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Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 237
 
 Commentary
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COMMENTARY

IN THE YEAR OF JUBILEE

This title as many readers will remember is borrowed from a novel by George Gissing that deals with events in a previous jubilee year—a very depressing book
To write about the souvenirs produced to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary is almost equally depressing. You would expect the silversmith’s trade in particular to shine at a silver jubilee, but the products of many firms show an almost incredible failure to understand contemporary taste.
They range from tiepins embellished with the Union Jack in full colours to a whole variety of medals. But who wants to go about to-day with a medal pinned over his chest ? Possibly such ornaments appealed to our Victorian ancestors but apart from the school children and town councillors on whom they may be showered willy nilly I cannot imagine who will acquire them in this year of grace 1935.

Certainly most of the designs would not encourage anyone whose mind was wavering. The designers—if that is the right word—of most of the medals appear to think that any man’s face with a beard on it will pass as a representation of the King, while some of the portraits of the Queen look more like Cicely Courtneidge in one of her more ludicrous stage disguises. Crowns are stuck on the back of the royal heads like bowler-hats on inebriated cockneys.

Most of these monstrosities are the product of Birmingham manufacturers who have been complaining that the Mint is competing unfairly with private “ enterprise ” in producing an official Jubilee medal. Looking at the matter from a detached point of view we may be glad that the Mint has done so, for its medal designed by Mr. Percy Metcalfe, while representational, gives by its formality of line some impression of dignity.

The same design has also been used for the Jubilee mark—an innovation suggested by Mr. Arthur Tremayne that has received royal approval. It takes the form of a tiny mark applied beside the hallmark on silver goods made in the years 1933-4, 1934-5, 1935-6. This of course does not materially alter the appearance or in any way spoil the usefulness of any piece of silver on which it is stamped, but it has historic interest as the first Assay-office mark showing the heads of king and queen side by side.

One of the most ludicrously inefficient devices that I have seen is an ashtray bearing in its centre a raised medallion of Their Majesties. Surely an uneven surface such as this Ipresents is the most difficult to free from ash : a cynic might add that it is a perverted form of patriotism that places the Royal portrait in such a position.

On the other hand a few handsome souvenirs have been made by the silversmiths—notably by the London firm of Wakely and Wheeler. Among them perhaps the most interesting is a silver tankard whose function is in no way impaired and whose beauty is increased by an engraved state coach with lively horses that run round it near the rim.

W. L. STEPHENSON ON PUBLIC TASTE
(Chairman, Messrs. Woolworth)

I have been asked whether there has been any evident improvement in the popular taste such as might be reflected in the many articles of limited value sold in Woolworth’s Stores.

Taking a period of, say, 25 years, I would say that a very definite difference exists to-day as compared with 25 years ago. The merchandise of to-day evinces a drawing away from the mere gaudy in every direction and a movement towards finer colour and line. In point of fact it does seem impossible that a quarter of a century ago we had to sell (to meet popular demand) articles that were positively ugly ; size and much colour was what the people needed then and naturally we gave it to them.

I cannot claim that we have brought about the changes which have taken place. Improvement in popular taste, evidenced by the preference of the public, has gradually asserted itself and is no doubt the result of the widening of the popular vision by such means as the press, radio and travel. Again behind all this, particularly applicable to the present generation of young men and women, is the fact of the more liberal educational methods of post-war years, the extension of the school-leaving age and the opportunities now given for art study and handicraft training.

The factors I have just touched upon must, in my opinion, have had a very definite influence on popular taste in recent years, and will continue to have an even more pronounced influence in the years to come.

The younger generation of to-day is being taught not merely such subjects as will enable them to earn a living, but how to enjoy living, and through this medium it is not difficult to visualise a future where popular taste will discriminate quite readily between the beautiful and the ugly.

