Archived entries for ercol

Long Live my Ercol studio couch

I have owned my Ercol Studio Couch for about 5 years now and if I think of all of times spent sitting, lounging, sleeping, entertaining and working on that sofa, it has been a real workhorse. A little creaky when you sit down on it, which worries most visitors, the wood is flexible enough to take 4 people comfortably sitting alongside each other.

Ercol studio couch red upholstery

Nowadays they sell for anything from £1685 to £1970 at British retailer TwentyTwentyOne, although I picked mine up from eBay for a mere £285. What a steal!

Ercol studio couch vintage advert

Designed by Lucian Ercolani, the Studio Couch was first introduced in the late 1950s. It was designed to function both as a large sofa and an occasional single bed for guests. It features characteristic steam bent arms and is made from solid elm and beech in our Buckinghamshire factory. It was available in a choice of over one hundred different fabrics.

Ercol studio couch with and without cushions

In a recent interview with Architonic, British designer Matthew Hilton described Ercol as ‘one of the very few good British furniture manufacturers around today’.

Ercol studio couch vintage advert black-white

Whilst Ercol seem to have been a company that have struggled to find their voice for the past decade, the decision to create a ‘classics’ collection for those that remember the old style well is a great decision. Although much of their designs have moved on and become more traditional in style, appealing to the mass-market, there is still a core of followers that want to see the classics back on the shop floor.

Ercol studio couch Donna Wilson update

Even the British designer has got in on the game, producing a knitted version of the studio couch which softens the wood even further than it was before.

Long live Ercol and the studio couch!

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Britain Can Make It, can’t it?

How much do you know about British Manufacturing and export? Nor me. But it is in decline. It wasn’t always like this…

‘Britain Can Make It’ was an exhibition held in 1946 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It was organised and held under the auspices of the Council of Industrial Design (later renamed the Design Council) which had been established by central government in 1944 ‘to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry’. We still have the Design Council and I have to admit it can be hard to know what they get up to sometimes, although this is a nice reminder of their purpose back then.


Image courtesy www.vads.ahds.ac.uk

‘Britain Can Make It’ displayed the consumer goods which, the government intended, would form the basis on which the economy of post-War Britain would be renewed. Six years of war had left the country in severe debt. The government’s main concern was to ensure that income could be generated through trade, particularly with countries overseas. Hence all effort in production was aimed at the export market while the British market remained subject to a rationing even more severe than in wartime. This situation was made clear at ‘Britain Can Make It’ where all the goods on display were for purchase only by the export market and would not be available, at least in the short term, to home consumers (hence the popular nickname for the exhibition, Britain Can’t Have It).


Image courtesy www.vads.ahds.ac.uk

I wish I had seen this exhibition as it would have been ground-breaking to be seen. Instead, I had to see a later incarnation on a smaller scale, by David Nicholls for Liberty of London in an exhibition he entitled ‘Britain Can (Still) Make It‘ which showed some fantastic examples of British Manufacturing still going strong. Favourites of mine (not all shown in David’s exhibition) are Ercol, Vitsœ and Anglepoise… three really wonderful products with fantastic heritage that I could never imagine being without. In fact, my flat is adorned with all three of them but I’m not biased.

 

Still want to read more? Seriously?
Okay, there are further resources for ‘Britain Can Make It’ here:
http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/designingbritain/html/bcmi_intro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_Can_Make_It

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Wallpaper* Chair Arch at V&A

My friends at Wallpaper* produced a chair arch with Ercol for the 2009 London Design Festival. Being a fan of both of these companies, I am pleased that they have worked together to produce this. Staged at another great place, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the chair arch was a highlight of the festival.

Wallpaper* write “we felt Britain deserved a pat on the back this year for services to design, which have surged of late, both in interest and success on a global scale, so we set about commissioning one of London’s most exciting resident designers (well versed in the art of chairs) to build an arch using chairs from one of Britain’s most historic manufacturers. Martino Gamper was the man, Ercol the manufacturer and together, with construction expertise from engineers Atelier One, the contemporary arch took shape.”

 

Watch the guardian.co.uk film about the Wallpaper* Chair Arch

Ercol chair arch.png

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