ROYAL TYPISTES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 367, 30 May 1928, Page 5

ROYAL TYPISTES

Duke and Princess Mary

“NOW WE ARE EIGHT ”

When the King visited the British Industries Fair he appeared very surprised to learn what an efficient typist the Duke of York had become as the result o£ the lessons he gave himself while oil board the Renown. Oil the other hand, when his Majesty was informed of the recent success that British typewriters had had in ousting foreign machines from different Government departments, he knew all about the matter. The Duke of Y'ork can type just over 40 words to the minute. He has a rival in his sister, Princess Mary, who has recently taken to typing her own correspondence, and has sent several such letters to the Queen. Prince Charles of Rumania was the most interesting contemporary figure at Cannes, where he often watched play at the big baccarat table intently for long periods, but never played. This Prince of destiny affects, incidentally, the most dizzyiug taste in pull-overs even Cannes has seen. Such a hotch-potch of hues may have been seen before, but never all knitted together like forked lightning. The effect is all the more curious because Carol still wears a heavy mourning arm-band. Kathleen Shackletou, the late explorer’s artist sister, who returned to

London from Canada last December, has just sailed again for Montreal, where she spent several years during the war sketching and writing. Like her brother, Miss Shackleton has an adventurous spirit. Last year she travelled Canada from east to west, and made so many friends that she decided to return. Several good orders for portraits came from Toronto. She wants to do sketches of the St. Lawrence and Quebec, which she loves, before winter has quite disappeared. All Miss Shackleton’s clever drawings of Red Indians, shown at a Bond Street gallery, were bought by a wealthy Canadian business man in London, to present to Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Thero are eight women M.P.’s in England now, live married and three spinsters. The curious thing is that the three unmarried ones all sit on the Labour side of the House. Lady Astor, the Duchess of Atholi and Lady Iveagh’s husbands are in the Lords, Mrs. Phillipson got in when her husband was unseated on petition, and Mrs. Runciman will retire at. the general election at St. Ives in favour of her husband.

THE MODERNIST FURNITURE NO ANGLES AND LITTLE DECORATION The Pai'is exhibition of 1325 showed a number of excellent ideas in furniture, but it has taken a couple of years for these ideas to establish themselves elsewhere. This season, however, we may choose designs which prove that the 20th century has really evolved a style of its own, which will go down to posterity as a new development in the art of cabinetmaking. Notable differences in form are observed where wardrobes, cabinets and dressing tables are concerned. Wardrobes are built lower than of yore; they avoid panels and mouldings, and affect nicely rounded fronts and corners. Often they rely for ornament on the natural grain of the wood, but when decoration is introduced, it is generally in the form of a narrow edging, carved in flower and leaf form, and lightly gilt or silvered. Dressing tables also avoid angular lines, and are expressed in barrel or elliptic form —a feature which rules out risk of uncomfortable knocks against their corners. So, too, with bed-ends, which are made with graceful curves to correspond with the tables.

Sitting room furniture, under the new method, becomes delightfully decorative. Painted decorations are not used to any great extent; when they are, they usually appear on carved ornaments, very slight and reticent in style. The mouldings to the glass doors of cupboards and cabinets are often finely inlaid, sometimes with wood of a different colour, sometimes with mother o’ pearl, and the shelves within are treated with colour to very effective ends. Handles are distinctive features, and various materials are brought into requisition including carved ivories and tinted horn.