shelf appeal

Nomenclature for the people

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:21:00 +0000

Museums are funny places. I should know - I work in them. They are constantly trying to redefine themselves in relation to contemporary material cultures. But by their very nature they are old-fashioned. Their weighty pasts - and often un-wieldy present - make them unsuitable for chasing the mode. A new gallery today will probably be there in 10 years time, and so become something of a museum piece itself.

A trip to the Horniman Museum in South London revealed a lovely example of an historical display. The museum itself is a super thing; an arts and craft castle perched over Forest Hill. Within the last few years it has had the ubiquitous extension and ‘revamp.’ For most lottery-funded projects that translated as fewer objects on show, more multi-media, a new café and a new shop.

But despite shiny new galleries, it was the old natural history gallery that fascinated and kept my attention for far longer. A large galleried room full of ponderous wooden display cases, chock-full of stuffed animals (including a rather disconcerting trophy-mounted, heads-of-pet-dogs display). All presided over by a grand stuffed Walrus on its giant fake iceberg. Glorious.

The predominant colour of these antique displays – pink – is unexpected. And the detailed interpretation throughout the cases is very beautifully wrought: labels of plaster letters, black with a white edge, in a 1930s font* in nicely measured layouts - stood proud of their textured ground. Smaller plaster-pink paper labels full of Latin nomenclature were the next level down of interpretation. And, every so often, a larger frame was slotted in - with strange and beautiful classifications charted across it.

Old school it may be. But there is a place for exhibitions of weird and wonderful objects beautifully displayed. And I think this gallery sits comfortably alongside its new neighbours. But realistically it might be an idea to get along to see it soon, as it's probably on someone's funding hit list.

* On this font, über graphic designer and sound northern chap Paul Hetherington comments:

‘The overall characteristic is of the font is deco, it looks like a cross between Futura and Gill, but it has quite a unique G. Therefore, an obscure font, probably1930s, an amalgamation of the look of the day and would have been designed and made in-house by a single, individual foundry. Certainly it’s no classic, or something that became widely used. Nor would it have made the leap out of metal into photo-typesetting.’

D-Bros on the shelf

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:03:00 +0000

I am a little bit in love with Japanese illustration, books and stationery. A few items are slowly slipping out of Japan onto the shelves of select shops in London. Happily, I am working near the new-ish Magma 'product' shop at the moment, which sells paper nonsense, amongst other things. And on paper shelves, which is nice.

Magma is all a bit designery and knowing but they like their graphics. And I’ve (almost) given up pretending I’m not like that. I regularly check the shop for new things. Picking amongst their latest Japanese bits and pieces today - I bought myself a nice D-Bros Happy Birthday card. Need I mention it is going on the shelf, not actually to be used?

The D-Bros website is all fur coat and no knickers – as the saying goes. But they do really lovely work. And it is nice to finally see as well as buy some of it over here. Especially after spying it on various Japanese websites. But surfing those many, many Japanese sites is a Catch-22 mouth-watering and frustrating undertaking - don’t know what it says, can’t buy it easily, but want it all.

They do paper so well in Japan. From the country that invented Origami you expect it. But this isn’t about printing on paper; it’s about cutting and forming crisp paper, exquisitely. And it’s about small things, details, quirky illustrations, nods to historical graphics and winks to some of the great designers and illustrators of the mid-20th century: Calder, Girard, Eksell, Munari, Rand…

A journey of delight

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:35:00 +0000

Hmm, I am rarely caught off-guard when surfing the internet these days. So much, so many, so seen it. But last week I was looking at a great image of stacking chairs on the design site Mocoloco and clicked through to the exhibition at MoMA in New York: Design and the Elastic Mind. Great name and what looks to be an interesting show, with many familiar names and designs, some new ones, but all gutsily curated. An exhibition with something to say.

