My Grandmother had one, and so, possibly, did yours. The Roberts transistor radio, with its leather case, was the classic radio of the Sixties. It was designed by Leslie Bidmead, who went into a business partnership with Harry Roberts in 1932. The RT1 was, according to company lore, based on the shape of Mrs Bidmead’s…
We’re all aware of the January sales when you can pick up a sofa for a song or snag a bargain fridge freezer but every November there is another sale. One that only the diehards know about. Yet the prices can be reduced by up to 70 percent. It is the Knoll annual sample sale…
This is a tale about a rock star (albeit a slightly ageing one) and a shelf (or rather a shelving system). It happened a couple of years ago, but is no less relevant for that. So the ARS (as he shall henceforth be known) rang me from his summer hideout, where he was, if truth…
This classic tap is designed by Barber Wilsons This classic tap is found in homes up and down the country. It even has a place in at least one of the Royal Palaces, as the company, which was founded in 1905, holds a royal warrant to supply kitchen taps and bathroom mixers to HM the…
This chair was inspired by a picture in a travel guide to Africa and has been a design classic since it first appeared in 1933. Kaare Klint was inspired by a British Officer’s chair he had seen in a travel guide for Africa. Apparently, he particularly liked the picture in which the author of the…
Created in 1933 by the Finnish designer Alvar Aalto, this quintessentially functional piece of furniture celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. The simple stool, which has become a design classic, is recognisable by its distinctive bent legs and round seat. This style would eventually become the feature of all Aalto furniture. There is also a…
Ernest Race was one of Britain’s most successful and inventive furniture designers. This chair was one of his first productions for his company Race Furniture and was first exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s morale-boosting exhibition ‘Britain Can Make It’ in 1946. The chair, which has been re-issued from the archives, has now returned to…
Named after Eileen Gray’s summer house in Maison en Bord de Mer at Roquebrune Cap Martin, which she built for herself and her collaborator Jean Badovici, the name E1027 is in code. E is for Eileen, 10 for Jean (J is the 10th letter of the alphabet), 2 for B(adovici) and 7 for G(ray). This simple height…
As a pioneer of the Knoll Planning Unit, Florence Knoll created what she modestly referred to as the “fill-in pieces that no one else wants to do.” She referred to her own line of lounge seating as the equivalent of “meat and potatoes,” adding, “I needed the piece of furniture for a job and it wasn’t there, so I designed…
So today’s question is: What is the link between that chair and this bicycle? The answer is that Marcel Breuer was a keen cyclist. He had an Adler bicycle which he particularly admired for its functional design. An apprentice at the Bauhaus school in Germany, he graduated in 1924 and headed for Paris, but returned…