WARWICKSHIRE.- Do you remember when children happily played in the street, you could leave your doors unlocked and Britain’s only motorway was a whopping eight miles long?
Well if you do – and even if you don’t –
Compton Verney will take you on a fascinating journey down memory lane this summer. Running until 2nd October, Britain in the Fifties: Design and Aspiration reflects on how design shaped and influenced people’s lives whilst embodying their aspirations for the future.
Although the country was still recovering from the seismic shock of the Second World War, there was a general mood of optimism, as austerity gave way to increasing affluence and burgeoning consumerism. This carried on through much of the decade, prompting Harold Macmillan’s famous quote: “Go around the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime ...most of our people have never had it so good.”
In the years which followed the ground-breaking Festival of Britain of 1951, design played a crucial role in shaping and redefining the Brave New World of a modernising and increasingly prosperous Britain. Britain in the Fifties traces the design journey of a notional young British couple and conjures the social and cultural landscape of this fascinating time.
In many ways, the 1950s has been overshadowed by the ‘Swinging 60s’ and is often regarded as rather drab and dull by comparison. However, visitors to this fascinating retrospective will see a very different vision of the country sixty years ago. Drawing together over 150 objects – as diverse as a Vespa scooter to the original illustrations for the celebrated 1958 Ladybird book Shopping with Mother, Britain in the Fifties also includes paintings, posters and textiles by Enid Marx, Edward Bawden, John Piper, Graham Sutherland and their contemporaries. It will delight those who grew up in the decade and reveal to today’s youngsters the roots of what they take for granted and yet seemed so fresh, exciting and innovative then.
The first room is called Britain Can Make It and focuses on the Festival of Britain and its legacy. Abram Games was perhaps the most outstanding British graphic designer of the wartime and post-war years. Already famous for the bold, brilliantly simple recruitment and information posters he had produced for the government as an Official War Artist; in 1948 he won the competition to design the Festival of Britain’s logo. In this room we will see exhibits including his preparatory drawings for that logo, the final poster, catalogue and a biro souvenir (all Private Collection.)
Next is Home by Design. The Conservative government of the time pledged to build over 300,000 new homes and the resultant towns and estates that emerged offered new opportunities to fill them with affordable, mass produced good and furniture. Copies of popular magazines such as Homes and Gardens, Housewife and Practical Householder show the type of interiors Britons strived to achieve, alongside a selection of new textile and wallpaper designs characterised by their vivid colour combinations and unapologetically modernist compositions from leading British designers such as Lucienne Day, Terence Conran and Marian Mahler for British firms such as Sandersons, WML, Ercol, Robert Welch and Whiteleaf.
Shopping for Time. The growth in home technology and the explosion in the availability of new, labour-saving electrical equipment revolutionised the kitchen in the 1950s. Robert Welch named his ‘Campden’ kitchenware range after the Chipping Campden studio in which his firm was based. By blending the British craft tradition with the benefits of mass-production, the work of designers such as Welch finally realised William Morris’ aspiration of a century earlier: that good design should be within everyone’s reach. Also on display is a 1958 refridgirator and early teasmade (produced just as tea rationing was ending), an original 1050 Abram Games Cona Rex coffee machine (Private Collection) and a 1950 Kenwood Chef food mixer (Basildon Park) – the first multi-function electric mixer to appear in Britain.
The New Elizabethans at Home. Elizabeth II’s coronation on 2nd June 1953 was the first one to be witnessed by the ordinary man and woman thanks to its broadcast on national television. 56% of the population, some 20.4 million people, watched the event live on the small screen. Many of these TVs were rented for the occasion, or were viewed in other homes but the coronation marked a change in our national life, in how we watched major news stories and settled down for our evening entertainment. Central to this room is 1953 Bush wood and Bakelite television showing the Coronation – nearby are commemorative teapots, tea sets, magazines, and a set of the postage stamps Enid Marx designed for the occasion (all Private Collection).
Never Had it So Good. The rapid rise of consumerism also created a number of inter-linked industries. With the emergence of Rock ‘n’ Roll came youth culture, in the form of the Teddy Boys. Car ownership climbed as Britain became the world’s largest exporter of motor vehicles. Design and aspiration – and not just reliability and value for money – became far more important for the car buyers of the later 1950s. Accordingly, motor manufacturers worked with leading designers to make what were, beneath the bodywork, often very average models look racy and contemporary – the sprightly Triumph TR2 of 1953, the Austin Healey Sprite of 1958 and Alec Issigonis’ ground-breaking Mini of 1959. Corradino D’Ascanio’s sophisticated Vespa scooter, originally designed for Piaggo, was instantly hailed as a timeless style icon by design-conscious Fifties Britain, so much so that it was soon being produced by Douglas of Bristol under licence.
A highlight of the exhibition is undoubtedly the child-sized Royal Caravan was presented to HRH The Prince Charles and HRH The Princess Anne by the Caravan Club in 1955, along with a set of Beatrix Potter books and a copy of Captain Frederick Marryatt’s book Children of the New Forest, which was autographed by everyone at Rollalong who had worked on the caravan. This rarely seen caravan has been lent to the exhibition by kind permission of HRH The Princess Royal.
Indian Summer of British Cinema. It was a curious era for film-makers and their audiences alike. As late as 1959, the top twelve films at the box office were all British with a broad and varied range of stars and subject matter. Diana Dors was promoted as Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe, while the gritty realism of Room at the Top (1959) heralded the British New Wave and ‘Kitchen Sink’ realism. Albeit that it was still very much fresh in the memory, Britain was confident enough to critically reevaluate the Second World War with films such Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). A row of 1950’s cinema seas form Bristol form the centrepiece to film stills and posters for films such as The Blue Lamp(designed by James Boswell) and The Titchfield Thunderbolt (designed by Edward Bawden).
See Britain. Despite the first package holidays to Corsica being offered from 1950, Britons took to the trains and flocked to holiday camps and coastal resorts the length and breadth of the country – as we see in posters extolling the delights of Ramsgate, Eastrbourne and Hastings. At this time, the humble British swimsuit was transformed from a dowdy woollen garment into a rakish and sophisticated must-have beach accessory – as shown with some examples from Southend Museum.
Stepping beyond the exhibition space, a typical 1950s allotment has been recreated in Compton Verney’s wonderful landscape while the Cafe has been turned into a 1950s ‘Milk Bar’ – complete with Wurlitzer Juke Box.
Exhibition curator and Compton Verney Director Dr Steven Parissien says: “This fascinating exhibition explores new ground for us. It charts the harnessing of outstanding artistic talent to everyday commercial design in Britain – a development which in turn enabled the makers and retailers of the 1950s to ensure that good design could, and should, be made available not just to the wealthy few but to everyone. The exhibition explores how British textile, wallpaper and ceramic designs spread around the world; how time-saving kitchen appliances changed the home forever; how the High Street evolved in an age of unaccustomed plenty; the role of British film in reflecting our homes and lives; the last hurrah of the British seaside holiday; and the growing influence of television – all of which made the Britain of 1959 a far more visually-aware society than it had ever been before.”