But, never mind the exhibition (did I say THAT?) just look at the website... So much thought has gone into this; it is dripping with content, layers and has an intriguing interface. Definitely one of the best exhibition websites I’ve seen in a long time. The credits show the site to be the work of Yugo Nakamura and THA Ltd. His name sounded very familiar and a little bit of searching took me back to an old haunt of mine - when I first discovered surfing the net in a big way - MONO*crafts. Simple, beautiful and at the time, to me, revelatory.

Clicking through THA’s current site it is evident that Nakamura’s work is still simple, extraordinary and then some. Interface design taken to the limits yet so spotlessly executed it becomes seamless and joyful to interact with.

The Elastic Mind site isn’t desperately easy to navigate, but so interesting that I didn’t mind. The search function is lovely, scrolling across the pages, linking results visually. And it feels like a real virtual, curated exhibit, developed alongside the exhibition. Not the usual afterthought - consisting of photographs and visiting information.

It made me feel that athough I won’t see the physical exhibition, I have participated in the experience.

Many happy returns

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:10:00 +0000

I started this blog on Friday 9 March 2007 so Happy Birthday to Shelf Appeal.

For me, blogging has been nothing other than interesting, fun and satisfying. It took me a long time to get this off the ground. Procrastination should be my middle name. I wanted it to look right. I wanted to write about things that inspired me, rather than things I was paid to write about. I wanted to write when it felt right and not tie myself down to the pressure of daily or even weekly posts. I wanted it to be ‘fit and proper’ as this birthday card for the Clarks shoes Lucky Two Club states. All in all I was, as the cliché goes, writing it to please myself.

But there has been a steady stream of visitors. Sudden spikes on Google Analytics let me know someone has found something they liked and linked through. It’s nice that only for a very few days has Shelf Appeal sat lonely, with no one reading it.

I have been happy for readers to stumble upon this blog. There is immense appeal in finding things on the internet from browsing random ideas and remembrances. Many visitors have come via Google images and I’m sure that is how I would have found it. It is constantly surprising to me that anyone wants to read this stuff. It’s mostly about obscure objects that get my visual antenna vibrating and my fingers typing. But if the internet does anything, it shows you how small the world is. That, no matter what it is you like, there is a website, blog or at the very least, a Flickr group out there about it.

At any point when I have been at a loss for something to blog - yet feeling I would like to - I have got distracted and overwhelmed by just how much there is out there. And I usually end up not posting after all. On two such occasions I searched Flickr for items ‘just to see’ if they might already be in there. Shows you how out of things I am. There they were, with a vengeance; search for cupcakes and start browsing some of the 178,565 images that come up. Or for coloured pencils and look through the 20,047 images that result. Scary yet reassuring stuff. So many people interested in and writing or photographing what might once have been thought of as obscure stuff. Andy Warhol would have loved it.

I'm a marionette

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:28:00 +0000

You expect advertising to make products look as good, if not better, than they do in real life. Despite knowing that, Uniqlo was a disappointment to me. A bit like a washed up Benetton, with some H&M chaos thrown in.

But their recent campaign, featuring 'puppets' made from various pieces of clothing from the shop, was a classic and had made me venture into the shop. Beautifully contrived and photographed, the images really stepped off the walls of the underground and shined in the pages of the free Uniqlo Paper magazine.

In fact, if you didn’t feel the need to buy a less than sumptuous cashmere jumper, you could do worse than pick up a copy of that free paper - far more inspiring than the clothes on sale. Of course, I find it hard to leave any free shop literature behind anyway, whether it's a tiny leaflet on washing your purchases (agnès b) or a more substantial catalogue (Habitat or Muji).

I have been meaning to post about this campaign for a while, it’s the only one that has caught my attention - and got my antenna twitching - for a good long time. But I always like to assimilate what I think about things. The puppets were made by Gary Card, set designer and model maker, who has collaborated with stylist Nicola Formichetti on previous Uniqlo projects. Those two seem to have one of those empathetic creative relationships (like Tim Walker and Shona Heath) that takes their work onto the next level.

