The Country Kitchen |
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The country kitchen as we understand it never really existed. A blend of nostalgia and nature, the style harks back to those traditional farmhouse kitchens which teemed with resourceful activity, or the service rooms of great country houses with their ready supplies of fresh, dairy produce and estate-grown fruit and practices, it more what these kitchen seem to represent in terms of ambience that has made the country kitchen such a perennially popular approach to decoration. Ever since people began to congregate in towns and suburbs, ’country’ has been synonymous with all that is wholesome, undoctored and natural. The association is never more powerful than in the case of the kitchen. By concentrating on the elemental associations of natural materials, country kitchens preserve the best of tradition, without sacrificing the benefits of modern convenience or becoming sidetracked into spurious reproduction detail. Terracotta, stone and scrubbed wood are principal materials of the country aesthetic. All where and weather well, and indeed often improve with age. Colours are subdued and natural, surfaces robust and not highly finished. The emphasis is on simplicity and rugged practicality. The focal point of the traditional kitchen was the kitchen fireplace or range. Solid fuel stoves, such as the Aga, first introduced in the 1920’s, provide the same cosy focus and have become something of a talisman for those enamoured of the quintessentially country look. Scrubbed pine or oak tables which double as food preparation areas and the setting for family meals, dressers displaying a cheerful array of crockery, deep Belfast skins, wooden plate racks and butcher’s block chopping tables are equally popular features, combining practicality with the lure of tradition. Because the country kitchen is commonly associated with the hustle and bustle of activity and -more practically- often contains many unfitted elements, it works best on a fairly generous scale. Then there is room, too, for hanging displays of pans and cooking utensils, for the simple enjoyment of cooking and its results. There is no real reason why you cannot create a country kitchen where ever you live, even in the heart of the city. Nevertheless this approach does work best where there is the opportunity to emphasize the connection with nature, provide a constant visual reminder that the kitchen, at its most basic, is a place for the preparation and cooking of food. A ground-level kitchen with larder that leads out to a well-stocked vegetable garden or herb plot represents the country style in its fullest sense. | ||||||||
| Last Updated ( Monday, 25 February 2008 ) | ||||||||
