Studio: international art (19.1900)

A Country House

organization of furniture which such a function
generally implies.

Nowadays, when the cult of simplicity has been
taken up to such fell purpose, the bedroom is
often a most barren and comfortless apartment.
The sanitary expert has decreed that the ideal
bedroom is that which most resembles a hospital
ward, but although one quite realises the necessity
of the study of sanitation in all details of a house,
one is loth to let it so usurp the claims of art in the
furnishing of the bedroom—and the most robust
health would hardly be sufficient compensation for
these cheerless surroundings. In the bedroom
which is illustrated here an attempt has been made
to realise a less rigorous scheme. The bed lined
with pink like a seashell, its green coverlet spangled
with flowers, like a meadow, and with its blue
curtains and white valance decorated with mauve
poppies, gives the key-note to the colour scheme
of a room which, while not aggressively sanitary, one
ventures to hope might lead to pleasant dreaming.

On the same floor there are three other bed-
rooms and a dressing-room, and each of these
would demand a distinctive treatment; while in the
roof are the servants' rooms and a boxroom.

The questions of heating and ventilation are

important ones and cannot be entirely solved by
the introduction of the open fire-place alone. It
is proposed to supplement this in the house under
discussion with a system of hot-air heating. By
this particular system the cold air enters the
chamber in the basement prepared for the purpose,
and is there not only heated but moistened before
passing to the various rooms. It then rises to the
ceiling and descends again into the room till it finally
escapes by the chimney flue. By this means a
constant current of warm, moist air is secured, and
in this way the problems of heating and ventilation
are both solved.

It is a common belief that ventilation depends
mainly on the cubic capacity of a room, and that
the large rooms with high ceilings are therefore
necessarily more sanitary in this respect. A con-
sideration of the facts of the case seems to show
that, on the contrary, perfectly sanitary conditions
as regards ventilation may be secured in the
smallest of rooms provided that the air is con-
stantly changed, and that one really gains very
little by an increase in the volume of stagnation in
a room. The system suggested here, providing as
it does for a constant flow of air, must necessarily
insure complete ventilation.