NEW BOOKS

Evening Star, Issue 23681, 14 September 1940, Page 4

NEW BOOKS

MAKING NEW ZEALAND Following ‘ Tracks and Roads,’ ‘(Railways,’ and ‘ The Sea and Air,’ ‘ Making New_ Zealand,’ the series of volumes published by the Centennial Branch of the Internal Affairs Department, completes, in No. 19, its treatment of ‘ Communications ’ with a survey of postal services, telegraphy and radio under that general title. The historical record (by Mr P. N. Cryer) is complete, and the illustrations find room for humorous as well as piquant contrast. The main features of New Zealand’s history and concrete development would appear with this issue_ to be exhausted, and we pass to trimmings of the edifice. No. 20 (letterpress by Mr Paul Pascoe) deals with houses, from the cob hut to the modern flat. Changes of fashion are reviewed, and copiously illustrated. Public buildings follow in. No. 21 (by the same writer) and this statement is worth noting: “The individualism that allows every building in a street to have its own dissenting style was even more acute in New Zealand than overseas. This gave to our towns the amazing contrasts of dignity and ostenation, of style and trash, of restraint and ornament, which mar the individual achievement of a single good building. It is this comparison of standards which makes New Zealand, even more than contemporary England, aesthetically unsatisfying, especially as there is Hie added contrast of buildings in variously painted wood and in stone, brick or concrete. To-day New Zealanders are aware of new standards in architecture, and they are shedding their dislike of novelty enough to put up buildings which are clearly functional, But buildings are usually so permanent that it will be many years before the streets of the larger towns achieve any real unity.” A surprising variety of interest will be found in the volume on ‘ Furniture.’ for which Mr L. Gabites supplies the letterpress, memories quaint and fond being wakened by its plethora of illustrations.