DOI issue:
No. 83 (February, 1900)
DOI article:Scott, Mackay H. Baillie: A country house
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19784#0043
ACOUNTRY HOUSE, BY M, H,
BAILLIE SCOTT.
If one examines the average modern
house, it will be found to consist of a series
of rectangular boxes—"reception rooms" as they
are generally called. There is the dining-room,
drawing-room, and so forth, and when the house is
small these rooms are correspondingly decreased
till the minimum of size and maximum of dis-
comfort are reached, and one contemplates at last
the common spectacle of a large family crowded
into a small room which is already filled to
overflowing with unnecessary and incongruous
furniture.
A logical expression of this habit would
necessarily assume, one would think, a dominant
note in the plan — a central hall — or living
room, which one would like to make as large
and airy as funds permit, with plenty of floor
space. One would like to add a great ingle fire-
place with seats wide and low, and, for the rest,
furnish it not for effect, but with only those few
things which are really necessary, each piece of
furniture being the expression of a real and
substantial need, and as serviceable and simple in
its way as the bag of tools of the workman who
made it.
As for decoration and pattern—if we have no
artist at our disposal we can afford to dispense with
all that, and, instead, be content to see posts, beams
and walls each doing their appointed task.
There is no necessity, artistic or practical, to
obscure these real and fundamental things with a
superficial veneer of plaster and paint, and to crown
all with a wall paper with an impossible name and
frieze to match. If construction and constructive
features are good enough decoration for our
cathedrals and churches, surely they are good
enough for our homes, and bricks, timber, and
plain white-washed spaces may well replace
much of the foolish and fantastic features which
constitute what we now dignify by the title of
" decoration."
Having arrived at the central idea of a hall or
living-room as the keynote of a home, it follows
naturally that one must group round this the
various other rooms which may be required by
the family, and these may be regarded as mere
appendages and dependencies of the hall, not
pretending to compete with it as rooms, but rather
becoming merely recesses, each specially modified
BAILLIE SCOTT.
If one examines the average modern
house, it will be found to consist of a series
of rectangular boxes—"reception rooms" as they
are generally called. There is the dining-room,
drawing-room, and so forth, and when the house is
small these rooms are correspondingly decreased
till the minimum of size and maximum of dis-
comfort are reached, and one contemplates at last
the common spectacle of a large family crowded
into a small room which is already filled to
overflowing with unnecessary and incongruous
furniture.
A logical expression of this habit would
necessarily assume, one would think, a dominant
note in the plan — a central hall — or living
room, which one would like to make as large
and airy as funds permit, with plenty of floor
space. One would like to add a great ingle fire-
place with seats wide and low, and, for the rest,
furnish it not for effect, but with only those few
things which are really necessary, each piece of
furniture being the expression of a real and
substantial need, and as serviceable and simple in
its way as the bag of tools of the workman who
made it.
As for decoration and pattern—if we have no
artist at our disposal we can afford to dispense with
all that, and, instead, be content to see posts, beams
and walls each doing their appointed task.
There is no necessity, artistic or practical, to
obscure these real and fundamental things with a
superficial veneer of plaster and paint, and to crown
all with a wall paper with an impossible name and
frieze to match. If construction and constructive
features are good enough decoration for our
cathedrals and churches, surely they are good
enough for our homes, and bricks, timber, and
plain white-washed spaces may well replace
much of the foolish and fantastic features which
constitute what we now dignify by the title of
" decoration."
Having arrived at the central idea of a hall or
living-room as the keynote of a home, it follows
naturally that one must group round this the
various other rooms which may be required by
the family, and these may be regarded as mere
appendages and dependencies of the hall, not
pretending to compete with it as rooms, but rather
becoming merely recesses, each specially modified