I have attempted to indicate that any improvement in design which has taken place is due largely to the more knowledgeable taste of the public. I have not tried in detail to draw comparisons between the articles of to-day and of 25 years ago ; it would be a long story and it is sufficient to say that the difference consists mainly in changing from such characteristics necessary
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 238
 
 Commentary
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Russell, Gordon [1892-1980. UK. Furniture Designer]
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to constitute a good seller, namely, from mere size and colourfulness to very much more attention to shape and the subjection of colour to design. This change in taste runs in the popular price articles all the way from jewellery to pans.
A firm like
Woolworth, who are merely retail distributors of articles at popular prices, are actually in a very favourable position to influence popular taste. They have a close liaison between demand and production, as by means of close contact with the public who buy their wares, they can gauge how far they can go with new ideas and very quickly note the trend of demand. On the other hand, knowing the capacity and ability of the various British manufacturers, who to-day are alert and willing to co-operate very closely in either modifying production to meet changed demands, or in putting in the necessary plant to carry out new ideas, Woolworth’s can, and do, work to good purpose between maker and consumer, and I really believe the result is in the direction of improved design and the elimination of the crude and ugly.

GORDON RUSSELL ON FURNITURE

In looking back at the furniture trade over the present century the war emerges as a factor of prime importance.

Before the war there were great numbers of " small masters ” in the trade—independent units sometimes composed of members of one family, sometimes employing two or three men. The work was largely handwork, machine work, if any, was done outside. These shops were often good training grounds for skilled work and a considerable variety was tackled. Conditions on the other hand were frequently bad, hours long and wages low. Even in the larger factories the machine shop was often a modest affair and much work was done by hand. On the whole the standard of design was low, the standard of workmanship generally fairly high. Of course, some very shoddy stuff was made as it has been at all periods, but the standard of the best was very high indeed, much work was in solid wood, well seasoned. The methods of construction for this material had been evolved over many centuries. Wood swells and shrinks in the width of the board, but not in the length and the cabinet maker forgot this at his peril.

Plywood was being used in increasing quantities, much of it was of poor quality, owing to lack of experience in the making. It was treated purely as a substitute for solid wood, not as entirely new material calling for methods of construction of its own. It is an artificial material with quite different properties from the wood of which it is made, for instance as regards shrinkage.

Then came the war with its insatiable demand for all kinds of goods—woodwork not least among them. To increase production machines were called in more than they had been in the past. Quality went down. I do not want to infer that quality necessarily drops when the machine replaces the hand. But the machine does enable the unscrupulous to exploit it. After the war for various causes the demand for furniture increased. The higher standard of living of the artisan enabled him to buy cheap new furniture instead of second hand things as in the past. The great spurt in building : lower working hours leading to more “ amusement ” building ; the war and the motor car leading to a roving spirit which encouraged hotels, restaurants, road houses, etc. ; great independence of women bringing a demand for flats of their own, all these often stimulated by the extension of hire purchase, kept the trade very busy. Plywood became a reliable graded product, an essential in the mass production of cabinet work. It developed into laminated board which can be manufactured up to 2 inches thick. The world was searched for interesting trees to be converted into veneer with which to cover the large surfaces now rendered possible. A modern movement in design developed spasmodically in a trade which did not as a whole understand the deeper significance of it. But the larger surfaces, the elimination of redundant ornament, the simplified shapes, have led to an improvement in the standard of design. It is still difficult, but no longer impossible to get reasonably well designed things in ordinary shops. Considerable freedom of design will no doubt be looked for in the future in hand-made things. There will, I hope, always be a demand for these in spite of their price. The machine ought to give a reasonably wide range of standardised units, well made, well and logically designed and reasonably low in cost.

BRICKS
In an exhaustive survey delivered at the Building Centre by Mr. A. Zaiman on " Properties of Bricks in Relation to Processes of Manufacture ” a reasoned case was made for the intelligent use of brick. Among other observations of moment, the lecturer made the following:—

In recent years there has been a marked development in England, particularly in the South and later in the North as well, in favour of what are called multi-coloured, rough-textured or rustic bricks. Smooth red bricks retain their popularity in the North. The colours range from white, yellow, tan, brown, red to purple, blue, black, grey, with variegated and mottled tints. Descriptions such as " autumn tints,” “ Cherry red,” “ brindled,” “ dark strawberry,” “ orange red plum,” “silver grey,” " golden grey,” " pot pourri,” “brown (or buff) mottled brindle,” found in catalogues, give an indication of the wealth of vivid and sometimes flamboyant colourings. Differences in width, form and
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colouring of mortar joints are also being exploited to extend the range of colour effects. Apparently architects have been seized with a desire to obtain artistic expression in this way rather than by reverting to the intricate patternings in vogue in Mediaeval times.

