Design for living

It's been a difficult couple of weeks for post-War British design, with the loss of not one but two women designers who were giants. Not literally giants, obviously. That would be silly.


First to go was Lucienne Day, famous as part of the husband-and-wife team of Robin-And-Lucienne-Day, but she was a design titan in her own right.


She was a key member of the group of designers who shaped the Festival of Britain, and emerged from it as leading figures in the modern -- in her case going on to work particularly closely with the influential furnisher Heal's.


Perhaps best-known for her fabrics, she was also a key influence on her husband (whose chairs remain in use in pretty much every school and public building in the country).


She was an expert at taking simple shapes -- often from the natural world -- and turning them into almost abstract repeats. Many of them seemed influenced by artists like Miro.


The second designer to die was Jessie Tait: with a lower-profile than Lucienne, Jessie might well have been even more influential.


She was a ceramic designer, and her often highly colourful designs could be found in almost every home in the country.


Using often gawdy colours and simple motifs, she also experimented with the shapes of objects to create extraordinary sets of clashing/matching ceramics.


Sometimes she used very simple geometric designs:


Really -- very simple:


Other times she combined apparently simple designs with delicate shapes to create objects that are utterly delightful:



She'll probably be best remembered for her various tableware designs:




But Jessie has a particular place in my heart for producing a design which she decided to call "The Gay Gobbler". I am very serious now.


A magnificently perky object, here is proof of the name and her involvement:


Who could resist celebrating a designer such as her?


And maybe it's appropriate that they both died so close to each other -- throughout this period there seemed to be an almost symbiotic relationship between fabric and ceramic design.