Back of the kitchen is the laundry and an old well, which has been drained and is now used as a cooling cellar, and the wire basket containing meats and milk and butter is drawn up and down on the old crank. Beyond this, the old wood and coal shed has been transformed into the studio. Here Mrs. Shaw designs all her beautiful jewelry work at the long work-table across the rear under the four long windows. Opening from it is a tiny little apartment used as an office, and here at a quaint desk, the designs for the metal work are sketched out, and the correspondence connected with the business end transacted.
In the adaptation of the outbuildings to the special and unusual requirements of the owner, an excellent example is given to others who have individual hobbies such as this to accommodate. But throughout the building the needs and the personality of the owner have been as carefully if not as ostensibly expressed. There has been no thought of comfort or of service sacrificed in the effort to revive the atmosphere of the past, but rather has that very simplicity and straight-forwardness been utilized to banish all that might complicate entire convenience. The personality of the owner has been interwoven into every detail, and shows nowhere more strongly than in the preservation of all the delightful vagaries and unevenness of hand work played upon and mellowed by time.
The prospective house owner generally has little or no idea of how to go about designing his own home. If he chances to see some other house that strikes his fancy, he realizes that it approaches, at least in part, what he has in mind. How to accomplish his desire, however, he has no definite knowledge. He hesitates to call in an architect who is a stranger to him and knows nothing of his needs and habits and preferences; he fears that an attempt to combine his own ideas with those of the architect will result unsatisfactorily to both of them. To such a man as this, the remodeled farmhouse comes as a boon. From the old house he is able to determine what type his home will be; no matter how battered and worn it is to start with, he can get some impression of the possible room space and arrangement by studying other old interiors and their relation to each other. That is one of the reasons why the movement sweeping through the country to-day has become so extensive. It gives a substantial foundation upon which to develop an artistic home under one's own supervision.