Added to this, manufacturers have met the demand for variation in surface finishes, so as to intensify light and shade. The rich texture of the hand-made brick, usually showing the creases or folds where the soft plastic mass has been compressed in the mould, have set the example to imitations by machine. But the machine has failed as yet to reproduce this antique texture. Nothing daunted, manufacturers have gone further, and have exaggerated natural rough texture. This they have done by slicing off the surface of the brick, by stippling it with wire brushes, by nail or wire scratches, slight and deep, regular and irregular. Also, overburnt and misshapen bricks, once the refuse of the brickyard, have been eagerly sought by some architects, and utilised for special rustic effects.

By contrast, the brickwork of the continental countries, though differing amongst themselves, is of regular shape, smooth surface and uniform colouring. Even in Holland, despite the popular conception of “ Dutch antique ” or “ Waalstein,” the range of tones in brickwork is not very extensive.

But however far English manufacturers have proceeded in directions of multi-colourings and varying textures, they are greatly outdistanced by the Americans. Urged by the recent enthusiasm of architects for colour, they have achieved an amazing range of gradation in light shades— white, cream, stone, limestone grey to match natural stone, stone with “ iron spots,” fawn, iron buff, golden buff, as well as in vivid tints of tangerine, toasted brown, pale greens, red, blues and purples. I am quoting some of these paragraphs from a report of the Building Research Station, of which I was part author. 1 They have reproduced, for example, the tints of the sycamore and its foliage—red, grey, golden brown, green and fawn—all the blendings of the Pennsylvania forests at their loveliest in the autumn of the year. To obtain their colourings they have, on the one hand, used inferior fireclays or admixtures to the brick clay or shale, or have added commercially prepared oxides, and on the other, have developed a high technique in flashing with zinc during the burning of the ware. Incidentally, at least one British manufacturer has taken recently to the use of fire clay in facing brick manufacture. A process has also been tried for electrically plated bricks ; or again, of spraying them with metals. Particular mention must be made of the adoption in American sky-scrapers of what they call flowing colour schemes, wherein hue is superimposed on hue, so that walls built of a dark shade of brick at their base tone gradually to a light shade in the upper courses of the buildings. Or again, contrasting shades of light and dark may be used in columns running to the height of the building, thus emphasising the vertical construction : a striking example is the American Radiator Building with its manganese and gold tower.

THE CRAZE FOR BEAUTY
In a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts on “ Fashionable crazes of the eighteenth century : with special reference to their influence on art and commerce,” Mrs. Herbert Richardson gave a whitty and picturesque survey of the world of fashion.

“ The pursuit of beauty in detail and accessory— mainly expressed itself during the eighteenth century in three absorbing passions : a passion for make-up and cosmetics, a passion for exaggerated hair-dressing, and a passion for attenuated slenderness. But the greatest of these was cosmetics, for nearly sixty years one of the century’s most potent vanities. We decry the vogue to-day for this particular folly, and yet the most highly coloured of our modern ‘ bright young things ’ would be pale beside her greatgreat-grandmother. The beauty-doctor’s posters were on every wall, her advertisements filled the newspapers, outnumbering those of any other type and purveying every requisite for beauty, even to 6 the natural and lasting blush, not to be rubb’d off.’ The perfumer’s shop, as Swift reminds us, was the most popular of fashionable resorts, so much so that the print-sellers tickled our fancy with humorous engraving of walking automatons or robots completely composed of the materials of the perfumer’s trade. And the time not spent at the perfumer’s was taken up indoors at the dressing table, where, at a levee as elaborate as that of the Grand Monarque, the lady of fashion composed her hair and face and scribbled her love-letters in full company of all her friends, as Hogarth shows his poor tragic Countess in Marriage a la Mode. Even the art of letters is indebted to the craze, and from Congreve’s Way of the World to Sheridan’s School for Scandal a dressing-table scene is part of the stock-in-trade of eighteenth century comedy. Pope, too, has drawn the dressing-table with his brilliant pen as surely as Hogarth with his brush—that litter of Belinda’s toilet table with its ‘ puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billet-doux.’ In fact, the beautydoctor dominates the social century, much to her advantage—£10,000 is one known fortune amassed from the sale of indelible blushes and similar fashionable necessities. And because she dominates it, the greatest artists and craftsmen

