The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1918)

A SMALL COUNTRY HOUSE


A SMALL COUNTRY HOUSE-THE PARLOUR
side it has a range of windows with broad shelf tor flowering plants. A
serving hatch is arranged between this room and the kitchen which forms
a cupboard about two feet square, in which things in daily use on the table
may be kept.
It may be objected in both this plan and the last that no properly specialized
dining-room is devised. This is not due, as may be supposed, to the reduc-
tion in our food caused by the war which has made it perhaps seem hardly
worth while to build a special room for eating our rations in. In any case
the specialized dining-room is an uninspiring apartment. The tramp under
the hedge, at least in summer time, enjoys his food in better surroundings
than if enclosed by these four walls with the sideboard at one end and the
fireplace at one side. Meals should be served in the garden, and since this has
certain practical disadvantages the garden-room or wide verandah which
can be enclosed in winter time is better than the usual type of dining-room,
while for a change the hall may be used for dining, as in the old days.
If we now pass from the hall into the kitchen premises we first enter a small
lobby or back hall which constitutes a kind of buffer-state between the
family rooms and the kitchen premises. On this neutral territory the stair-
case is placed, and here it can be conveniently used for all purposes without
encroaching on the privacy of the principal apartments. There is no at-
tempt here to make a “feature staircase,” with imposing display of balusters
and contorted hand-rails. It is one of those modest little stairways which
take us upstairs with the least possible fuss. This simplicity in the staircase
follows .as a natural corollary to the comparatively low ceiling. The kitchen
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