The Dining Room and Kitchen 



171 



The English have handed down to us from the Elizabethan and Georgian 

 periods some of* the best types of dining-room furniture which are to be had. 

 Some of the high, straight-backed chairs of the former are most excellent. The 

 great stumbling block in modern dining 

 room furniture is the table. Tables 

 with fixed legs have their advantages 

 in steadiness; those with adjustable 

 members are correspondingly unsteady. 

 The old "thousand leg" of the past 

 is a work of art and a pleasure to the 

 eye, but utterly impossible for a dining 

 table. There are legs enough under a 

 table, as a usual thing, without adding 

 anything in the way of wooden ones, 

 and the mix-up is often most annoying. 

 Wherever the legs come on the outside 

 edge of the table they are bound to be 

 in the way; if a centre support be used, 

 the spread of the legs or feet at the 

 bottom is almost as bad as the first. 

 While the central support is a step in 

 the right direction, yet it does not insure 

 rigidity, and is hence imperfect. Ugly 

 as the extension table is, and despite 

 its legs and lack of 

 firmness, especially 

 when extended, it is 

 the best we have. 

 Why has not some- 

 one considered this 

 problem from the 

 standpoint of a fixed 

 or built-in standard, 

 combining extension 

 features in such a 

 way that the table 

 will have good lines 

 whether closed or 

 extended ? Such a 

 solution would do 

 away with those ob- 

 stacles \vhich get in 

 the way of the feet, 

 and would be a boon 

 to the gastronomic 



i i . The wamscottmg and the ceiling are noticeable and good. The old-time ancestral portrait is, 



WOrld in general. however, decidedly out of place 



Fig. 26. Showing an isolated kitchen and dining room 



a Passage r. Radiator B.P. Butler's pantry 



b. Window D.R. Dining room H. Hall 



bo. Screened opening K. Kitchen V. Vestibule 



