The Geffrye Museum

Hokitika Guardian, 20 March 1922, Page 4

The Geffrye Museum

A HOUSE OF LOVELY HOMES

LONDON, Jan. 14. M any writers have notified and com-1 men ted on the fact that there is in no 1 other language a word which means exactly what our word “borne” means. The other languages have words which express u part, and sometimes a great part, of the meaning of our word, but there is always something lacking. And although one would hardly care to assert that the tiling for which tlie word stands is the exclusive copyright of -ue British race, the fact remains that our nation lias always cherished its homes with a peculiar tenderness, lias made of them dear, intimate, and individual things, has sought to express itself and its secret dreams and happiness in them to an extent no other nation with which 1 am acquainted can match. It is fitting, then, that there should be among the treasures of our infinitely varied London a place designed to make manifest and to praise the loveliness of tht' English home. That place exists, as so many of London’s jewels exist, in a dist rict where no uninstructed person would dream of looking for it. North from Shoreditch Church, which, in its turn, lies north of Liverpool-street Station, runs Kingsland-road. A little way up the road, on the right, there are gracious and homely buildings of mallow brickwork enclosing a space where tall trees reign. These are the Geffrye Alms-houses established in tbe eighteenth century by Richard Geffrye, knight and alderman of tbe City, and in a part of the buildings the London County Council lias found a home for what is inadequately desribed as a furniture museum. The explorer passes through dingy and dejected thoroughfares to a habitation of loveliness. RELICS OE 300 YEARS. This is a place where wise lovers of London and of England have brought together a multitude of the things’ which make London not worshipful or marvellous or tremendous—but merely lovable. It is not concerned with celebrating any meretricious splendours of the past. It lias no concern with any form of pomp and massive dignity. Proud London, which has been the chief market of the world, is not considered or remembered within these walls. Tlie only concern is to display those tilings which Londoners have made during the past 300 years to honour and make beautiful their dwellings.

So there are, gathered here, all sorts of intimate, friendly tilings. You may find, for instance, in the first room yon enter, a collection ol those charmingly fantastic knockers which the people of tlie seventeenth century were accustomed to place on bedroom doors, together with a variety of those cheery conceits in wrought iron which they placed 011 the entrances to their homes to welcome the visitor who came to hammer 011 the door. Beyond these you pass to a long series of illustrations of household interiors as they were before furniture was made in bulk by ma-

chinery. The people who work for the Geffrye Museum are very wise and watchful. They know when any venerable London lions is about to be pulled down, and they go immediately to ve>’ what they can find. Consequently they have contrived to have all their rooms panelled with the beautiful work in yellow pine with which the eighteenth century—criticising in advance our modern love of passionate wall-paper—covered the walls of its homes. They have rescued also fine staircases, stray bits of iron railings, sections of moulding from ceilings, and, in one case, an entire room of an eigliteenth-eentury cottage which would be enough to make even a Communist cobbler sit down and thank God for the British Constitution and the long traditions of our land. 111 NTS FOR CA BINET-M A KEE S. In so far as they make any visitor aware of and cause him to desire loveliness, all museums may, I suppose, be described as useful. But the Geffrye Museum—to which all are admitted without charge—lias a more immediate usefulness. It stands in a district which is almost entirely inhabited by cabinet-makers, and it was cheering to learn, as l did from Mr Hawkins, the curator, that the workers of the neighbourhood go there over and over again to look at all those splendid tilings, at those chairs and tables and bureaux and bookcases and bedsteads to gain from them some guidance, some inspiration for their own work. It filled one with a hope for tlie future of furniture in England—and. seeing that so great a proportion of one’s life is spent in intimate association with furniture, it does not seem out of place to hope, or even to pray, for better furniture than so much of the rubbish which, shaming all our great tradition, is turned out of the factories to-day.