The New House Book II

      A second tranche of images from Terence Conran's 'New House Book' of 1985.

    The first image is a page of photographs taken in Leon Krier's Belsize Park flat in North London.  In the mid-eighties I began to know the place quite well.  The library was at the front looking out on to the street.  There was, I think, a grand piano in the room, though I may be mistaken. The rustication in the hall contained all sorts of storage, with a tiny bathroom at the far end on the right. Anyway, outside of the world of the country house, I think it must be one of the stylish rooms I have yet experienced.  I wonder if it still exists. (20.06.26  An informant tells it does.)

The New House Book I

     A day of sunshine and half-hearted showers; a blustery day with the trees just beyond the garden sounding like the sea.  A welcome return to normal weather.

     A return also to the world of Terence Conran, and his second big book of interior design: 'The New House book' of 1985.  My edition of the book is published by Book Club Associates; the original by Conran Octopus.  'English Style', by Stafford Cliff and Suzanne Slesin, was published the previous year and the difference could not be more marked.  Like the original House Book, this is a collaborative effort.  The usual names appear: Stephen Bayley, Gillian Darley, Susan Collier (of Collier Campbell), and the aforementioned Suzanne Slesin, and Stafford Cliff.  Cliff was the Project Consultant, and Hilary Arnold the Project Editor.

     So the mid-eighties, and many of us will have an idea of what that entails, a notion gleaned from journalism and the internet.  The same applies to the proceeding decade, as though 1970s decor comprised solely of garish wallpaper.  I cannot stress enough that since the end of the 18th century we have been in period of eclecticism.  So what do we find here?            Firstly, much that I wrote about the first 'House Book' (Mitchell Beazley, 1974) could equally apply here.  Those six categories of interior which were there as a guide for the perplexed remain, but their presence is by implication.  Secondly, let me say that not all the interiors on display are contemporaneous, some are the creation of the previous decades, centuries.  Realising also, that these images are a selection, an editorialising, so not entirely objective, it is still possible to make some general comments on what, it has to be said, is a very middle class selection.*  On the whole it is 'all done in the best possible taste'.  The outlandishness that was the hallmark of a certain strand of 60s/70s taste is largely absent.   An elegant sobriety rules.  After all, the interview with Conran which fronts the book is entitled 'A Taste for Simplicity'.  Colours are on the whole subdued.  There is a tendency to isolate items, endowing them some sort of signification, which may be the result of the increasing interest in the 'designer' object.  Many of the rooms are very serious, if not intellectual; austere to the point of loosing a sense of domesticity.  They are rooms of parade, not comfort.  As I have written before these sort of rooms begin to take on the quality of public space.  All that said there is much to admire.  The design of the book is excellent (with the exception of the Dust Jacket).  Perhaps those rooms which hint at the Mediterranean are the best.  You may recall that 'Mediterranean' is one of those six categories of the original House Book, and is one that in this book Conran sought to emphasize, it being the only one mentioned in the introductory interview.

     Unlike Habitat, this Conran publication happily takes Post-Modernism in its stride.  One of the reasons, I think, that things went a bit awry at Habitat in the 80s was the inability to come to terms with the change in taste in the late 70s.  Perhaps a bit strange that, as I believe, and I'm sure I've said this before, it is possible to make a case for Habitat being in a state of eclecticism if not Post Modernism since its inception.  It was always a bit of a dressing up box.  This book is no different.

* A book like this is a complex enough thing; at one level it functions as a survey of contemporary taste, but it is also in a quiet, polite sort of way, a polemic, and a manifesto.  And that's before we get to the book as 'Apologia Pro Vita Sua'.

The Habitat Catalogue VII: 1985

      What to say about this 1985 edition of the Habitat Catalogue that I haven't said before? It's probably not the worse, I suppose.  From what I've seen of it the 1982/3 edition is maybe a contender for that award, although 1988 is a strong runner.  Like the 1981/2 catalogue, which I reviewed last year, there does seem to a general aesthetic falling off.  This 1985 edition, I should point out, is the edition I mentioned in my post on 'English Style' by Suzanne Slesin & Stafford Cliff.

     As usual there are several Habitats on display.  To begin with there are the six templates, or looks, to be found in the introduction of Terence Conran's 'The House Book' of 1972.  For the uninitiated these six templates are: 'Country House', 'Farm House', 'Town House', 'Mediterranean', 'International', and 'Eclectic'.  That final category is, I suspect, less easy to define, or find.  It could, I suppose, be what you couldn't buy in Habitat.  The sort of things that made it seem that bit more liveable and interesting, and are that bit less prominent in this edition than hitherto.  

     Secondly there is the matter of style, for instance in this catalogue there is High Tec and 'Chic Graphique', and 'Neo-Victorian', but Art Deco, once prominent in the 1970s catalogues, has gone completely.
    Finally there is a third (as it were) typology at work in this catalogue.  Let me explain.  The major change - a major conceptual change, I think - was the introduction of the 'Habitat Country' range; furniture, fabrics and kitchenware, etc.  Some of it good, some of it less so.  In many respects it was nothing new - it was, essentially, the 'Country House' and 'Farm House' templates combined and repackaged.  A victory, then, of style over substance?  Perhaps, yes. However, it is the first time in the Habitat catalogue when these categories have been made so explicitly distinct.  The contrast between 'Country' and the rest never so heightened.  It would be reductionist of me to present this as a simple choice between the bland and the rebarbative (see the Viby range below), simply because the aesthetics of the 1970s catalogues remain in places, but it wouldn't be wide of the mark.

     On to 'things', and the deeply covetable Habitat Chesterfield was then still available.  As always seems to be the case the fabrics are particularly hit-and-miss. The best all seem to be designed by Collier Campbell; of the others the best are Fleurs des Champs and Jardin.

