Making Britain Modern

Parking meter, 1958 (for Venner)

        LONDON.- Kenneth Grange is Britain’s leading product designer, his prolific career spans over 50 years and he is responsible for designing some of the most iconic and familiar products and appliances that shape our daily lives. Kodak cameras, the silhouette for the Intercity 125 train, Kenwood food mixers, Parker pens, and the re-design of the London Taxi Cab are just some of his well-known designs. This exhibition is Kenneth Grange’s first UK retrospective and it will celebrate his work, his design journey and the role he has played in making Britain modern. During the 1960s and 70s Grange designed a considerable number of domestic products.

London taxi-cab Model TX1, 1998

        The Kenwood Chef was a revelation in home baking and it became a standard aesthetic for food mixers. Razors for Wilkinson Sword, cigarette lighters for Ronson, Irons for Morphy Richards, Pens for Parker, each of his designs supported new materials and advances in technology. This was a time when Britain led the way with its strong manufacturing base and renewed vigour for design, a time for Britain to embrace the future. In 1972 Grange, together with Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Colin Forbes and Mervyn Kurlansky established Pentagram, a world renowned multi-disciplinary design consultancy.

Wilkinson Sword Razor (Retractor), 1982


        In 1968 Grange designed the iconic exterior and interior layout for the High Speed Intercity 125 train for British Rail. Unveiled in 1976, the Intercity’s distinctive and futuristic aerodynamic cone nose caught the mood of the time and set the standard for high-speed train design still referenced today. Born in 1929 Grange attended Willesden School of Art, London, his National Service was spent as a technical illustrator for the Royal Engineers.

Bowers & Wilkins Diamond Signature Loudspeakers, 1975

        In 1951 whilst working as an architect’s assistant Grange contributed to the Sports and Home pavilions for the Festival of Britain. In 1958 Grange designed the interiors for the Kodak Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair and so began the start of a successful partnership which would lead to Grange designing his first camera for Kodak the 44A in 1959. Grange also developed the Kodak instamatic camera in 1968, followed by the Kodak Pocket Instamatic in 1972, the start of a new generation of portable, inexpensive cameras. Influenced by the form and function of Scandinavian, German and Italian design, Grange’s elegant and functional designs embraced a contemporary aesthetic, combining a unique style and appreciation of domestic values, creating products that were not only a commercial success but also a joy to use.

British Rail Intercity 125 Train, 1976

        More recently, in the 1990s, Grange has produced distinctive designs that have become part of our landscape, from the re-design of the London black cab, the Taxi TX1 in 1998, to the Adshel bus shelters of 1993 and the Rural Post box for Royal Mail in 1998, these familiar designs shape our streetscape and continue Grange’s work in street design that started with his parking meter for Venner in 1958. Today Grange continues to work with British companies including Anglepoise, furniture designer Hitch Mylius and fashion designer Margaret Howell.

Kodak Istamatic camera, 1970

        Still at the centre of the design community, he was made a Royal Designer for Industry in 1969, awarded a CBE in 1984, has an impressive five honorary doctorates and continues toteach and offer his support and experience to the next generation ofdesigners at the Royal College of Art. The exhibition will be designed by James Irvine and Jasper Morrison with graphics by Graphic Thought Facility.

RECENT WORK: One of Grange's many lamp designs for Anglepoise, where he serves as the company's design director

Note:  I felt foolish yesterday when I discovered that I didn't know anything about Kenneth Grange, Britain's leading industrial designer, whose career is being celebrated this month in a London museum retrospective at the Design Museum.  A fascinating man and a prodigious, prolific creator, Grange's Making Britain Modern book is being published in paperback this summer.  Whenever I travel to Britain, I notice that the "shapes of things" are different there than they are in the US.  Like most people, I tend to attribute this to a general, but undefinable, difference in cultural aesthetics that may have reached its apotheosis in the conception and design of Daleks and composition and recording of the original Doctor Who theme. (Click link if desired.)  It's good finally to have a more precise fix on things. And I would really like to acquire one of those Margaret Howell workshirts pictured at the bottom of this post.  The press release above was re-posted from ArtDaily.org, an excellent online newspaper covering the world art scene.  The Kenneth Grange retrospective will be on view through October 30.

Adshell bench, 1972

 Workshirt for Margaret Howell, 2010
 

Suspended Animation (Japan and Libya)

Elisabeth Sladen (as Sarah) shows the effects of suspended animation in Doctor Who 

       The tragic, still unfolding events in Japan and Libya have awoken in me a curious and disturbing sense of suspended animation., i.e., the slowing of life processes by external means without termination.