Work like this is rooted in imagination and craftsmanship. But, like a lot of great fashion imagery, it dabbles with the hyperreal, too.

Fold in half lengthwise

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:19:00 +0000

Shopping centres are not what they might be. Usually nothing more than somewhere to stay out of the rain, or to find a seat. Not a nice places, really. The interiors are what they are - generic. It’s usually the ugly exteriors of these centres and their awkward, if not nihilistic, sitings that very often ruin the flow of towns. Everything under one roof meant the death knell of many regal high streets across the country.

I spotted these two lovelies in the window of M&S in Lewisham shopping centre. A real rainy day looking place that does the town no favours at all.

Poor things. They were not shown to advantage. Not nicely placed. The window display wasn’t harmonious in any way. And the clothing goods on sale in most M&S stores wouldn’t gladden anyone’s heart. But still I stopped and smiled and snapped. Someone, somewhere, had tried to put some wit into their promotional campaign.

These particular perky paper hounds look to be Scottish Terriers. Better known as ‘Southport dogs’ to my friends as they seem to be the dog of choice in the seaside town. Perhaps because they fit so well under all those old-fashioned tea room tables?

Britain Can Make It

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:37:00 +0000

The Visual Arts Data Service is keeping me happy in-between times. It’s such a nice place to surf. Image after cracking image, taking you through seminal exhibitions like Britain Can Make It, past the London College of Fashion online archive and into the filing cabinets of the Design Council. I like it because it has lots of great pictures of historical designs. Some information accompanies the images (often not quite enough) but it’s really about looking at nice things.

The image here is the 'Working Model Diver' by Dixon Plastics of Northampton and was shown in the Children's Section of the Britain Can Make It exhibition of 1946. The many images from the exhibition on VADS include everything from installation shots to shots of individual items like egg cups and toasters.

What a great image this is, photographed like a piece of sculpture. The bizarre photographic face inside the helmet just adds a surreal icing.

Held in 1946 at the V&A, Britain Can Make It was a huge undertaking, extending to about half the museum footprint. On display were 5000 of the latest Council of Industrial Design approved products, intended for export rather than the home market. And the public were hungry for the positivist message relayed by this excess of commercialism. 1, 432, 369 visitors passed through the exhibition between September and November 1946.

Never let it be said that blockbuster exhibitions are a new thing.

Russian dolls

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:40:00 +0000

I was really pleased to come upon another online repository of images of vintage children’s books this week. So much so it means the unheard of excitement of two posts in one week!

I blogged a website in March 2007 that featured beautiful images from a vintage Japanese magazine called Kodomo no kuni. This time it is Russian children’s books and how gorgeous they are. Not a poor illustration amongst them. They were part of an exhibition in the McGill University Library, Quebec and wouldn’t I have liked to have seen that?

The library apparently has over 350 Soviet children's books published in the 20s and 30s. From this selection I particularly like the paper cut-out instruction book Iz Bumagi Bez Kleia (deliciously translated as Made of Paper Without Glue) from 1931. As you can see from the picture of the cover above, it has a bright and witty illustration of traditionally dressed woman on its cover, pushing a rather abstract wheelbarrow and happy in her work.

In the same section of the website Women as Partners is my second favourite book: Mamin Most (apparently Mother's Bridge). Its chromolithographed illustrations are very nice indeed. Seeing women depicted as architectural engineers is unusual enough, but in 1933? Vive la Révolution.

And as I was clicking through the site I had a ‘whatdoyouknow’ moment. I wrote about one of my favourite contemporary illustrated books Ton in July last year. And you can’t help feeling the illustrator of that book, Taro Miura, had seen this book as the characters are look so very similar, down to the outfits, colours and trouser turn-ups. Its nice, though, to see that what goes around, comes around.

