Thoughts For The Times

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1921, Page 2

Thoughts For The Times

Ostentation and Comfort. As a people we prided ourselves, with good reason, on being .eminently practical; the English home was regarded as a model for the whole world, and the comfort which the furnishing industry of this country was able to provide wa, s the envy of other lands and yet in spite of all these advantages there was too much ostentation and too little comfort in the furnishing of many houses. Ostentation had. in course of time, played some queer tricks with furniture; it 'had actually turned some of it inside out In the seventeenth century a sideboard was a chest or cupboard raised to a convenient height above the floor, a plain honest receptacle for food and other things. To-day the cupboard space was frequently sulAudinate to a high hack with complication of mirrors and shelves for the display of “ornaments.” Alanv .cabinets suffered from the same defect, being so made that curios and objects d’nrt must he put outside instead of inside them Such things added greatly to domesti drudgery. Alany women realised this and longed to make a bonfire of the superfluous things in their houses. It tliOy acted on that impulse their rooms would gain largely in comfort and lose little in beauty.