        It seems so strange  -- the protracted and seemingly endless alternation of unverifiable, unreliable and  unsustained "good news" and "bad news" from Japan, dispensed and rotated through half, quarter -- even shorter -- cycles.  Things must seem twice as incoherent over there  -- unless they're receiving different and more consistent information than we are here -- and they are as unaware of our alternate universe as we surely are of theirs.

  

Jupiter Mission:  2001, A Space Odyssey


        Libya, a completely different situation and one suffused with an obvious (except in the sense of being easily understood) political superstratum, is scarcely more coherent and confuses both spatial/political (right and left) and compass directions. (Civil wars are like that.)   Please note that this is not a political posting expressing a personal conclusion or point of view on these matters.  However, for an opinion/analysis of a person on the right (Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post),  click here.   To read a "left" alternative view (from Michael Kinsley in the Los Angeles Times), click here.   Both writers are knowledgeable and thoughtful.  Neither paints anything like a happy, contented picture.

        While both catastrophes are still "current events", they now each seem to have gone on for so long without obvious milestones or signposts that I feel myself cryonically frozen in a permanent fuzzy present tense with no expectation of any future arrival at any point of entry or safe harbor.

Where my knowledge of suspended animation first began.


        On a much more trivial level, a similar sensation of suspended animation arises from experiencing the continuing, practically incessant television appearances of former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, former Tennessee U.S. representative Harold Ford, and former Newsweek magazine editor Jon Meacham (the man who single-handedly wrecked Newsweek, in business since 1933, by making it unreadable, uninteresting and actually physically unpleasant to the touch) on various news shows where they each discourse interminably about subjects they know very little about.  At least Rendell is in his element here -- turn on the switch and he just Goes, kind of like Jane's brilliant Kung-Fu Hamster.  The other two just emit wheezy sounds. 

Unrelenting blowhard, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who will speak at any length on any topic.

Former U.S. representative from Memphis, Tennessee, Harold Ford -- icy opportunist and "higher office political hopeful" turned soggy pundit and  "investment banker"/Rolodex whore.  Encountering him on a Manhattan street is scary -- is he a revenant or an extra-terrestrial visitor from an ongoing real-life "V" invasion?  And why is he making that face?

Jon Meacham -- he actually destroyed Newsweek magazine all by himself.  By making its appeal more "selective", he completely eviscerated it so quickly that he should receive the Admiral Graf Spee Award for speedy scuttling.  A cure for insomnia in human form, being subjected to Meacham's Hamlet-like soliloquies is clearly collective karmic payback for some mysterious wrong thing each of us did to someone sometime somewhere.  For what it's worth, I'm so sorry.  As Linda Blair once said so memorably: "Mother, make it stop." 

Kung-Fu Hamster -- in Todd Rundgren's words, A Wizard, A True Star.  

Click on link above and here to see hamster in action.

Doctor Who's 47th Anniversary

 

William Hartnell as Doctor Who in "An Unearthly Child"   


     Today, November 23rd, is the 47th anniversary of the first BBC transmission of ""An Unearthly Child", the first episode of Doctor Who, and I believe it is an anniversary worth marking.

     Given its 26-year original run and subsequent revivals, I assume Doctor Who will always wear the mantle of longest-running television program ever. For any and all of its ups-and-downs, the show is deservedly well loved.

     During the years I worked as a lawyer for CBS/FOX Video, we acted as BBC's home video marketer and distributor in North America.  CBS/FOX released an enormous amount of Doctor Who programming, all of it for the first time on home video, on a regular basis to a fairly sizable, ultra-fanatic audience.

     When you work as in-house counsel for a media company and have acquired a good reputation for problem-solving,  all of the weird and unclassifiable telephone calls and inquiries the company receives are sent your way.  Because of this, I found myself regularly dealing the "Who-vians" (i.e., Doctor Who ultra-fans), who would call enthusiastically and persistently with the most obscure questions imaginable about anything and everything. An earlier stint working in a record company publicity department  prepared me a little bit for the excessive level of personal devotion some people are capable of exercising regarding matters outside of their family, friends and work life, but the Who-vian passion surpassed anything I had previously experienced or could imagine.  Because the calls sometimes produced  unsatisfactory endings for the caller (not every question elicits the "right" answer) or tedious follow-up work for me (while it's good and important to "keep the customer satisfied", there are practical limits), I eventually formed an unfair negative impression of the show.

     However, this ended when one day I decided that I needed to learn more about the Doctor Who series in order to prepare for a substantive work project.  Over a weekend when I was bedridden with flu, I began watching the series.  The first shows I viewed featured Tom Baker in the role of Doctor Who (our head of Marketing, Mindy Pickard, told me that he was the most popular and highly regarded of the various Doctors). I immediately "got it" and understood the show's appeal. 