Edinburgh rock

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:51:00 +0000

A recent weekend in Edinburgh proved to be full of fantastic stonemasonry. Street after impressive street of great houses and municipal buildings. Lots of independent shops, many with remnants of their original facades still visible. And hills - London doesn’t have enough of those. There was a really good exhibition on Basil Spence with a great Festival of Britain model, it was packed with visitors on a very cold Sunday afternoon.

And a really nice botanic garden.

I do like parks. Nature tamed for the urbanite. Botanic gardens are the best - they have plants nicely labelled, like open air museums. This one has a lovely palm house, Japanese gardens, plenty of sculpture and a very smart art gallery. One entrance to the gardens is currently being re-built on a grand scale, to maximise visitor spend with new facilities. But I think I’d stick with this East Gate entrance and its fabulous metal nameplate.

A quickly answered enquiry to the garden website elicited the information that there was no definitive designer attributed to this classic logo. The flower was originally drawn by Gillian Meadows, a Herbarium Assistant ‘with a special talent for illustration.’ She drew it for the garden’s tercentenary in 1970.The drawing was for the cover of the garden's journal. It made it onto the entrance plates that year too and has remained the logo, with tweaks, ever since. It pictures the Sibbaldia wildflower, named after one of the founders of the gardens Robert Sibbald.

The typography sits really well with the illustration and the whole logo still holds its own on the website header, 38 years later. All in all, it reminds me of one of those beautiful, classic Penguin covers.

Britain in pictures

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:54:00 +0000

The Britain in Pictures series of books was published in the late 1930s and 1940s by Collins. It was edited by the then literary editor of the Spectator, Walter James Turner.

The overall aim of the series was to tell a social history of Britain, perhaps spurred on by the war and a subsequent re-appropriation of nationalism in all its forms. Although the series ran with the subtitle 'The British People in Pictures', the books were as much about writing as pictures. The roll call of authors reads like a veritable who’s-who of the literary, political and arts worlds of the period. From John Piper on British Romantic Artists, Cecil Beaton on English Photographers and Edith Sitwell on English Women to Graham Greene on British Dramatists and John Betjeman on English Cities and Small Towns.

A uniformly designed set of over 100 books, they look great as a collection. This image (from a 1939 book promoting Britain abroad) is an advertisement for the Tullis Russell paper company. Each book in the Britain in Pictures series, it says, was printed on their Mellotex cartridge paper. The advertisement features 3 small model men, standing amongst a world built from Britain in Pictures. It’s all a bit Incredible Shrinking Man and Gulliver (the experimental Russian communist puppet version from 1935, of course…) rolled into one.

And, really, what could be nicer than living in a world of books?

His Happy Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:05:00 +0000

A man can never have too many good ties or socks. These particular ‘plain or fancy’ socks come from a small leaflet entitled His Happy Christmas, published by Austin Reed in the 1930s:

‘For finding gifts for men which touch just the right chord of gratification, there could hardly be a more suitable place than Austin Reed’s, where masculine whims and vanities are served at all seasons and in all circumstances.’

The Austin Reed gentleman might have received a jacket or waistcoat in suede or leather, or a Golf Jac (sic) of ‘Ventile gaberdine, rainproof without being airtight.’ Perhaps a spotted silk dressing gown, from a choice to suit ‘old and young, staid and spirited’ to add ‘that triumphal touch to leisure hours.’ But the ‘way to a man’s heart may be through his neck!’ so then the sensible choice would have been a ‘woollen scarf from Scotland.’ How romantic.

Even today, there aren’t many sartorial areas where men can serve their ‘whims and vanities’ at Christmas. I am sure socks - striped, ribbed and plaid - are walking out of the various shops on Jermyn Street in huge numbers this week. Perhaps a scarf and hat set for a riotous change. Probably not underwear - except for gentleman shoppers of a certain sexual persuasion.

