1928-05-19 — Page 6

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH,

EXPERT CRAFTSMANSHIP

AND THE FINEST OF MATERIALS

1.

Glass

Are placed at the disposal of architects for Shop, Bank and Office Fitting Sign Boards, Stained and Leaded Ceilings, Decorative Plaster Friezes, and Pilasters, Parquetry Panelling Floors, Ornamental Grilles, Gates and Fencing.

Photographs, Sketches

and Estimates

submitted or Tenders given on Archi- tects Details.

ARTS & CRAFTS

SHIPBUILDERS.

SHIP REPAIRERS,

BOILER MAKERS.

FORGE MASTERS. OXY-ACETYLENE AND

ELECTRIC WELDERS. MECHANICAL AND

ELECTRICAL

ENGINEERS.

SHANGHAI, A

CABLE ADDRESS "STUDIO",

Codes:

A.B.C..5th Eddition.

Bentley's.

THE TAIKOO DOCKYARD & ENGineering comPANY

OF HONGKONG, LIMITED,

-DRY DOCK- LENGTH 787, FEET. LENGTH ON BLOCKS 750 FEET

DEPTH ON CENTRE OF

SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1928.

RECENT BUILDING

EXHIBITION.

: A

(Continued From Page 5.)

U.S. AMMUNITION DEPOTS.

BIG VOTE BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

facos and the decencies of sym- metry; there is still an amazing

Washington, May 11. markot for quaintness and for

The House rules' committee de- those traditions which have ceased. to signify anything in modern cided to-day to include in the de- life. When visitors to Lord's ficiency appropriation bill $20,- repair this summer for the pur-1000,000 for ammunition depots at poses of arfcket to St. John's Hawthorne, Nevada, Hawaii, and Wand-road, they will find com-Cavite, Philippine Islands.

with plete. at its junction

The measure includes $8,400,-

for ammunition for Edgware-road, a large group of 000

the now flats surrounded by streets. Hawallan depot and $3,279,500 for The important frontage to replacements and improvements at: Edgware-road is a black and white the Cavite depot.

confection in the half-timber man-

ner, which can hardly be believed.

The bill, providing funds to meet

The side and back elevations are deficits in current appropriations, well designed, yellow London is probably one of the last that will brick buildings. They lift their come before the House at this bats courteously to the decorous Sesion. Aradition of St. John's Wood, and

are not unworthy to be near neigh-

bours of the admirable new Syna-pieces which ignore the nature of gogue which nearly fronts Lord's. materials. The proprietors of these flats are doubtless competent business men,

seems

تم

Post-war Furniture Design.

A

д леж

...

and good husbands and fathers, Now that America has come lo who believe they know what other the conclusion that the house- husbands and fathers want. But proud need not live for ever on the I refuse to believe that people willow-pattern plate and the Jaco really want to live in wholly pre: bean umbrella-stand, England is posterous caricatures of mediaeval the fast country to be convinced. buildings.

Even we begin to be a little brave. The development of furniture de- Hope of Better Things.

sign since the war, in the direc- We got what architecture we do.tion of simplicity of form and serve, and if London will not face reliance on the inherent beauties Home control of street design as a of wood, is full of fine perform- unit, in the interests of order-ance and still better promisc. Baess, and as a gesture of civic walk along the Tottenham, Court decency, let us have the best that rond is still flavoured undulý can be offered by individualism in with reminiscences of highly rea- design and novel use of materials,pectable centuries, but at least the At present we are apt to get no sheer stupidity of mechanical car pleasure either way. In Regent-vings has been allayed, and ward- street we find order in the Quad-robes do not sprout broken podi- rant and confusion in the straight ments. When the makers feel the stretch, but the confusion lacks urge to reproduce something his- the justification of having been torical, they have the wit to choose confounded by buildings of high pleasant and feasible pieces to individual character. They order copy, and they copy them with to these things better in France, and high intelligence. Often, how- best of all in Amsterdam. The ever, they have the courage Dutch arc a people individual carry their development a logical enough, one would have thought, step further, and to use a form but Amsterdam does not allow that is reminiscent but authen- anyone with money to burn to tically new. That is all one need defle the city with buildings of ask of invention, for form is Ill-famed design. New. work has governed by the limitations of use. to be passed, not merely ns to its When it comes to pattern and Sre exits and its drains, but as to colour the artist is, and ought to its scemliness, by an official who be, unfettered, save by technical is bidden to prevent bad new considerations, and these give him architecture, and does, in fact, to-day a new scope and prevent it. No doubt he falls to liberty. It surely is not reason- please some of the good burghers. able to, expect him to ignore the Dutch architects are apt to be infinite opportunity afforded by modernists, and probably the more new materials and now precesses, elderly people of Amsterdam like undreamed of when the hand- cornices in the manner of William crafts and the simple issue of the the Silent, just as much as I hate mechanisms of loom, "and kiln umbrella standa in the pretty blossomed into styles, now seen as fancy of James the First. The historically racy of their time. provision of an ædilo

