CORONATION AND HOME
Ideal Home Exhibition. (Olympia.)
SLAP up the middle of the Grand Hall at Olympia, between the majestic pavilions of linoleums, wall-papers, cocktail cabinets, period reproductions, bouncy mattresses, cookers, tasselled sofas and other products desirable or otherwise according to taste, runs a thick red carpet. At the end of a long and comfortable march one walks into a two-thirds scale model of that fantastic rococo chariot, the Golden State Coach, complete with horses, postillions, walking men, Yeomen of the Guard and officers of the Royal Ekon. It is close on a hundred feet long. A huge peaked canopy of gold soars above, and nigher-still the bleak girders are softly veiled by gauze of Lenten hue. A monstrous Tudor rose on one gable looks towards a still vaster lion and unicorn on the other: The connections between all this noble spectacle and the ideal home is tenuous, but it reminds us handsomely, if we need reminding, that from now until the end of the year we shall be sitting on Coronation couches, drinking Coro- nation tea brewed in Coronation teapots, eating Coronation biscuits, smoking cigarettes offered in Coronation boxes, and in one way and another having our fill of neo-Elizabethan bread and circuses. • What with gazing at Coronation blancmanges, wandering in the Sunlit Gardens of Music and sniffing the carnations, listening to the band, being scolded by a woman with a vacuum cleaner for walking on the red carpet, sampling soups, admiring nylon filigree, being convinced of the absolute safety of a brand-new variety of convection heater, accepting a small sample bag of fish-pastes and ketchup, and declining a draught of a colourful syrup, it took one some time to penetrate to the heart of the great labyrinth of fabrics and fashions, food, cookery and furnishings—to the Village of Ideal Homes, that is, where six real, solid and substantial dwellings have been built and furnished for the visitor's pleasure and instruction, three of them by private enterprise and three by the Ministry of Housing. One would not go so far as to say that Mr. MacMillan's People's House is in the strict sense an ideal home for anyone who feels the needs of space about him, but within their limits the two examples of the design shown here, and the cottage flat, are no less successful than the three private exhibits. They are certainly furnished-much more pleasingly and imaginatively, and credit for this goes to the Council of Industrial Design. One hopes that they will convert many young people to the idea that good design is nothing to be scared of. The largest of the three private houses has many good features, but the shock of the huge canopied fireplace in the sitting-room which houses a horrid imitation log-fire was severe enough, alas, to dull
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