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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 1910 



The Steam Radiator in France 



By Frances B. Sheafer 



RANGE is adapting, little by little, certain 

 American household features. The bath- 

 room and open plumbing are being in- 

 corporated — slowly, it is true, but none 

 the less inevitably — into modern French 

 building construction. So, too, American 

 methods of heating have revolutionized 

 Continental in-door life. The time was when no more than 

 one or two rooms of an apartment or of a house were kept 

 warm for the family who dwelt therein. These were most 

 likely the salle a manger, and the kitchen, if the cooking 

 was done on a coal stove. The salon was practically out 



of use, when the cold 



weather set in; and the 

 sleeping-rooms were never 

 warmed — a sufficiently hy- 

 gienic custom if any indi- 

 vidual of Latin birth could 

 once be induced to sleep 

 with the windows open. 



Steam heating and hot 

 air furnaces have given the 

 people of France some new 

 ideas of comfort, even 

 though their naturally eco- 

 nomical instincts impel 

 them to take these benefits 

 in homeopathic doses. A 

 French hot-air register is a 

 sort of toy. In a good- 

 sized room, it may often 

 be no more than six inches 

 square; and in an apart- 

 ment so inadequately 

 heated, it is still necessary 

 to wear many more woolen 

 garments and thick wraps 

 than are ever necessary in 

 an American home of even 

 heat. 



The hot-air system of 

 heating has not in any ap- 

 preciable degree changed 

 the style of furnishing of 

 French rooms. The regis- 

 ter is so inconspicuous a 

 feature of an interior that 

 it need not be considered 

 at all in planning a decora- 

 tive ensemble. 



The steam radiator, 

 however, is quite another problem. It is a definite piece of 

 furnishing which fills a certain amount of space. In prac- 

 tical America, this useful heating apparatus is accepted just 

 as it is, in all its bald utilitarianism. We need it over 

 there, which is excuse enough for setting up its gilt or silver 

 coils anywhere that will best serve temperature purposes. 



French asstheticism could not quite reconcile itself to so 

 homely an innovation, and immediately, it has become a 

 subject for French ingenuity and fancifulness. A steam 

 radiator is hard to beautify, and so the Continental dec- 

 orators and designers have confined themselves rather to 

 inventing new ways of hiding the unsightly things. The 



A radiator designed in the form of a peacock 



An artistic design for a radiator 



draughty but picturesque fireplace has been for long a part 

 of all interior schemes here in France. An almost unavoid- 

 able experiment, then, would be a combination of the new 

 way of heating with the old. In one of the Louis XVI 

 bedrooms recently displayed at the Salon du Mobilier in 

 the Grand Palais, one decorative firm had hidden the steam 

 radiator in the fireplace and covered it with a wire screen. 

 That was not a bad idea, though the screen was unsightly. 

 In all of the recent Salons there have been exhibited 

 more or less interesting "cache radiateurs." In the new 

 Salon of M. L. Rion, a Belgian designer showed a hand- 

 some copper case, the motive being a peacock with spread 



tail, the interstices among 

 his tail feathers allowing 

 for the distribution of the 

 heat. 



In the Salon d'Automne, 

 a Polish artist resident in 

 Paris, M. Stanislas Lan- 

 dau exhibited some still 

 more elaborate "cache ra- 

 diateurs," made of faience 

 and metal combined. M. 

 Landau's designs are orig- 

 inal and artistic and they 

 are quite possible for any 

 interior furnished in the 

 modern spirit. The photo- 

 graph reproduced with this 

 article is one of several de- 

 signs made by M. Landau 

 for some important dec- 

 orative projects intrusted 

 to him. The ornamenta- 

 tion both for the pottery 

 case and the metal door is 

 simple and eminently suit- 

 able for the materials em- 

 ployed in making the radi- 

 ator cover. 



Some of these cases are 

 flat and are designed for 

 side walls; others are made 

 triangular in shape in order 

 to be fitted into the corners 

 of a room. Several of the 

 covers allow for a special 

 heating plant, which can be 

 attached to the radiator 

 when it is necessary to heat 

 but one r o o m — if the 

 weather is too mild to start the central heating system. 



All of these treatments of the new heating instrument 

 are admirable and they are a fine commentary on the Con- 

 tinental — more especially the L^tin — ^way of looking at 

 this matter of interior furnishings. The steam radiator in 

 its original unadorned simplicity is as typical of practical 

 America as these ornate and beautiful elaborations of the 

 ^ame articles are of artistic France. 



The radiator as seen in the usual home is unsightly and 

 the use of an ornamental one as presented herewith adds an 

 artistic value in decoration that could not be obtained in 

 any other way. 



