156 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
September, 
1914 
An electric range for all kinds of cooking has but one drawback — you forget to turn 
off the current 
Sunlight was the first requisite — lots of it. And sunlight was 
given the chance: diamond-paned casement windows line three 
sides and the ell in which the room is located stands sufficiently 
off from the house to allow plenty of air and light. A mixture 
of pioneer ruggedness and civilized improvement characterizes 
the furnishing. There is at one end a rough stone hearth, 
■double-hooded by the combination of a little antique cap and the 
longer, room-width hood that serves also as covering for the 
divan to one side and the melodium to the other. Yes, madam, 
a real divan, pillow crowded — the very last device to conduce 
work — and a melodium, a real melodium that plays real tunes. 
Incongruous? No. it is in perfect keeping with the spirit of this 
kitchen. Here, mind you, work is play! 
A shelf table ranges down two sides of the wall; let in one of 
them, convenient sinks with modern open plumbing. At the 
end of these tables, row above row of un-modern jars, ancient 
crocks filled with sugar and spice and everything nice out of 
which, if we believe the rhyme, little girls as well as preserves 
are made. In the middle of the room, supported by heavy un- 
Tbe toaster has a table to itself. Its output is six large slices at a time—and no 
burnt fingers 
stripped timbers, is a long, oil-burning stove. A slab of soap¬ 
stone tops it. The floor is covered with red Italian tiles wide- 
coursed. Valanced curtains of a gaudy tint give finish to the 
windows, and the ancient atmosphere is further accented bv the 
hams and lanthornes and sides of bacon and picturesque 
schucked ears of corn dangling from the open rafters—a char¬ 
acteristically feminine contrast to the rows of burnished pots 
and pans, many of them of up-to-date make, that hang, like the 
sword of Damocles, over the soapstone top of the blue-flame 
oil stove. 
If ever femininity were set down in concrete terms in one 
room, here it is — old-fashioned femininity, the domesticated, 
generous, laughter-loving femininity that can play the melodium 
while the blackberries are stewing, can loll on the coach with a 
novel as the currant jelly drips. But in addition, the various 
furnishings of this kitchen represent the principle of selection 
reduced to the ,nth power. Half a dozen countries and cen¬ 
turies have been drawn on for the furnishings, and with mas- 
terlv appreciation for both effect and efficiency have the objects 
been arranged. 
Concentrated efficiency — twin cobaltum sinks, sanitary vitrolite drainboard and work 
table, with flower bin and drawers below 
A Gray Kitchen 
In the planning of my home I began with the kitchen, the 
most important room of all to that much-pitied woman who, in 
common parlance, “does her own work,” and also to that fastid¬ 
ious woman who has hobbies in regard to its ordering and sighs 
despairingly over the indifferent handling of a succession of 
careless maids. My whole house was planned with the fact in 
view that all the drugdery of the kitchen—and this sounded like 
the crack of doom or a life sentence when 1 foreswore my antici¬ 
pated career for the marriage yoke—would be mine except on 
those weekly advents of the cleaning women, the very transient 
nature of whom would render them migratory and very unde¬ 
pendable servants at best. 
] determined that my kitchen should be just as easy to care 
for, since I must do my own work, as my present enlightenment 
could make it, and I think that another time all the tentative 
ventures made this time would be augmented by a number of 
radical departures from the old order of kitchens. 
Not long ago a prominent architect introduced in an otherwise 
self-confident article in an architectural magazine, a cry for 
(Continued on page 173) 
