DETAILS OF THE VILLA OF IMPORT 351 



We are planning the Villa of Import as a two-level house. 

 Within, three steps to the left will lead upward to a loggia recep- 

 tion room which connects with the staircase hall, while on the right 

 of the entrance hall with its sixteen-foot cambered-beamed ceiling 

 decorated in Arabesque style, and at the same lower level, is the 

 dining room, also with a sixteen-foot ceiling, but domed, and a 

 true ellipse, the lost corners utilized as closets in adjoining hall 

 and room. A small electric, fern-edged fountain may centre a white 

 tiled alcove, large enough for a few potted plants, to brighten this 

 somewhat unusual room. The outer wall of the house above the 

 glass roofed alcove may be filled from arch to frieze height with large 

 stained glass window in sylvan design. 



Fluted pilasters with Ionic caps edge window and door open- 

 ings, and support pediments, the former with under-panel. All door 

 head panels are decorated and a line of Colonial dentals circles 

 the room. An ingle centred by a fireplace flanked by red leather- 

 covered settles extends along the inside wall, its low seven-foot ceil- 

 ing allowing a seven-foot-stud mezzanine den overhead, reached by 

 a door from the minstrels' balcony which overlooks the entrance 

 hall and is lighted by low leaded casements in an oriel window swing- 

 ing open into the dining room near ceiling line. The dining room 

 floor is of kiln-dried eight-inch oak planks, inset with ebonized keys 

 four feet apart. Its sixteen-foot height is a pronounced feature, 

 the door opening fourteen feet high, but a copper-set, stained-glass 

 transom reduces the space to nine feet, the same height as the front 

 door. Portieres are impressively hung the entire height of fourteen 

 feet. A leaded, clear plate-glass cabinet can be built in the chimney 

 breast, high above the mantel shelf. 



One of the two doors leading to butler's pantry is fitted with 

 rim protected dish shelves and pivoted, swinging to either din- 

 ing room or pantry, while the other doorway is grilled down to a 

 five-foot nine-inch height, screening upper pantry shelves, and has a 

 closely fitting sliding door controlled by foot pressure. Care must 

 be taken that neither door is in line with that opening from butler's 

 pantry to kitchen. 



The balance of the floor area we will divide into library, living 

 room, studio-den, reception room and palm-decorated corridor which, 

 if built with groined ceiling, entered beneath spandreled arches, and 

 its walls hung with family portraits, may aspire to the dignity of an 

 ancestral hall. 



The library, sided with a semi-polygon bay, has one end wall 

 built inward a foot to inset deep Georgian windows centred with 

 book mark design, this plan allowing of broad cushioned settle with 

 convenient ambry at either side. A wall fountain might fill a panel 

 in the lower half of one Georgian window, protected in the outer 

 house wall bv a bas-relief in Caen stone. Bookcases should have not 



