COUNTRY COTTAGES, OLD AND NEW Old English Country Cottages. Edited
by Charles Holme. (Studio, Leicester Square, W.C. 5s. net.)—Country Cottages and Week End Homes, By J. H. Elder-Duncan. (Cassell and Co. 5s. net.)—These two volumes, both quartos in limp covers, reach us together. There can be nothing but praise for the object which Mr. Holme has had in view. The two hundred drawings of old English cottages form a record at once useful and interesting. Many an architect and many a would-be cottage owner will get invaluable hints from the pages of the Studio winter number. The explanatory letterpress adds considerably to the utility of the publication. The counties in which drawings have been made are Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucester- alike, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Worcester- shire, and Warwickshire. There is also a number of illustrations in colour. From an artistic point of view, these old cottages are singularly attractive; but in how many of them would a man of any means at all choose to live,—that is, unless the most radical alterations were made in order to procure light, air, and a reasonable degree of comfort? And this mode of obtaining a little house in the country, Mr. Elder-Duncan assures us in his book, is not one that townsfolk can be recommended to adopt. It is cheaper, and also more satisfactory in the end from an aesthetic point of view, to build a new cottage. certainly some of the new cottages shown in his photographic reproduetiora are most successful in their combination of artistic quality with convenience, serviceableness, and economy. They show, as Mr. Elder-Duncan argues, how thoroughly the spirit of the old cottages can be transmitted to new ones. A few of the cottages we do not care for at all ; but the series of illustrations, as a whole, demonstrates that many architects have given pains. taking attention to the problem of providing homes in the country for people of moderate means. In rejard to economy, by the way, it is interesting to find the author saying a good word for the often-abused geyser for providing hot water for baths. Writing in defence of English architects, Mr. Elder-Duncan says :—" The work here shown is work that is eagerly illus- trated in American journals, and finds a place in publications subsidised by the German Government for the study and benefit ef German architects and students. Elsewhere British domestic work is looked up to and admired, and there are symptoms that one day the Briton generally may find beauties in it to which he is at present blind."
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