THE IDEAL HOME EXHIBITION. T HE greatest attraction at the Ideal
Homo Exhibition at Olympia is, no doubt, "the ideal home" itself. Other exhibits wait for visitors; crowds of visitors wait to see the home. If you go early in the morning you may have a chance
of taking a place in a queue of twenty or thirty persons waiting to be passed in by the policeman at the garden gate; if you try your luck in the afternoon you are as likely as not
to find the queue lengthened round three sides of the building. And most certainly the little house is well worth seeing. The
architect is Mr. Reginald Fry, of 12 Clifford's Lin, Fleet Street, whose design was selected as the best out of some seven hundred sent in for competition. The house, which contains eleven rooms, cost £1,100, and was actually built on the spot in the Exhibition in ten days. The builders are Messrs. H. and G. Taylor, of Parklangley, Beckenham, Kent, who before beginning their work drilled a picked body of men
to work to a given schedule ; and, though they do not guarantee to build other houses as fast, they state that they
are prepared to duplicate the house from the original designs on any reasonable site within twenty miles of Charing Cross for the same sum. This does not, of course, include
the furniture or all the fittings, which would vary with the
taste and purse of the owner. Some of the fittings are intro- duced in order to illustrate alternative or possible methods
and appliances, and the furniture, of course, merely supple- ments the work of the architect. Of the furniture, then, there is little room for criticism ; and as regards the general design of the house, since it was selected out of seven hundred, there are doubtless sound architects' answers to a question or two which the measurements and apportioning of space seemed to suggest. A minor point is that in the case of a hanging cupboard it is surely best to enclose the whole of the alcove in which the cupboard is placed rather than leave a space which would collect dust between the cupboard's top and the coiling. Not all the cupboards are flush with the ceiling. Another point is the low pitch of the bedrooms and the apparent difficulty of readily getting rid of the hot air which would collect in the top of the room, for some of the windows, owing to the slope of the roof, are set a little low. A. third point suggests alteration on perhaps rather an extensive scale. There are seven bed- and dressing-rooms provided in the design, and the decoration and furniture follow bedroom requirements. But ought not " the ideal home " to possess a day and a night nursery P There is plenty of opportunity for ingenuity in nursery furniture. Possibly it was decided that the opportunities for exhibition of various devices and con- trivances would be rather too extensive.
There are model nurseries and model nursery furniture, in any case, to be seen in other parts of the Exhibition building. Indeed, there are models of almost every possible style and size of room, with surely every possible form and design of furniture and decoration, from the shot gun used by Napoleon to the embroideries in petit point from the Royal School of Art Needlework. Besides furniture there are endless appli- ances for making furniture more useful or for keeping it in good repair. There are contrivances for keeping doors shut in a wind, for fastening windows securely, and (at aid. a pair) "non-slip holders" for preventing mats from sliding about on polished floors. There are inventions, such as the "Permutit " system, by which hard water is passed through a cylindrical filter and emerges as soft water from a tap on the other side. There are various kinds of vacuum dust cleaners; indeed, one of the features of the exhibition is the number of stalls at which untiring exhibitors are occupied first in making carpets and cushions detestably dusty and next with rendering them admirably clean again. Almost as satisfactorily large in number are the various materials and inventions which prevent the accumulation of dust or which are cleaned with the least possible trouble—the various wash- able paints and enamels, for instance, or the smooth substitutes for rougher surfaces. "Paripan " is an enamel which tempts amateur experiment; possibly the amateur might fail to obtain the most workmanlike results, but the specimen surfaces shown could hardly be more inviting. " Emdeca" is another attractive material which substitutes metal for earthenware tiling. You are asked to " observe the following :—The work- man goes into the room in the morning and leaves it with a palatial appearance in the evening." Well, what more could a workman do for any room P Unless, indeed, he lined it with Beaver Board. Beaver Board is not a polished surface, but is a wall board made of pure wood fibre which takes the place of lath and plaster. Beaver Board stands explosions. The advertisement shows a "room in house of Jas. Welch, Buffalo, finished with lath and plaster; some distance from a violent explosion." It is, indeed, finished with lath and plaster, of which the explosion has left hardly a trace : Jas. Welch's room is a complete wreck. Then you turn to a photograph of a room in the same house lined with Beaver Board, and Beaver Board has stuck to its post. " We cannot afford to have your Beaver Board job less successful than the best." There is fidelity, almost affection, in the very name of Beaver Board. But the naming of these new inventions must tax the most agile intellects. Here is "Marosa," for instance; whence is derived" Marosa" P " Mimosa," looked at either close or far away, is apparently a sheet of polished marble in different shades. But it is, in fact, a substitute, and is manufactured solely by a British firm in Belfast. " Coatostone " is easier to derive : it is a liquid stone which can be applied like paint "to give a natural stone effect." " Nealstone," again, puzzles a little, though possibly it embodies an inventor's name. It is, in any case, an ingenious invention which can be poured into moulds, or applied to brickwork, or can be carved like natural stone. Nobody but an expert could tell the difference. These various labour-saving inventions and cheap substitutes for expensive material are one of the most attractive features of the exhibition. Another valuable section, which will interest both those who have their own installations and those who have not, is devoted to the various systems of heating and lighting a house. But, perhaps, the sections which next to " the ideal home" itself will attract visitors are two which are ornamental and decorative rather than merely necessary and useful. There is the Dutch village, with its Dutch shops, Dutch girls, and Dutch tulips ; canals run through the tulips and under wooden bridges, and frogs dive among the duckweed on the canals. The tulips and hyacinths are certainly an ideal garden background to an ideal village. Another ingenious piece of gardening is Messrs. Pulham's rock and water garden, with its dashing waterfall; though it is perhaps a little disillusioning to find the rock garden with its real Alpine plants approached by a rose pergola of which the flowers are all imitation. But there are plenty of workmanlike gardening stalls—from those which offer substantial garden seats to those which urge the visitor to " sow sweet peas now." A very practical exhibit is the model of the Garden Village in process of building at Knebworth. You can choose your house and garden in the Exhibition build- ing. You may also choose a smaller house of a different kind at another stall, where there is a model of a " Bunty Cottage " which may well be the envy of children with woods or large gardens to play in. A. " Bunty Cottage" is even better than a " Wendy House"; a Bunty Cottage is a little building, fireproof and portable, in which children can cook, keep house, entertain friends, and keep out of the rain. It holds a kitchen range, a dresser, tables, chairs, cupboards, crockery, pots, pans, and, indeed, everything that is necessary. W hen it is not being used as a Bunty Cottage you can turn it into a studio, or a summer-house, or a fishing hut, and with all these advantages, and fitted with every possible contrivance, you can buy it for £75. At the exhibi- tion, to add to its completeness, you can watch children cooking things in it. This particular corner of the exhibition, the visitor will find, deals in everything which should make homes ideal for children, from underclothing to wooden trick puzzles, and sooner or later he will find himself con- templating the children themselves in their own separate exhibition. There are more than a hundred of them, all, it is stated, fed on Virol, and their different nationalities make a most encouraging list : there are " English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Chinese, Japanese and Indian, Ceylon, Malay, South American, West Indian, East Indian, North American. Moroccan, African, French, German, Russian, Roumanian,
Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss, Dutch, Greek, and many other babies." Most of them apparently can talk English, and none of them seem to tire. of playing, though there must be a certain monotony in being gazed at by inquiring visitors for so many hours during the day. Most of them have developed a quite creditable equanimity, and some, indeed, know well how the inquiries of certain visitors should be met; the black babies, and the Japanese in particular, take not the smallest notice whatever.
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