     Crockery is also hit-and-miss.  There are some excellent designs: Bianca, Petit Fleur, Kristina, Blue Copenhagen (also then available in pink) and 'Asiatic Pheasant' by Burleigh of Stoke-on-Trent; and there are some terrible ones: Quadra, Ribbon, Cerise, and Sandie.  Interestingly Old Colonial, a design from the 1950s produced by Adams, also of Stoke-on-Trent, was still available.  As always, the glassware and kitchenware are pretty much spot on.

 

'English Style'

      This book, 'English Style', is to be found nestling in the bibliography at the back of Ben Pentreath's wonderful first book 'English Decoration'.  Although keeping a lazy eye out for other books on the list, I always felt a certain reticence about buying this book.  I think I may have been put off by the images of the book online, but I must say in the flesh this book is in many ways superb, a real delight.  The photography, by Ken Kirkwood is absolutely spot-on.  There are interiors by likes of David Hicks, Bernard Nevil, Charles Beresford Clarke, and Terence Conran. If I was feeling particularly cynical (which I often am these days) I might say the usual suspects.  Certainly if, like me you have a (small) library of this sort of book, then you can guarantee that certain people, and certain properties, such as The Temple at Stoke-By-Nayland, will reappear with pleasant regularity.  To leaven things there are, however, some new names to conjure with: Priscilla Conran, Piers Gough, Brian Henderson, Lesley Astaire, Tricia Guild, and Susan Collier (of Collier Campbell).  I could go on.  Anyway, in all there are some 58 entries or short chapters - short on text, but rich in photography.  In addition, there is both a Forward by Terence Conran and a Preface by Fiona MacCarthy. Both are good, but the latter steals the prize. Although this is a book essentially about the English house, the net is cast wide enough to include a gypsy caravan and a narrow boat. (They are, it has to be remarked, the only working class interiors.) In addition, there is even, perhaps oddly, one garden.  The result is an eclectic, seemingly encyclopaedic book.  Regardless of any claim to the latter, it is certainly an embarrassment of riches, happily swinging between austerity of Minimalism and over abundant bricolage.  Minimalism apart this is essentially a conservative book, rather like Habitat (for all its vaunted Modernism).  As the Introduction points out the short efflorescence of the Sixties - in its wilder moments - had little lasting influence on English style.  There are no inflatable Italian furniture or Pop Art graphics on view here, and I see nothing necessarily wrong with that.  Not only is there an almost innate conservatism on display but also a certain seriousness, that I suspect could verge on the high minded.  An at times distant echo of 17th century Puritanism, perhaps.

     'English Style', not to be confused with that excellent book of the same name by Mary Gilliatt and Michael Boys*, was first published in the US by Clarkson N Potter Inc of New York, and then in Britain by Thames & Hudson in 1984.  It is the work of Suzanne Slesin and Stafford Cliff, who was also the designer.  The former an American, the latter from Australia.

     Slesin, a grand stepdaughter of Helena Rubinstein, is a prolific writer on matters of style and design: she worked at the New York Times as both writer and editor, and is currently design editor of Conde Nast House and Garden, and Editor-in-chief of Homestyle. Among her books is a biography of Helena Rubinstein: 'Over the Top: Helena Rubinstein: Extraordinary Style, Beauty, Art, Fashion and Design'.

     Cliff, as you may well remember from earlier posts, was the designer of 'The House Book' of 1972 and the Creative Director of the Habitat catalogues in the 1970s.  At time of publication, he was 'Creative Director' of the Conran Group, and 'Project Consultant' of 'Terence Conran's New House Book' of 1985.  Slezin contributed the chapter 'One Room Living', Susan Collier 'A Sure Sense of Style'.  Stafford and Slesin subsequently worked together they worked on a number of books: 'French Style'. 'Greek Style', 'Indian Style', and 'Grimsby Style'.

     So far so good.

     However I have a number of reservations about this book, which in 1984 was subject to a scornful and dismissive review in the December edition of the 'World of Interiors', some less trivial than others.  Firstly the design.  On the whole it is very good.  I particularly like the use of a different textured paper for the 'supporting cast' - the introduction, the 'Catalogue of Sources', and the Index, etc.  There is a logic to it.  However the last two pages of the Introduction are in the same glossy paper as the 'main feature'.  A small point, I know, but some consistency would be preferable.  I suspect a technical explanation, which is fair enough.

     My main reservation however lies with the text of the Introduction and its ambition - and, indeed, the ambition of the whole book.  I realise that all books of this sort are subjective in their choices - the omitted (alas, no Angus McBean) are perhaps as telling as the included - but the authors go further than usual by attempting to cement Habitat and the whole Conran phenomenon in the mainstream of British art and design, as inheritors of the 'great tradition'. There are two problems with this; firstly, the writers are too close (being part of the Conran cohort) to be completely objective; and secondly, and I think, shamefully, there is an attempt to do this by denigrating the opposition i.e. Laura Ashley.  A tame academic from the RCA is even brought in at this point like a hired assassin to wield the knife.  And that, to me at least, all seems a bit unnecessary.  

     Truth is, I suspect, that 'English Style' is in all but name a Conran production - at least a half a dozen of the interiors catalogued here are owned by people closely connected to TC, including the home, 'Old House, Informal Mix', of one of the photographers who worked on the 1985 Habitat catalogue - same furniture in the same positions in both publications etc.  

      The result then is not what you might call objective however it is a thing of beauty, and utility.  A very useful visual and historical reference to an eclectic, and interesting, period in British interior design.

     

* Little in the way of inflatable furniture etc. there either.