Studio: international art (16.1899)

The Passmore Edwards Settlement

height. The basement and ground floor have pillars gives grace and dignity for the lack of a
been advantageously utilised for the common door. Any feeling of coldness that might be in-
rooms, including the dining-hall, drawing and duced by this or by its ample window spaces is
reception rooms, library, and a number of small counteracted by curtains of plain blue tapestry, a
and homely class-rooms, by which it is hoped to thick Oriental carpet, which supplies the only
provide informally some educational facilities and colour pattern in the room, and two fire-places, one
social clubs for the neighbourhood. Above the of which, as will be seen in our illustration (page 16),
roof of the gymnasium is an open quadrangle, which is effectively placed between two doors slightly re-
secures light and air for the backs of the upper cessed in the thickness of the wall, and approached
storeys. by a short flight of stairs on either side of the

Entering the residents' porch, we pass through a hearth. The dark blue tiles around the plain iron

spacious hall and corridor, in which the prevailing grate fail, however, to give quite the right note of

note of the interior—simplicity of form combined colour to this end of the room, and seem to

with purity of colour—is instantly struck. The demand relief by brass or copper. The chairs are

walls throughout the corridors and staircases are mostly of ash-wood, with simple rush seats. The

distempered a pale ochre, and the woodwork table shown in the photograph is from a design

painted dark green. The simple lines of the small used repeatedly in the common rooms, but with

skirtings and architraves of the doors, unmarred by the greatest success in the dining-hall, where, when

any extraneous ornament, serve to emphasise the out of use, the tables are folded flat in a remarkably

restful quality of the colouring. small compass and are slipped into the shallow cup-

The drawing-room, which is one of the most boards that line the wainscot, thus leaving the

picturesque in the house, is approached by a small body of the room clear for friendly gatherings and

ante-chamber, in which a judicious arrangement of house debates. By placing a set of these ingenious

ONE OF THE PRIVATE APARTMENTS A. DUNBAR SMITH AND CECIL BREWER, ARCHITECTS

(From a photograph by G. E. Martin)