And I can’t even bear the thought of comedy ties…

Mushroom & Monkey

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:36:00 +0000

This time last year I was swanning around New York, celebrating a birthday in a style to which I could become accustomed. Fabulously contrived shops on every street corner and backdropped, at least in parts, by amazing architecture. It looks just as it ought, New York.

In amongst a long list of shops to visit (from Kid Robot and Apple to the first Kiehl's shop) was Kate Spade - wrapping a corner of SoHo with WASP clothing and objects of taste and social acceptability. Not a beat missed in that shop.

Whilst there I was bought a charming book, Mushroom & Monkey, for a birthday gift, it was illustrated by Paulina Reyes, who has worked for the company rather a lot. Illustration rides high in the Spade brand, on bags, clothing, notepaper… and it seems Mr Spade (under his brand Jack Spade) has a yearning to run his own imprint and has started commissioning simple books, heavy on the pictures. The shop also sells various hand-picked antique books, from Salinger to Cecil Beaton. First edition dust-jackets intact, of course.

The Jack Spade label is about tucked-in gingham, chinos and canvas man-bags. All in counterpoint to the Kate Spade peony flourishes, jewel satins and tidy leather bags. Both looks never quite translate comfortably outside of America.

But in that corner shop, they looked ‘just so.’

Knit it in Jaeger

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:16:00 +0000

Chilly days and the knitting needles are twitching. Or rather, for me, the accoutrements of knitting come out onto the shelf. The design of this lovely card of darning wool is such a happy combination of type, shape and colour. Humorous too. The Jaeger typeface is a mystery (Ashley Havinden?) but nevertheless it’s a joyous bit of card.

Dr Gustav Jaeger was famous for championing sanitary wool for clothing. It was, he said, cool in the summer, warm in the winter and would ‘assist the evaporations of the emanations coming from the body.’ Hmm.

Jaeger called his first shop Dr Jaeger’s Sanitary Woollen System. Opened in 1884 it sold clothes - mainly underwear - and camel hair blankets. By the early decades of the 20th Century the name Jaeger, bought by Englishman LRS Tomalin, had become a fashionable and classic brand name. Coveted by the smart set, it was worn by Scott on his way to the Arctic and Cary Grant on his way off set.

It has to be said that today knitting hasn’t quite the cachet it may have had when this card was produced, probably in the early 1950s. It is also hard to buy such a small amount of anything useful, as haberdashers have all but died out. And pretty much nobody would think to lavish such attention to the design of such a small and inconsequential item today.

Typographic fireworks

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:44:00 +0000

The past weekend of bonfire night celebrations made me think of a simple piece of work by John Maeda that I first saw years ago but is still in my mind. He made his Typographic Fireworks in 1997, as part of a larger body of work commissioned by the Japanese cosmetics firm Shiseido. The calendar series of Java animations, designed ‘to waste time instead of save time’ includes a delicate flower and other treats. I think these animations still stand up. The simplicity of idea, execution and neat navigation that runs throughout Maeda’s work was all there.

Nothing more to say, really, just have a play.

Cartoon bling

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:54:00 +0000

I never really thought about it before but where did Tin Tin shop? Those dapper plus fours, sharp brogues and those (cashmere?) pullovers...

If he’d lived in London in the 1930s (when his character debuted) he’d have had an account at Simpson’s in Piccadilly. Their barber shop and floors of gentleman’s essentials would be just the place to spruce up, before taking off for the moon with your pet dog.

Why is this on my mind? Well Cartier - makers of bling in all its manifestations - have commissioned several illustrators, including Glen Baxter and Jean-Claude Floc'h, to promote their new watch Le Ballon Bleu.

Floc’h is surely a fan of Herge but has his own contribution to make. He has drawn many New Yorker covers and illustrated several books. For this work for Cartier, titled ‘175 – 176 New Bond Street,’ Floc’h illustrates a glamorous shopping trip, as a couple pick an anniversary present in the Cartier shop.

