Everyday Things 1936; Catalogue To The Exhibition Arranged By The Royal Institute Of British Architects Holden Charles; London : Royal Institute of British Architects; 1936; 25cm; English language 117 pages, lxvii pages adverts softback
Exhibition organised by RIBA in 1936 which alongside the British Art in Industry exhibition held in 1935 are now held up to be the defining exhibitions of British design in the 1930s. It is said that Everyday Things had a better selection which reflected a more contemporary modern design.
The 'Everyday Things' exhibition was divided into eleven sections (furniture, glassware, dressing table equipment, silverware and cutlery, textiles, rugs, church furnishings, plastics, china, building equipment, kitchen equipment, building finishes) and supplier's details and prices were given for each item. After London, the exhibition toured to Bristol, followed by showings at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and the City Art Gallery, Manchester.
Section organizers included LH Bucknell, RA Duncan, Max Fry, Murray Easton, Gordon Cullen, Noel Carrington, Cachemaille Day, Betty Scott, Raymond McGrath, Geoffrey Jellicoe, Rowland Piece, both Miriam and
Grey Wornum, and John Gloag. For Gloag, the implicit argument, just as he had articulated in Industrial Art Explained two years previously, was for the architect to direct the design of ‘everyday things’, and that this conformed to a traditional professional role which had been lost in the Victorian period. It is worth quoting at length:
. . . the designer, the man whose taste and judgement are trained and who can direct and select design, is fundamentally different from the man who has his spiritual roots in the Morris period: the real designer has his intellectual kinship with the eighteenth century; the real designer, the arbiter of taste, should be the architect. In the Georgian age he was in control of all design—he influenced the form of every object made by workers in metal, wood and glass; and the Georgian age was the golden age of taste. The Exhibition of Everyday Things at the RIBA suggests that when the architect once again assumes the responsibility for every branch of design, we shall enjoy a gracious and urbane period, comparable with the eighteenth century.
Quoted from Designs on Democracy: Architecture and the Public in Interwar London. Neal Shasore, Oxford University Press. P204
Condition: There is moderate shelf-wear to the extremities of the cover, especially the head and tail of the spine, there are a few very minor marks and the cover is tanned. The binding is tight. There is very light tanning to the extremities of the pages. 6 pages have one or two pencil lines to the margins adjacent to items in the catalogue, a further two pages have pen lines. Otherwise the pages are clean and unmarked.
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