Get their look: Groovy pad

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This week’s Get their look feature is a house in New South Wales, Australia. Built in 1974, the current home-owners – Michael and Lisa – pay homage to the decade. This groovy pad is the epitome of 1970s interior design and décor. The era was a time of hopefulness and looking forward to the future.

Tangerine orange is the shade most associated with that age and it’s the dominant colour in the couple’s living room. Ditto bold, op art patterns in textiles and wall coverings. The futuristic phone, record player and television demonstrate the obsession of that age with outer-space and science fiction.

Get their look

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Taunton Vale chopping board

Belinda Lyon for Oxfam tea towel

Figgjo Flint ‘AnneMarie’ serveware

Orange JVC Videosphere television

GEC Weltron record player

Sculptura ‘Donut’ rotary telephone

Green Tulip inspired chair

2-tier tiled coffee table

Taunton Vale chopping board

Belinda Lyon for Oxfam tea towel

Figgjo Flint ‘AnneMarie’ serveware

Orange JVC Videosphere television

GEC Weltron record player

Sculptura ‘Donut’ rotary telephone

Green Tulip inspired chair

2-tier tiled coffee table

Designer Desire: Roger Hargreaves

Roger Hargreaves (1935-1988) is Britain’s third best-selling author of all time, having sold in excess of 100 million books. He is the man responsible for entertaining generations of children with his Mr Men and Little Misses books.

You can find Roger Hargreaves’ author page on Amazon here. In addition, we have some original vintage books for sale in our shop.

The first 43 of 84 Misters and Misses books were drawn by Roger and the subsequent ones were created by his son, Adam.

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Adam (b. 1963) explains:

It was a good 10 years after his death before I wrote one of my own Mr Men books because I always saw it as his thing… (I’m) principally trying to follow what my father did as closely as possible… My dad’s style of drawing changed enormously and I started drawing the characters in the way that he was doing it at the time of his death. But now my own hand has taken charge.

It was actually Adam who was the initial inspiration for Roger’s first ever Mr Men book, ‘Mr Tickle’. In 1971, when he was eight-years old, Adam asked his father what a tickle looked like. Roger spontaneously drew the first version of what would become the renowned cartoon character; a small, round orange man with extraordinarily long arms that could reach out anywhere to tickle people. He soon followed this up with Mr Greedy, Mr Happy, Mr Nosey, Mr Sneeze and Mr Bump.

The books have been reproduced in many other languages, and their titles often make me smile; Mr Bump is Herr Dumpidump in German and Mr Greedy is M. Glouton in French.

If you fancy a trip down memory lane, I found a play-list on YouTube that includes all the episodes in the Mr Men television series.

Designer Desire: Otl Aicher

After recently highlighting the global influence of designer Margaret Calvert, we’ve chosen another who had a similar impact – Otl Aicher.

Otl ‘Otto’ Aicher (1922-1991) was a German designer and educator who made an indelible mark on post-war pictography and mass communication.

In 1953, Aicher co-founded Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm) with Swiss designer, Max Bill. In 1962, with assistance from the Ulm student development team – Entwicklungsgruppe 5 (E5) – Aicher updated the Lufthansa corporate identity, introducing a brighter yellow colour and sans serif Helvetica font to the branding.

Aicher was responsible for designing the ground-breaking, memorable branding used in the 1972 Olympics held in Munich; iconic pictograms and designs that were used in the signage, programmes, posters, tickets… and Waldi, the Olympic mascot.

In the late 1970s, he was commissioned to create an identity concept for the small southern German town of Isny Im Allgäu with the aim of boosting tourism to the area. He created 120 monochrome pictograms of local buildings and landmarks.

He created the Rotis typeface in 1988 which was later used in collaboration with architect, Norman Foster on the signage for the Bilbao metro system.

If you have a look on Etsy or eBay, you’ll find original 1976 Munich Olympics posters, memorabilia and ephemera (programmes, match boxes, beer mats etc.).

To date, there’s only a single published monograph on this important designer, written by Markus Rathgeb.

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Additional image credits:

Dezeen | MOMA | Phaidon

Designer Desire: John Donald

We often feature vintage jewellery design on the blog however, it’s usually of the Scandinavian variety. Today we’re spotlighting a home-grown jewellery designer, John Donald.

We learned about him on last week’s episode of Antiques Roadshow where a member of the public brought in a beautiful ring to be valued. Donald (b. 1928) was at the vanguard of 1960s and 70s British jewellery design, alongside other metalworking giants such as Gerald Benney, Stuart Devlin and Robert Welch.

He worked with precious and semi-precious materials including diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, amethyst, citrine, pyrite and quartz set in silver and gold. He describes the process of creating his honeycomb series (seen in the top two images in the montage above) in 1972:

This piece of cast honeycomb, in 18ct yellow gold and set gold bee and Mexican fire opals as honey drops, was achieved after considerable effort. In theory, casting from wax – the lost wax process – should be straightforward. This process was successfully created by craftsmen several thousand years ago. For this honeycomb, it took two years of constant experimentation by me with my assistant in order to produce a satisfactory piece.
The casting process is relatively simple; embed the wax object in a can of plaster, leaving a hole for the wax to drain away once it has been heated to a high temperature. Whilst the plaster is still very hot, the molten metal is poured into the space left by the wax. This is best assisted by atmospheric pressure or centrifugal force. But….. fresh honeycomb dries out very quickly, making cell walls too thin for metal to flow easily. Also, we discovered, in frustration, that molten gold will not flow through more than two right angles! This problem was partially overcome by attaching wax rods to the original honeycomb in order to facilitate the flow of metal.
This piece is the result of a ‘miscast’, where the bottom of each cell is missing, thus showing the structure of the cell behind. The idea for this piece originated from mythology: – Daedalus, the goldsmith, made a gold honeycomb with seven gold bees for his son, Icarus, as a wedding present.

John Donald has numerous famous fans and customers, including the late Princess Margaret and author, Barbara Taylor Bradford.

I can’t afford any of his exquisite jewellery – perhaps I could stretch to buying a copy of Precious Statements. John Donald: designer and jeweller – his monograph, currently available at the pretty price of almost £90.00.

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Additional image credits:

1stDibs | Bonhams

H is for Home Harbinger

Tag: 1970s

Get their look: Groovy pad

Get their look

Designer Desire: Roger Hargreaves

Designer Desire: Otl Aicher

Designer Desire: John Donald