FURNITURE ART

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 104, 23 July 1927, Page 21

FURNITURE ART

HANDSOME STANDARDISED WORK FIRST NEW ZEALAND DISPLAY Improved living comforts mark the progress of man. Each generation becomes acquainted with phenomenal en\'ironment changes, notably seen in homes and furniture. A typical example of evolution in connection with house appointments is seen in the remarkably fine exhibit at the Winter Show by Standardised Furniture, Ltd. (of New South Wales) —an Australian firm which has extended its activities to this Dominion. While we know that mas sproduction and intensive organisation have paved the way for the economical standardisation of such manufactures as foods, clothing, motor-cars and various other acknowledged necessities and luxuries, few people would have credited the possibilities with furniture standardisation so well accomplished to-day by the firm mentioned.

True, most furniture manufacturers have certain lines of ordinary demand that are more or less standardised for factory convenience, but it was the promoter of Standardised Furniture, Ltd., Mr. Ralph Symonds, of Marrackville, New South Wales, who has exploited the idea with supreme success. His beautiful samples of workmanship at the show —the first exhibit of the kind in New Zealand —are well above the scope of a mere series of plainly similar designs and sizes ready and suitable for construction to represent furniture subjects. It is revealed that all varieties of household and office furniture can be e solved on highly artistic and utility lines with a restricted number jf patterns. The object of this unique display is not only to demonstrate from a public educational viewpoint, but to interest the cabinetmakers of New Zealand in the exceptional service of standardised furniture, which this exhibitor can give. LOVELY AUSTRALIAN TIMBERS This stand in shed 12 must arrest much public attention, not only for the merit of the furniture, but for the strikingly beautiful array of Australian timbers, outstanding, against a background of sample door panels in mahogany, maple, walnut, sycamore, grey sycamore, Hungarian ash and anjelim, is a four-piece bedroom suite comprising a handsome wardrobe, chest, pedestal and bed in Italian figured walnut on maple and inlaid with satinwood stringing. Nearby is an equally attractive writing desk of fiddle-backed mahogany, the upper portion being encased as an ideal wireless bureau. A rounded table-top, seven feet in diameter, in thoroughly finished Queensland maple curls, wins admiration and the firm is also well to the fore with delightful illustrations of marquetry in colour. Altogether it may be said that the display connotes industrially developed art and a new era in furniture treatment. It is readily conceded that such production essentially passes through the hands of superior draughtsmen and to obtain such results must be produced by skilled craftsmen with high-grade machining plant at their command. The display is veritably a monument to modern advance in furniture efficiency, presenting super quality and distinctiveness in design, ornamentation, colour and lustre. The sole representative for New Zealand, Mr. J. R. Simpson, builder, of Green Lane, Auckland, is well prepared to give full information to those concerned. ______