FURNITURE FROM SHELL CASES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 228, 20 June 1919, Page 8

FURNITURE FROM SHELL CASES

HIGH PRICES FOB GOVERNMENT SURPLUS STOCK.

Those people who, frightened at the present prices of furniture, have decided to wait until the Ministry of Munitions Disposal' Board begins to sell oft its surplus stock will perhaps think again when thev see the results of the sale nt the Bast Cumberland Shell Factow. at Carlisle. A suite of furniture which cost thi Ministry M was sold for .£l3 10s and a roll-top desk and revolving chair originally bought for £i 10s., (etched .CIS. A sot of three chairs, however, on two of which the king and Queen had eat, brought only £2 2s. 6d.! The Disposal Board will soon have at its disposal hundreds of thousands of bed boards, which will make excellent Kitchen shelves, until the'price of dressers comes down, hundreds of tables andchairs from dismantled offices and messes, and there should be large supplies of crockery, table linen, cutlery, and glass ware from the numerous Armv mes<cs which will bo "demobilised. The hospitals have large numbers of beds, quantities of bed linen, screens, bed cupboards, and other, items which when put on the market should go far to bring the price of furnishing a bedroom more nearly within the means of a normal banking account. "We can supply anything,' 1 said a member of the Disposal Board to a "Daily News representative recently, "from a submarine to a saucepan, and I may also say that the policv of the board is to get (ho highest possible prices for everything. It is in the public interest that we should do so." Evcu then, they will undersell the profiteers. In this connection it is interesting to note (hat Captain Irarie, Into of the Esher Munitions Department, proposes to start making furniture out of the shell cases and ammunition boxes, which arc of the best wood. He will rely on demobilised soldiers for his labour.