to

The Acid Test. work. Amsterdam is now second only to Stockholm as the European It is very singular that the City whither architects from the woman of to-day, should spur. the world over repair to see interest-artist to copious invention in de- ing stud. It is a litt distressing sign and material for the fashions that foreign artists come to Lon-of dress, and be scared of any don rather to dream over the thing but a crude Jacobean or a Georgian background, miracles of the past, than to seg polite the buildings which represented against which she may display the outlonk of to-day. But, there them. It seems. true that this a well-founded in a growing life and movement is partly due to from which we hope better things, fear lest things of modernist de-. Some of the most significant, be-sign shall not dwell pleasantly cause the most practical evidence alongside older possessions. It of it, is to be seen at Olympia's is indeed the acid test of modern Building Exhibition.

things that they shall take their place faithfully and naturally amidst gear of an elder day. The Inside a building we look for best things full the test, and by two sorts of things, fine planning this fruit you may know them. fit- and equipment, which mean It can hardly be true that Eng- ness for purposes, and such aligh people generally suppose that measure of beauty as will bring the decorative arts In this coun- esthetic pleasure. In workaday try stopped dead in 1820, or in buildings, perhaps, it is unreason-whatever is the, last year that the able to look for positive beauty, individual may regard as histori but at least there should be seem-cally sound. There must be some liness.

reason why modernity in design "Art," says Mr. Clive Bell, "is is suspect. I believe it is due to. significant form," a definition as the horrid thought that it is for- satisfactory as four words can be eign. There is some humour in expected to make it, but not com-jremembering that the European prehensive. Robert Louis Steven-[movement, now regarded ashance son thought that "the motive and had its true root in William end of any art whatever is to make Morris. He set Europe thinking a pattern." The two together make about the decorative arts and fine a pretty comprehensive rule, and craftsmanship and the absence have the advantage that they leave burden of ugly and thoughtless decorative artists and furniture machine work. Although he was The last section, Wise-Wyzen, designers with a free hand. It is mediaevalist in fibre, much of of the New Oxford English Dic-significant of English delibera-his work was sheer invention. tionary was published on Apr. 19th tion, on the looming up of a new The Foreigner has taken his prin- -und--as the section X, Y, Z has idea abroad, that between the ciples of design and brought them already been issued this will Parla Exhibition of Industrial Art up to 1928, and it is not sur mark the completion of a monu-in 1926 and February, 1928, no prising that they produce; some mental work, the publishing of great department store in Eng-thing forty years younger than flavouring, which has extended over the last land saw that invention will take, 1888. But Morris was associated

and ought to tako, at lefet as big with places, of such 44 years.

The dictionary contains 16,488 a place in decoration as tradition. names as Kelmscott and Merton Then Shoolbreds opened their (Lord Nelson had to do with pages, 178 miles of type, 50 mil-show of French and English ex- Merion), and though he was a Socialist and a queer fellow, ho lion words, 500,000 definitions, and amples of modernist furnishing. nearly two million quotations.

The Parla Stores, with Prin- was English, and he was comfort- The preparations began in 1858, and the first volume was publish temps in the van, have long been ably off. It is not necessary, ed in 1881. To bring the work aware of modernist claims and therefore, to condemn him, and he When English artists are widely up-to-date, a supplement is being achievement. New York, devoted has duly become an Old Master. prepared, a copy of which will be as it is to antiquities and ro- offered free to every possessor of productions, is now enjoying its given the chance to express 1928. second notable show of modernist in decoration-and it has already the complete dictionary. The gross outlay by Oxford University decorations in a great department come to a few-they will not copy store. When I saw the exhibition Paris or Munich or Stockholm, has amounted to some £300,00

Since 1659, when Herbert at Lord and Taylor's, though it but will exercise their English But do let us Coleridge was appointed editor, was in curl papers just before it Art on English things in a modero six editors have taken up the task was opened at the end of Febru-and logical way.

ary, I found it not only interest-give them the chance: Englishness

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