These illustrations are great, unusual, sharp and evocative in a way a glossy photograph of a watch isn’t. More modern too. In this promotional material - as in all the best illustrations - the conjoining of the real and the fictional makes the whole message more powerful.

Just my cup of (Swedish) tea

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:46:00 +0000

I was trundling around Stockholm’s Architecture Museum the other weekend, admiring their selection of architectural models. I was especially taken by a Swedish Konsum (co op) shop from the 1930s. Great design, great typeface.

A bit further round the small museum I found a book to love too: Kooperativa Forbundets Arkitektkontor 1935 – 1949, produced by the Swedish Cooperative Union and Wholesale Society's Architect's Office. It details the interiors and exteriors of the various cooperative buildings of the period – shops, cafes, restaurants.

And who knew?! Fabulous examples of functional pared-down design intended to improve the lot of the everyday worker. The nicely propped photographs in the book, in black and white and colour, have a couple of strategically good-looking workers in each. And they surprise with the weight given over to the visual in them, the importance of the aesthetic. That has been singularly lacking from most histories of cooperatives, especially the British movement.

The cafe interior here is particularly tasty example. It contains basic elements but they are presented with refreshing finesse and detail: smart lights, the continuation of the same tongue and groove and strong lines throughout and robust yet elegant furniture. Unapologetic minimalism for the masses.

Egg, chips and beans

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:22:00 +0000

As anyone who reads this blog would have noted, I am a big advocate of design and its ability to make function pleasurable.

A cappuccino in a Pyrex cup and saucer, drunk from a saucy piece of Formica in plush and plastic surroundings…it doesn’t get much better. This particular cappuccino was drunk in the inimitable New Piccadilly Restaurant, on its last day of trading last Saturday. It must have been one of their busiest days trading, as people took the opportunity to say goodbye to this 1950s oasis.

Booths with vinyl seats, smooth wooden chairs, cone shaped lamps, horseshoe-shaped menus, plastic strip curtain, plastic flowers and plants, stuffed birds. All such a relief after all those self-conscious London cafes, which rarely last more than a year, if that.

Mind you, the clever clever copies of historic cafes are doing a booming trade across London. S & M Cafes are bursting at the seams of a weekend - all be it with a crowd you suspect would never been seen dead in the Piccadilly. And Hope & Greenwood, the born again sweet shop owners in Dulwich, are branching out into cafes. They will soon be rolling out their British Tea Rooms in Marylebone and elsewhere, designed to be impeccably 1930s revival. And Dover Street has its own faux-diner experience at Automat..

Yet it is such a bittersweet experience, visiting these heritage tearooms and greasy spoons. They are nice places to be in, eat in and be seen in. And the revival of earthy materials like glazed brick, Formica and wood is what gives them an edge. But sitting in a booth where someone sat half a century ago, drinking a beautifully presented cappuccino, with congenial company, it’s hard to beat that.

What to look for in autumn

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:45:00 +0000

I look forward to autumn. I like to kick against the trends. Most people are clinging to the last few days of sunshine. But I love wet autumn days. When the colours of the damp stones match the colour of the sky and the wet pavements smell fantastic.

And whilst what makes autumn acceptable for most people is the beauty of the countryside at this time of year, for me it is all about how buildings and fashion come together in real harmony. Cities smell better in the autumn. They look better.

And so do people. Layers of greys, blacks, browns. Raincoats flapping, with shoulders damp and dark from the wet. Woollen scarves, gloves, jumpers - preferably grey or striped. Shoes with socks, laces dipping into puddles. There are so many more ways to dress in the autumn.

And umbrellas. Tiny fold-aways. Stupid big golf ones. Cool see-through-domes. Plastic children’s umbrellas with cartoon characters on them. Even the word umbrella is nice.

The French word parapluie is even nicer. And Pluie sounds just like a drop of water..

