If, like me, you remember from your younger years the mesmerising Newton’s Cradle; a foot-long plastic matchstick concealing a lighter; or a black puck that attracts thousands of tiny steel diamonds you can sculpt, you know the work of Richard Loncraine. A wonderful book telling of the executive toys and hand-held amusements he made in partnership with Peter Broxton throughout the Seventies and Eighties has absorbed me this festive season, sparking memories of the ‘Oh, they did that too!’ variety. Crucially, the dry wit the pair deployed when coming up with their many creations prompted this post, since they share an approach that is distinctively British with several other artists and makers.
If you’ve seen Bellman & True, The Missionary and Richard III, you also know Loncraine’s work. None of those films, which he directed, is as funny as pens shaped like mullets and presented in fish crates, pencil holders made from real pencils or book jackets that are actual tailored jackets. Liquid puzzles in which you have to re-cork champagne or get Perrier bubbles back in the bottle give you more of an idea of his and Broxton’s waggish work, which intersected with a remarkable period of creativity in this country.
As car ownership soared in the Sixties, the road network expanded exponentially and so did an entire industry of support services. The Kenning Motor Group had motor dealerships, tyre service depots and petrol forecourts across the country and built service stations on the new motorways. At the start of the M1 in north west London, the Group opened what became known as the K Garage in 1965 – a highly distinctive Brutalist cuboid in concrete and cast glass. A ramp wound its way around the building to the roof, but to passers-by its best-known feature was the single car sitting inside a glass box that projected from the upper façade. With a big analogue clock at either end as further encouragement, the car always looked like it was desperate to join the never-ending flow of fast-moving traffic outside. No idea of the carchitect, sadly.
The independent fashion stores of the King’s Road was the place to shop in the Sixties. Many of them sported droll names. Nigel Waymouth, Sheila Cohen and John Pearse had Granny Takes A Trip; a few years after, impresario Malcolm McLaren opened Let it Rock, followed by SEX with Vivienne Westwood. But in 1967 came Just Looking, its name a knowing reference to that age-old phrase deployed by nervous or impecunious British shoppers and whose two large, circular doors set within a polished façade evoke both binoculars and sunglasses. I can’t, annoyingly, determine who the designer was here either but the boutique was still cool enough two years later to feature in an episode of the TV drama series Special Branch.
David Ogle left the Fleet Air Arm after the war, studied industrial design and founded Ogle Design. The firm began by styling the new transistor radios, and its most famous product is surely the Raleigh Chopper bicycle, beloved of Seventies boys like me, which took design cues from American Harley Davidson motorbikes such as the dropped handlebars and saddle backrest. It was a clever and amusing transatlantic transplant, but the T-bar gear shift betrays Ogle Design’s eventual specialisation – creating cars, including the Robin Reliant. For this piece I’ve chosen a much snazzier yet far less famous vehicle of theirs: the Bond Bug. Though also a three-wheeler, this stylish, angular design that came in any colour you liked as long as it was bright orange is much closer to my heart, not least as one was always parked near my parents’ house during my childhood and attracted covetous looks – it made me think of sci-fi films or James Bond films (slightly dully, the name actually comes from a Reliant subsidiary) though today I can’t help thinking of ladybirds. The orange ones, obviously.
Before retiring to become the ‘naked gardener’, Ian Pollard was that very rare thing, an architect and developer through his company Flaxyard. In the Eighties Sainsbury’s was commissioning private architects to design some of their stores, with the aim of raising the aesthetic quality of such urban interventions. Nick Grimshaw famously brought High Tech to Camden, but it was Ian Pollard who infamously brought Egyptian Deco to the Warwick Road branch of the company’s Homebase DIY chain. The car park was defined by massive columns with lotus leaf capitals supporting great beams; five even taller columns held up frankly-expressed RSJs to announce the entrance. The elevations were decorated with vast bas reliefs of Egyptian gods, except they brandished power tools as well as ankhs, and rearing asps loomed along the cornices. The whole confection was absurd but undoubtedly amusing, though one of the Sainsbury brothers didn’t see the joke and ordered the polychrome column capitals to be whitewashed and that entrance portal demolished.
Architectural amusement reached the Nineties – just about – thanks to the delayed redevelopment of No.1 Poultry in the City of London. Opened, finally, in 1998, after the death of architect James Stirling, the vividly styled wedge-shaped block uses geometry and colour to play some clever games with Classicism and more. The corner turret, its clock window said to be based on Stirling's own watch and concealing another Egyptian fantasy in the form of a sepulchral stairway; the west-facing pub window is supported on a striking yellow column amidst the salmon stone.
A pub seems the right place to end, considering the date. So remember the British wit essayed in design as varied as office blocks and puzzles, and try to look for some of your own in 2025.
Happy New Year.