36 
House & Garden 
A LIVING and DINING ROOM COMBINED 
The Solution for a Small House or City Apartment Where 
Comfort and Convenience Are Considered 
ETHEL DAVIS SEAL 
In furnishing this compact room we use a mahogany chest of drawers 41" high, 24" by 
38", $88; Windsor settee, 12" long, $76; and an upholstered chair 
La France Urn cretonne is a delightful combination 
of blue, black, cream, yellow and rose, $3 a yard 
H OW the world has 
changed! 
It seems as though 
fully half of it had 
moved into compar¬ 
atively small - sized 
apartments, reducing the 
bare act of living to a 
minimum of exertion, 
and eliminating the 
problem of how to carpet 
the stairs. A sizable 
proportion of it is living 
“in rooms,” elastically 
termed, while it becomes 
an enthusiastic pillar in 
the world of commerce 
and industry, with a 
soul-satisfying pay en¬ 
velope attached there¬ 
unto. And a vociferous 
fraction of it has im¬ 
bibed the high principles 
of art, and seeks its habi¬ 
tations in the unlikely 
spots of the earth, and 
having found the pos- 
s i b 1 e combination of 
winding stair, huge open 
fireplace, and a paint- 
able roofline window 
view, moves in and pro¬ 
ceeds to evolve a stun¬ 
ning interior with color 
and curtains and soul. 
What place is there 
here for a dining room? 
Or anywhere, in fact, 
where there is a scarcity of space and 
minutes, and a love of an artistically 
individual way of living? 
A Studio Room 
In the home of a celebrated artist, on 
the edge of a flowing canal, you descend 
through a garden of posies, and enter 
the low door. Except for the kitchen, the 
first floor is given over entirely to a 
studio-place with sky windows to the 
north and the river; a huge studio-place, 
with English weather-beaten furniture, 
and a fireplace built for logs that 
smoulder and glow. At one extreme end 
of the room, and I might practically add, 
the end near the kitchen, there is a long 
refectory table and any number of re¬ 
fectory chairs. You should walk in 
some time when a meal is in progress; 
a chair will be drawn up for you where 
you can get a glimpse of the river, and 
if you listen you can hear the tinkle of 
bells on the mules as they pull a laden canal 
boat upstream. And the talk will hover around 
the paintings leaning in piles against the walls, 
and looking through the door you will recog¬ 
nize a pictured bit of garden, and in the light 
of the fire on the hearth you have visions of 
building for your own a small cabin of clay 
and wattles, with bean rows, and a hive for the 
honey bee—and if you do—in the light of 
to-day’s experience and the crackling fire, 
there will surely be no dining room therein. 
Why do we cling to time-honored customs? 
I often wonder this when I eat a meal in my 
own living room, on my mahogany gate-leg, 
with the pewter candlesticks and their tips of 
flame reflecting satisfyingly in the surface of 
the wood, and my percolator bubbling indus¬ 
triously on the Chinese tea-wagon nearby, and 
the Chinese-red cups warming my spirit in a 
way they could never do in an impersonal 
dining room. And then 
in my most practical 
moods when I would 
give anything for an 
extra guest room, or an¬ 
other work room with 
labeled shelves and plen¬ 
ty of space, I wonder 
how small families can 
waste a perfectly good 
room on eating. 
Eliminate the Dining Room 
The truth of the mat¬ 
ter is that they do not. 
All the time we hear of 
small houses being built 
with, at most, a sunny 
little breakfast room, 
and meals are happily 
served in many places— 
in the living room, in 
front of the cheerful fire, 
on the enclosed porch 
with its wicker and cre¬ 
tonne, out on the lawn 
under the trees. And in 
apartment houses people 
are frankly utilizing the 
erstwhile dining room as 
anything else more use¬ 
ful and more worth 
while. 
I suppose by now, in 
the minds of the unini¬ 
tiated, the question has 
arisen as to just how one 
should go about combin¬ 
ing the living and dining room without 
making a hopeless mess of things. 
Visions of china closets and extension 
tables, no matter how camouflaged, pre¬ 
sent esthetic difficulties when combined 
with desks and books. But really the 
joy of the whole matter lies in getting rid 
of these bugbears. Extension tables are 
all right when they don’t look like what 
we used to associate with the term, but 
the kind most people have is the old 
kind, and therefore joyously discarded; 
and everyone is tired of trying to live 
down to their showy china closet, or 
should be. So we can travel on with a 
free mind. 
Speaking of Food 
Many a room is wholly living room 
except at mealtime, and then merely with 
an additional glory added unto it in the 
shape of a daintily served repast, par¬ 
taken of with happiness because one’s 
mind is, in the very surroundings, given 
other food for thought than the wonderment 
as to what course is next to be borne through 
the swinging door, or the way the cook has 
broiled the chops. 
Have you never noticed how people talk 
about the food they’re eating? It oftens forms 
the chief topic of conversation. 
But try dining these same people in your 
living room, or your garden, and the fame of 