4 heaped teaspoons

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:45:00 +0000

Suffering from bouts of insomnia hardly sounds like an excuse for a design-blog posting. Yet those dry and brittle hours when you lie awake may as well spent with beautifully designed objects, as not.

The plastic ‘Sweet Dreams’ beaker designed by A H Woodfull for Cadbury Bournvita in 1949 at least soothes a tired, sleep-deprived eye. With a beatific smile on the body of the mug and its blue ‘sleeping cap’ hat with a red bobble, it is all that is right about mid-century design. The cap even turns over and becomes a saucer. Ahhh..

This mug is one of those pieces of design that gets collectors over-excited and sweatily breathless. They will inexhaustibly hunt it down. And it is particularly baggable with it’s blue plastic hat / saucer. Although issued in an earlier ceramic version, the one that entices is plastic - so tactile and right for the period.

Woodfull was working with British Industrial Plastics Ltd at the time he designed this promotional give-away for Cadbury's and the materials it's manufactured from have those age-of-wonder-style names: Beetle urea formaldehyde, polythene and cellulose acetate.

You can almost hear the bubbling test tubes in the laboratory when they dreamt this one up.

Toys for modern young minds

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:27:00 +0000

Paul and Marjorie Abbatt designed toys. Not just any toys, but meticulously thought-out, designed and edited toys. They sold their toys in a spic and span modernist shop on Wimpole Street in London’s West End. The shop opened in 1936 and was designed by the Abbatt’s good friend, architect Erno Goldfinger.

Goldfinger designed the façade as a wall of glass, broken only by the name ‘Paul & Marjorie Abbatt Ltd’ in cut out Gill lettering. The interior, intended to be child-friendly, with low-level displays and children’s chairs, was nevertheless rather severe. Goldfinger was severely modernist here in a way he would never repeat.

Interested in the educational value of play, the Abbatt’s produced catalogues with extensive information on age-appropriate toys. Images of Ladybird children earnestly enjoying themselves with Abbatt toys – from snap cards to climbing frames – were wrapped in covers displaying the Abbatt logo of two children, again designed by Goldfinger.

Yet one can only guess how comfortable the real fit between modernism and childhood was.

What to wear in the garden?

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:18:00 +0000

On a hot summer day like today - when you remember the old adage that tea is actually rather refreshing, if not rather cooling - you may take a sip from a cup like this. I wonder if it is because I don’t have a garden that I am constantly drawn to idyllic images of gardens and people gardening, rusty old gardening tools, terracotta plant pots and old greenhouses. I have no real desire to garden, you understand, just to partake of the garden as subject in art.

The Beswick pottery pattern Green Fingers, seen here, is one of those beautiful mismatches of pattern, form and function so common on mid-century pottery. Beswick produced equally eccentric tea sets with ballerinas on them and even a set with cacti prickling across it.

On the larger set of Green Fingers china the illustrations suffer from being slapped rather haphazardly onto the china. Other pieces show gentlemen resting against trees, whilst the ladies dig away in their proto-New Look skirts and ballerina pumps. There is no attempt to match the form to its decoration or to balance the quantity of plain colour with the illustrations.

But for me, the isolated image on this cup is just right. It could have appeared on a 1950s Vogue page concerning what to wear in the garden. You can practically hear the clink of glasses, the buzzing of bees and the creak of wicker.

Variations on a theme

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:10:00 +0000

Simpson’s in the Strand was the place to buy your gentleman’s wardrobe in the 1930’s. The must-have item was the Daks trouser, pictured here in the ‘Pinpoint’ model from 1938. Sharp as a knife and available in so many different variations it makes the mind boggle – 41 colours and 8 materials.

The store opened in 1935. A striking modernist building by the émigré architect Joseph Emberton. The sleek white curves and tubular steel rails wound their way around five floors of manly consumables. There was a barbershop, a dog shop, a gift shop, a tailoring department, a sports department, a club room…the list goes on.

