Robin Day
Two rare cocktail units, model no. 652, designed for the 'Furniture Trades Exhibition', Earl's Court, London, 1951
Sycamore, sycamore-veneered plywood, glass.
Each: 183 x 71 x 44 cm
Manufactured by Hille & Co., London, United Kingdom. One drawer impressed HILLE OF LONDON.
Footnotes:
Literature
Architects' Journal, 22 Feb 1951, p. 234
The Cabinet Maker, 28 April 1951, p. 365
Architects' Journal, 2 August 1951, p. 136
Mavis Watney, 'Three Robin Day Cabinets', Antique Collecting, The Journal of the Antique Collectors Club, vol. 36, no. 7, December 2001-January 2002, illustrated p. 44
Lesley Jackson, Robin & Lucienne Day: Pioneers of Contemporary Design, London, 2011, p. 174

Tradition versus Modernity – The Ambiguity of British Design
Lesley Jackson
Writer, Curator and Design Historian

It is impossible to understand the evolution of modern British design without addressing the thorny issue of tradition. It keeps bubbling up during the post-war period long after British designers had embraced the concept of 'Contemporary' design. Even in the 1960s, a decade we think of as unashamedly progressive, there was still a vestigial hankering for tradition, manifested through Art Nouveau and Art Deco revivalism. Since the 1980s, historical allusions have resurfaced again in a new guise, often ironic, emboldened by Post Modernism. Without recognising and reconciling these two apparently conflicting impulses – tradition versus modernity – it is difficult to appreciate the distinctive character of British design.

It was the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto who helped to sow the seeds of Modernism in the UK. His appealingly tactile bent laminated wood furniture for Finmar [lot 14] found a receptive audience in the otherwise rather stick-in-the-mud market in Britain during the 1930s. Interestingly, as well as being sold through modern design emporia such as Bowman Brothers in Camden Town, Aalto's furniture was exhibited at Fortnum and Mason, a bastion of tradition. Gerald Summers' short-lived company, Makers of Simple Furniture, was clearly inspired by Aalto during its all-too-brief but glorious existence. The few surviving pieces from this remarkable workshop, such as the laminated birch plywood Mirror [lot 4], reflect the British propensity for organic modernism.

Like many manufacturers, Makers of Simple Furniture was forced to close in 1940 following the outbreak of the Second World War. The ensuing period of make-do-and-mend austerity meant that ambitious young furniture designers, such as Robin Day, had to put their careers on hold for over a decade. The Festival of Britain in 1951 was a seminal event in British post-war design. As well as kick-starting the country's economic and cultural recovery, it provided a launch pad for a host of up-and-coming designers, including less well known figures such as the architect Ray Leigh, who went on to become Design Director at Gordon Russell, as well as acknowledged names such as Ernest Race and Robin Day. Day had already achieved international renown in 1948 when he and Clive Latimer won first prize in the storage section of the International Low-Cost Furniture Competition organised by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was this competition that brought Day to the attention of Hille, the firm with whom he would collaborate so productively for the next three decades.

Day was determined to make the most of the unique opportunities provided by the Festival of Britain to showcase his ideas and get his furniture into production. As well as winning the contract to design the seating for the Royal Festival Hall, he created several room settings for the Homes and Gardens Pavilion. His stylish steel-framed room divider featuring an etching by the sculptor Geoffrey Clarke took pride of place in an open-plan living room / dining room, along with the aerodynamic moulded plywood chairs he had created for the Royal Festival Hall. While these designs are justifiably famous, some of Day's other contributions to the Festival are less well documented. Amongst these was a Cocktail Cabinet [lot 1] originally created for Hille's stand at the Furniture Trades Exhibition at Earl's Court in January 1951, which was later incorporated into a Country Parlour at the Festival designed by Eden Minns on behalf of the Council of Industrial Design. These cabinets, with their attractive sycamore and cherry veneers and their beaded tambour-effect bottom cupboards, are a curious hybrid, harnessing the traditional cabinetmaking skills of Hille's workforce, but embodying new ideas about functionalism and the clean-lined aesthetics of modern design.

Although Robin Day's success at the Festival convinced Hille to pin their flag to the mast of modern design, other firms, such as Gordon Russell, who were based in Broadway in the heart of the Cotswolds, took a more measured path. Their post-war output continued to reflect the dichotomy between tradition and modernity, as evidenced by the finely crafted executive Desk [lot 22] designed by Ray Leigh and Trevor Chinn.

The artist craftsman John Makepeace, who rose to prominence in the 1970s, is another designer whose work fuses tradition and modernity. On a purely technical level, his Fireside Desk [lot 10] represents the pinnacle of centuries-old hand craftsmanship, reflecting his conscious decision to pursue craft as an alternative to functionalist mass-production. Unexpectedly perhaps, the design incorporates some unmistakably modern materials, such as melamine and stainless steel. Makepeace's mastery of lamination and his fascination with organic forms also hark back to Alvar Aalto.

The technical ingenuity displayed by John Makepeace, along with his entrepreneurialism, are both recurrent features of British design. Not surprisingly, these two characteristics frequently go hand-in-hand, with designers such as Ernest Race establishing their own companies specifically to produce their own technically unconventional designs [lot 8]. Artists Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson, who teamed up in 1954 to found Hammer Prints to produce their own textiles, lamps and furniture, also demonstrate these qualities [lot 7]. They, too, were mavericks who chose to operate independently outside the establishment framework. Significantly, their radical pick-and-mix eclecticism drew on 'borrowed' imagery from historical sources, including 17th century woodcuts and 18th and 19th engravings, another typically quirky example of the fruitful alliance between tradition and modernity in British design.

Paolozzi and Henderson's mischievous iconoclasm and do-it-yourself mentality have parallels with the ethos of New Wave designers Tom Dixon and Mark Brazier Jones, who pioneered the concept of Creative Salvage during the 1980s. In their case, however, it was the collapse of manufacturing that prompted them to become designer-makers. Dixon's iconic S Chair [lot 27] with its steel base and armature has an overtly contemporary aesthetic, although its rush upholstery derives from traditional crafts. The shock tactics of this deliberate mismatch enhance its visual impact. The incongruous marriage between tradition and modernity also lies at the heart of many of Mark Brazier Jones's pieces, such as his Dressing Table and Mantle Clock [lots 23 and 37] with their playful allusions to extravagant 18th-century rococo idioms. Such objects were already an anachronism by the 1990s but Jones reinvents them as modern-day objets d'art. For him and many other British designers, tradition acts as a spur to inspiration rather than as a thorn in the side.
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