry Building and Ideals. “Bad art." we read in what Mr. Sparrow considers one of the first hindrances to success in home-making, viz., “Want of Public Criticism” "in household life, is more harmful by far than bad art. elsewhere, as in theatres and

novels, because recreation* are temporary, while things that act. and react on our fireside ideals are with us all day long, and, when bad, do incessant wrong to the nation as a whole. Yet novels and plays receive much more encouragement ; day by day they are reviewed throughout the year; while a district of ill-planned streets with jerry-built; houees never get* even a line of criticism. So we guard the amusements of our daily life and neglect the life itself—the homes aud its needs and traditions." An ugly truth is one that touches on a question often hinted at and one that, too, ean only be regarded as a disgracefully dishonest state of things. “A few months ago. in a technical journal, it was stated that jobs well done in speculative building were much more likely to get workers ‘sacked’ than to give them a settled position with their employers.” Another "Hindrance" may make some of us conventional beings blush, for its title is "The Popularity of Shams." "XX ho does not know." the writer asks, "that popular furniture in which the front parts are of oak and the backs of ill-dressed deal ?” Another Hindrance is one that the author is making an heroic effort himself by this capital book to remedy, and it is the XX ant of Popular Education in House Architecture, and on this subject Mr. Sparrow has some interesting observations to make about women and their aptitude and intuitive liking for architecture, also their power of rendering themselves hindrances by a lamentable ignorance of scales and plans. Feminine Faculties. "I call it," he says, alluding to this gift, "a native feeling; it is inborn and inherited. Domestic architecture has been greatly influenced by women, whose progress in refinement is to be read in the development of house planning. Motherhood—that Divine stay-at-home—-has been from the first an inspirer of good thoughts in building — thoughts that became traditions, traditions that became comforts and refinements; and so it is not surprising that the fair inherit as their birthright the gift of feeling what a house needs."

The reader's temptation is to quote

from every chapter, for each is excellent, laden with practical '’sense anif a great love of the beautiful. Mr. Sparrow deserves to succeed in the mission on which he has evidently set out —that of inducing householders to take an intellectual pride and loving interest in their houses and furniture that will, eventually, instil into their descendants attributes that will go far beyond the small beginnings "bounded by the four walls of their home and castle.