The shop displays and signage were conceived, initially, by another émigré designer – Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. A bit of a dude himself, Moholy-Nagy had ended up in London via the Bauhaus. His work for Simpson’s rivalled the best work coming out of Germany, which lead the world in shop window display. Both simple and surreal and executed with confidence, Moholy-Nagy wove an aesthetic that held strong for Simpson’s long after he crossed the Atlantic for work in 1937.

The Simpson’s building is now home to a bookshop. There are no ghosts inhabiting the building, it has been cleared of all but the hardiest original decoration and architectural detail. And the windows are unloved.

Enough and no more

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 18:50:00 +0000

Ton. A simple idea for a book, looking at weights. But beautifully executed by Japanese illustrator Taro Miura. The Japanese have really adopted the mantle of illustration these days and the clean, succinct and confident lines of these images are some of the best.

I love the simple, sequential story form in children’s books. It’s a format that can free an illustrator to really make strong symbolic images. I spent many hours as a child looking at The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a seminal book in this style.

The stencil or pochoir illustration really appeals to me. Childlike yet sophisticated, like all the best illustration. This work isn’t about free flowing pencil lines and washed over colours. It is a short sharp shock of image and word.

It seems to me the rigidity of the process, or style - as these illustrations or probably computer generated - of stencilling reduces images to their individual elements, so that they verge on the pictogram.

Miura’s work certainly does. And his other books on construction and tools suggest he has a bit of a thing going for industrial imagery, and the opportunities it gives for exploiting silhouette in illustration form. How lovely it would be to see someone like this let loose on actual signage, especially for a children’s space.

Swept away

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 20:13:00 +0000

I have a book about brushes. I like to know I’m not the only person who thinks too much about such inconsequential items. Some really beautiful brushes are manufactured in Sweden by Iris Hantverk, put together by a visually impaired workforce.

Some of their brushes have popped up in those knowing shops that line Columbia Road in London, precisely aimed at homemakers who don’t. The kind of people who hang tea towels on the wall and have improbably neat sets of herb and spice jars. The kind of people who revel in Labour and Wait’s faux wartime make do and mend aesthetic. Who coo at their regulation fly swats and seed markers, school plimsolls and brown betty teapots.

London is full of people like that. I like London because it can support such improbably twee shops. Because you soon realise you aren’t the only one who will buy a used plant pot with no intention of putting a plant in it.

I haven’t yet found one of these small Hantwerk horse brushes to buy though- it may have to be a trip to Sweden – but the website has many such pared down treasures on it.

Useful yet beautiful. Mr Morris would have approved.

Icing on the cake

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:31:00 +0000

Shops and their signature colours. Lovely. Harrod's green. Selfridge's yellow. Liberty purple. Fortnum & Mason's eau de nil.

I’m not sure when Fortnum and Mason adopted their tasteful, delicate blue-green choice. It’s a colour that shimmered on walls and shot through the weave of ladies striped gowns in the Georgian period. As Fortnum has been trading, in some form or another, since then, it is nice to think of it having been their signature colour for a long time.

But it is more likely that the colour became theirs in the 1930s, when it was revived and took on an iconic status. Everything from Vitrolite bathrooms to crushed velvet, bias cut evening jackets, came in eau de nil. Back then, the words ‘eau de nil’ were all that was tasteful.

Fortnum's have recently revived the colour. They have rebranded and reboxed everything from biscuits and cup cakes to tea in it. The façade of the shop too proclaims its allegiance; looking somewhat like a grand cake on the busy, dirty length of Piccadilly. And Fortnum’s have liberally applied the colour to their new shops-within a-shop in Japan, which repeat the décor of the London store.

The wee hound pictured here is from a Fortnum and Mason marketing leaflet of the 1930s. And although he was available in ‘orange plush’, the eau de nil of the Fortnum lettering is the thing.