Welcome to our first monthly mailer. Designed to provide continuity between publications,
we bring you a bit of Midcentury news, a couple of short articles and our listings of fun things
to do in London over the next couple of months.
It was great to see so many of you at the Midcentury Modern Show at Lord's in May – an exciting day for us, as it was the first opportunity we'd had to meet our readers (having just launched the magazine two weeks previously!).
In fact, I hardly got a minute to look around myself (well, apart from sneaking off to check out
the contemporary garden chairs when no one was looking...!).
We now have our next outing to look forward to: Vintage Festival on the South Bank at the end
of the month. We'll be manning our stand in the Vintage Village, so do come and say hello
if you're there.
Please continue to spread the word, and remember you can also follow us on twitter!
Subscribe to Midcentury magazine before 31 August for the chance to win a highly collectable pair of 1950s cushions.
Made by Jane Foster Vintage Cushions using fabric designed by
Marion Mahler and David Parsons, the pair would normally retail at £90.
It's just £6.95 per year for UK readers and a little more if you live overseas.
To subscribe, click here.
Katie Hill-Lines from Stevenage won the Paul Catherall limited edition print of the iconic
Skylon for signing up to our mailing list before 1st June. Congratulations and we hope it
has pride of place!
Photograph courtesy of Penguin Press
And so begins the opening paragraph of Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything. Written and set in the early '50s, it's a New York story of four young career women fighting their way through the Manhattan smog to find their place and fit in.
So far, so chick-lit, so Sex and the City. But The Best of Everything goes so much further than the cat-fighty lives of Carrie and co. I'd call it my favourite read of the year, even though there's still half a year to go. Why? I'll explain.
I used to think mid-century modern was purely about visual style, but I've discovered that it's more than just an aesthetic. It's about bringing back forgotten classics from every aspect of cultural life, whether it's design, film or literature.
Jaffe's book has been hailed as one of the first in modern literature to give a voice to the 20- and 30-somethings that didn't want to settle for a life in the burbs. Despite the after-work cocktails and a dazzling New York skyline, it's much more than a charmed tale of city life. It's not a critique, nor is it necessarily a feminist statement. The book is a quiet, unassuming observation of the limited options and the reality of inequality in a time that we've come to glamourise.
Sure, there's the naivety of the odd office girl waiting for her dream-boat suit-clad man to sweep her into a life of marriage and babies (and inevitably the odd mistress along the way), but the book also represents the struggling single mother (an extreme taboo at the time) and the ambitious career woman working for a pittance, striving to be taken seriously in her job.
It was thanks to a tiny cameo role in Mad Men, where we see Don Draper reading a copy
in bed, that The Best of Everything was spurred into reprint and it's been flying off the shelves ever since.
Jaffe wrote this book when she was 26, after reading Kitty Foyle, the 1939 novel by Christopher Morley, which had been made into a movie in the '40s, starring Ginger Rogers. Kitty Foyle was meant to be a book about working girls in New York, but Jaffe read it and declared: "I thought it was dumb. He doesn't know anything about women. I know about women. I'm going to write that working-girl book."
The Best of Everything certainly has its fair share of delicious style description – stifling rent-controlled Manhattan apartments,
chic black suits and camel-haired coats. But Jaffe's fiction
of New York isn't a glossy fiction of a starry-skied city. For the women in this book it's either
work or marriage – because you couldn't, contrary to the title, really have the best of everything.
She interviewed over 50 women about "all the things that nobody spoke about in polite company" to see if their experience of
New York was the same as her own. In 2005, nearly
50 years later, Jaffe wrote: "I thought that if I could help one young woman sitting in her tiny apartment thinking she was all alone and a bad girl, then the book would be worthwhile.
I had no idea what a chord it would strike for millions."
There's something about this book – not just the style, but the lives of the people it tells – that's timeless. So, you see, mid-century will always be more than just an iconic chair. It's a way of learning from the past a way to live in today.
by Huma Qureshi
What to do and where to do it: here's our list of exhibitions, markets, and other fun things.
We're starting with London this month, but we hope to eventually include the rest of the UK too.
If you have something to recommend,
please email listings@midcenturymagazine.co.uk.
Design Museum, London SE1
Until 7 August
www.designmuseum.org
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, PO19
25 June – 2 October
of working-class families, becoming a familiar part of British culture and folklore.
Contemporary photographer Anna Fox has spent two years photographing life at
Butlin's in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, one of only three that still remain in the UK.
www.pallant.org.uk
Business Design Centre, London N1
6 July – 9 July
50 young designers with an entrepreneurial flare and a strong body of work. There will also
be a New Designers Part 2 Awards Preview Evening on Wednesday 6 July officially opened
by Stephen Webster.
www.newdesigners.com
Kempton Park Racecourse, Sunbury on Thames, TW16
Tuesday 12 July, Tuesday 26 July
of furniture, silverware, jewellery, ceramics, kitchenalia, vintage fashion, clocks, paintings, cameras, books etc.
www.kemptonantiques.com
Design Museum, London SE1
20 July – 30 October
www.designmuseum.org
Barbican Centre, London, EC2Y
25 July – 28 December (Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays)
www.barbican.org.uk
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, SE1
29 July – 31 July
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Collectors of post-war Poole would agree that the early '60s was the most creative period in its history. This month we were lucky enough to see a unique collection of these colourful pieces, acquired by Ben over the past 30 years. "I bought my first piece of Poole when I was 15. It was a brightly coloured vase and its originality, shape and colour appealed to me then as it does now."
Ben's collection consists of 55 pieces dating between 1964 and 1970 and reflects the full spectrum of designs and palettes used
during this period. "For me, when viewed en masse,
the collection is a rare visual treat."
Robert Jefferson was appointed Designer at Poole Pottery in 1958 and is credited with the development of the Poole Pottery Studio. He worked alongside Studio Manager Guy Sydenham and used the latest glazes and experimental techniques as a means of developing new products and of preserving the unique identity of the Pottery. A cornerstone of the Studio's philosophy was the encouragement of freedom of expression. Artists were not required to comply with factory pattern books and there was no restriction on the choice of subject matter.
It is the variety of these pieces that has driven Ben's enthusiasm, "There is something addictive about collecting this 'Studio' pottery." Due to a move abroad, he is putting the collection up for sale. If you'd be interested in an investment purchase, please contact ben@mistral.co.uk.
