DOI issue:
No. 108 (March, 1902)
DOI article:Scott, Mackay H. Baillie: A country cottage
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19875#0102
A Country Cottage
third sitting-room, private and apart, where he room is decorated and furnished in a distinct style,
might sit in ease and quiet. And yet it must be and it is demanded that the occupants should
owned that the modern house, as it has been attune themselves in harmony with the trappings ot ■
evolved under economic and utilitarian conditions, the people of other nations and other times,
is not and can hardly be a thing of beauty. A The problem which the modern designer has
series of compartments without unity or focus can then to solve is how to secure the unity of effect
never make a house. However large the rooms which was a natural feature in the earlier and
may be, however great their individual beauty and simpler plans, and yet to fulfil the somewhat
attractiveness, they never unite to form a consistent complex requirements of modern life. In seeking
and coherent whole. The occupant of such a for the basis for a plan which shall comply with
dwelling is indeed never aware of the house as these conditions, and in looking backward to earlier
a whole, bat, shut in by the four walls of the types of plans for suggestions, one is led to observe
particular room he happens to be living in, that that one of the last surviving functions of the hall
room is, for the time being, the house. How- was the somewhat important one of dining; and it
ever beautifully its walls may be adorned, it is, may perhaps be claimed that such a function may
after all, merely a compartment—an individual in a be taken as the central and typical feature of the
community of alien and unsympathetic persons domestic ritual of daily life; and home life, even it
without social relations or government. Still more conducted on the most approved principles of plain
is this want of coherence accentuated when each living and high thinking, is still, to a large extent,
it must be confessed, a
question of meals. How,
then, if one were to take
a step back and make the
hall a dining-hall instead
of separating off a special
feeding cell ? The ob-
jection to the use of the
average hall for this pur-
pose would naturally be
that one does not care to
dine in a room which is
necessarily a passage for
servants and visitors, but
this objection may be
removed by a little plan-
ning, and so the Dining-
Hall resolves itself into
the focus of the plan and
the family life, from which
one catches a glimpse of
rooms beyond—the par-
lour adjoining, and in a
more remote privacy—the
study.
The cottage here illus-
trated is submitted as an
attempt to give a con-
crete form to the ideas
which resulted from such
a line of reasoning as
has been briefly sketched.
Access to the parlour
and the kitchen premises
PORTRAIT DE MME. X. (Photo by Hanfstaengl. See article on C. Giron) BY C. GIRON can be obtained Without
third sitting-room, private and apart, where he room is decorated and furnished in a distinct style,
might sit in ease and quiet. And yet it must be and it is demanded that the occupants should
owned that the modern house, as it has been attune themselves in harmony with the trappings ot ■
evolved under economic and utilitarian conditions, the people of other nations and other times,
is not and can hardly be a thing of beauty. A The problem which the modern designer has
series of compartments without unity or focus can then to solve is how to secure the unity of effect
never make a house. However large the rooms which was a natural feature in the earlier and
may be, however great their individual beauty and simpler plans, and yet to fulfil the somewhat
attractiveness, they never unite to form a consistent complex requirements of modern life. In seeking
and coherent whole. The occupant of such a for the basis for a plan which shall comply with
dwelling is indeed never aware of the house as these conditions, and in looking backward to earlier
a whole, bat, shut in by the four walls of the types of plans for suggestions, one is led to observe
particular room he happens to be living in, that that one of the last surviving functions of the hall
room is, for the time being, the house. How- was the somewhat important one of dining; and it
ever beautifully its walls may be adorned, it is, may perhaps be claimed that such a function may
after all, merely a compartment—an individual in a be taken as the central and typical feature of the
community of alien and unsympathetic persons domestic ritual of daily life; and home life, even it
without social relations or government. Still more conducted on the most approved principles of plain
is this want of coherence accentuated when each living and high thinking, is still, to a large extent,
it must be confessed, a
question of meals. How,
then, if one were to take
a step back and make the
hall a dining-hall instead
of separating off a special
feeding cell ? The ob-
jection to the use of the
average hall for this pur-
pose would naturally be
that one does not care to
dine in a room which is
necessarily a passage for
servants and visitors, but
this objection may be
removed by a little plan-
ning, and so the Dining-
Hall resolves itself into
the focus of the plan and
the family life, from which
one catches a glimpse of
rooms beyond—the par-
lour adjoining, and in a
more remote privacy—the
study.
The cottage here illus-
trated is submitted as an
attempt to give a con-
crete form to the ideas
which resulted from such
a line of reasoning as
has been briefly sketched.
Access to the parlour
and the kitchen premises
PORTRAIT DE MME. X. (Photo by Hanfstaengl. See article on C. Giron) BY C. GIRON can be obtained Without