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1 Building Research Special Report No. 20, “Economic and Manufacturing Aspects of the Building Brick Industries,” H.M Stationery Office, Kingsway. 2/-
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of the age serve the cult she personifies, and work goes merrily in many another calling. The books of the great furniture makers are full of dressingtable designs, all equipped for that important writing of the billet-doux, as 6 cabinet dressing-tables’ or ‘buro dressing-tables,’ which is Chippendale’s word—the ‘ bureau toilettes ’ of the French furniture makers. There are Hepplewhite tables with the characteristic shield-shaped glasses ; or lovely things, like that of painted satinwood at South Kensington, in the style of Sheraton, and possibly painted by Cipriani, all fitted with places for letters, cosmetics and needlework. While the toilet mirrors in lacquer and painted wood, in walnut and mahogany, or even in porcelain, employed an army of artist-workmen ; and each was fitted, too, for the 'trim out-spread Brushes and trays and porcelain cups for red.’ ”

COMMUNITY PLANNING AT BOURNVILLE

Long before we had the Peckham Health Centre and village colleges or had arrived at the conclusion that social centres are necessary for the life and health of any community, George Cadbury was creating “ community life ” at Bournville. Every schoolboy knows how Cadbury loved the country and wished the workers to share its pleasures ; how, quite early, he seized upon bad housing as the root of contemporary social evils and how he and his brother eventually shifted the factory to the country outside Birmingham, where it has become a byword of model organisation. In the old days at the Bridge Street works Richard and George, the second generation of Cadbury Brothers, toiled to put the cocoa business on a sure basis, but did not forget on a fine afternoon to bring along their cricket bat to have a game with the lads, to buy a boneshaker bicycle for the shared delight of those who could ride or to take them all out to the country for spring rambles.

This kindliness and care of the Quaker brothers has influenced the whole development of Bournville, now grown to magnificent proportions. To-day the workers number more than 8,000 and the factory is a vast centre with ramifications all over the world, so that the chocolate you eat in Shanghai, Poona or on Kanchenjunga or the cocoa you drink in Bungay or on Ellesmere Island is quite likely to be brought from Ashanti or Trinidad by the Cadburys.

The organisation of social life at Bournville covers, as in all well-ordered firms, pensions, houses, sick benefit, convalescent homes for men and women and for young girls, for example, who are “ off-colour ” and would benefit from a few days in the bracing air of the Welsh hills, holiday camps and tours, and education. There is an adult school, which is mainly recreative, there are scholarships to technical colleges and universities, and there are day continuation classes for all the youngest employees, where compulsory but liberal part-time education is given to all. There is a better concert hall than most towns possess, used for music and drama, there are billiard rooms, dark rooms for photography, workrooms for handicrafts, ample playing grounds for all the athlete could desire, two swimming baths (with compulsory swimming for the young girls on certain afternoons in the week), and clubs for birds of every feather—chess, gardening, cycling, pigeons, poultry and model yachts. All these activities are run by committees and councils of the people themselves.

Opinions differ, of course, as to whether people who work together should share their leisure into the bargain ; whether, as at Peckham, it is better to have postmen rub shoulders with plate-layers and schoolmasters with tram conductors—and more than that, their families—or to make life centre on the common bond of work. Taking into account, however, the voluntary character of the social life, the necessary human variety in 8,000 people and the fact that any social gathering must have some loose bond of common interest, often very much more restricted as in the case of most villages in England, these doubts seem unimportant. Only now are people beginning to wake to the need of a vigorous and full life for everyone, especially for factory workers whose toil may be mortally dull, and Cadburys, as in many other things—for instance, the housing estates laid out in pleasant gardens—made one of the original moves towards this social development.

THE TENEMENT CONTROVERSY

In our April number we made certain comments on the modern tendency of Local Authorities to build multi-storey tenements in slum clearance areas.

In the articles we made certain references to flats erected by the Liverpool Corporation and it has been suggested that the effect of those remarks and certain subsequent comments are a reflection on the Director of Housing of the Liverpool Corporation (Mr. L. H. Keay, O.B.E., F.R.I.B.A.) and his staff of architects.

We are glad to take this opportunity to make it quite clear that there was no intention of disparaging in any way the work done by the Corporation’s Director of Housing or his staff, and we apologise for any imputation of an adverse kind which may be read into the article.

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Interesting Opening for young man, keen on a craft and art, preferably with some aptitude for figures and management. Probationary Term. Write stating any qualification.—Box 24, Design for To-Day, 24, Essex Street, W.C.2.