Shelf Appeal presents “The one that I want”

By way of celebrating AtelierTally’s second birthday, I asked Shelf Appeal to take over and write a post. I was obviously very pleased when she agreed as for those that read this blog a lot, I am clearly a big fan.

So, without further ado I hand over…

The 1951 Festival of Britain holds all us design types in thrall. It feels like we missed the design happening of the century. If not of all time. It’s mainly because we are still collecting – with gusto – designs from the 1950s.  And most of the designers we collect, the British ones especially, were represented at the Festival.

This lovely colour film of the Festival makes the obsession worse, not better. In colour it is all so much more real.

On film the Festival looks particularly British in style, helped along here by a nice plumy voiceover.  It all looks a bit clockwork, tally-ho and jolly. It shows the Festival to be very much a production intended for peoples’ enjoyment. But the designers snuck in learning and government propaganda wherever possible. You could enjoy yourself but go home, somehow, bettered.

I like the Festival because it’s like one big shop window display.  Doubtless, lots of the displays were put together by shop display artists. And, anyway, designers at that time were very much commercial beings, used to working in shops, on exhibitions, doing posters, ceramics..applying design to pretty much anything that didn’t move.

It’s very nice to see the Festival moving on film though.

Amongst the delights seen in the film: a miniature train driven by a deep sea diver. Automata everywhere. Fish and chips on Ernest Race chairs. Models of everything. Ice cream. Murals on every wall. The South Bank Centre in all it’s shiny new-ness. A fancy pocket knife display. Molecular textiles over every surface. Balloons. The boats (!) on the river all lit up of a night. The Guinness clock. Skylon.

And, despite the continuation of rationing, everybody is dressed in their Sunday best.

You can read more marvelous posts like this at Shelf Appeal.