Tom Baker as Doctor Who

     Fabled shaky scenery and low-tech special effects notwithstanding, Doctor Who is simply character and story-driven television at its best.  Once you've bought into the story and the fantasy (the successive incarnations of Doctor Who, Time Lords, Daleks and, of course, the TARDIS), you found that the show's creative team had worked very hard over the years to keep Doctor Who both fresh and developing, continually interesting and entertaining. And, as is well known, Doctor Who had the best theme music anywhere.

    The original Doctor Who incarnation was played by the veteran character English actor William Hartnell, who will surely be recognizable to fans of British cinema. (Among other well-known roles, Hartnell played  Dallow in John Boulting's 1947 adaptation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock.)   Hartnell was much scarier and a much tougher nut than the charming Tom Baker.  They are my two favorites Doctors,  but all the original series Doctor Who actors (the others included Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker and Peter Davison) had their moments.

William Hartnell entering TARDIS

     "An Unearthly Child" was originally broadcast on November 23, 1963, the night following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  That's a spooky, resonant thought and it's difficult to imagine what it must have been like to watch a new science-fiction fantasy show during those profoundly difficult days, even outside the U.S.  For what it's worth, the first week's ratings were disappointing, but viewership quickly picked up in succeeding weeks and the rest is literally "history".

     Following, if you care to read on, is an interesting summary of  "An Unearthly Child" and the early days of the series, which I have borrowed from a fan site in celebration of the anniversary.  Although I hesitate to recommend more television viewing to anyone (personally I'm trying to lay off:  things currently seem so grim, the days are getting shorter, and I think it would be good to get out of the house more), but it's easy for me to endorse Doctor Who to non-initiates.  Plus, for any concerned parents, it is definitely and edifyingly "family viewing".  In its odd way, the show is as thought provoking as it is escapist.  The Daleks, while silly, represent a solid and consistent vision of totalitarianism as evil.  And the TARDIS is still a very potent image and concept that has endured and animated a national consciousness for 47 years.

 TARDIS in South Ambersham, Sussex ("Secret Of Loch Ness" episode)

Regarding "An Unearthly Child", Dr. Who Episode, Original BBC Broadcast Date: November 23, 1963:

     "The very first person you see on screen in Doctor Who is a policeman (played by an uncredited Reg Cranfield, trivia fans), walking outside a junkyard in Totters Lane, London. This is the home of Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), a teenaged pupil at local comprehensive Coal Hill School. Susan’s strangeness attracts the attention of two teachers, science master Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and history teacher Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), who one night pay a visit on Susan and her eccentric grandfather, known only as The Doctor…...

     That’s the beginning of “An Unearthly Child”, the first episode of Doctor Who. The series was originated by Sydney Newman, a Canadian-born broadcaster who had had considerable success with ABC’s Armchair Theatre. He had been brought over to the BBC to breathe new life into the then rather stuffy drama department, and Doctor Who was an attempt to bridge a gap between the end of Grandstand and the beginning of Juke Box Jury, a half-hour gap on a Saturday teatime where audiences tended to drop. The BBC had been a rather tradition-bound organisation, but by the early 1960s, with competition from ITV since 1955, new winds were blowing. If Doctor Who seemed new, it was the creation of outsiders and young people: Newman was a Canadian, the producer Verity Lambert was then the only female producer at the BBC and twenty years younger than her youngest male counterpart, while Waris Hussein was the only Asian-born director working then.

     William Hartnell was only fifty-five, though certainly looked at least a decade older. He had become typecast as sergeant majors, notably in the first Carry On film, Carry On Sergeant, though Lambert had been impressed by his seedy bookie in This Sporting Life. By contrast, Carole Ann Ford, playing a teenager, was actually twenty-three and a mother. William Russell had been the star of the 50s series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (which survives and is available on DVD), and was well qualified to handle any action sequences going. Meanwhile, Jacqueline Hill had built up a distinguished CV since the 1950s.

     Hussein and Lambert had in fact two goes at making that first episode. Unusually, the “pilot” version still exists (and is included on this disc). Small changes were made, such as a generally faster pace, Susan’s costume being more like a 60s teenager (a Mary Quant top, no less), and the Doctor’s characterisation being made less aggressive. Also, the theme tune is somewhat different. In whichever version you watch, the first major coup comes halfway through that first episode, when Ian and Barbara follow The Doctor and Susan into what looks like a contemporary police box…and into the interior of the TARDIS, bigger inside than outside. Given that this and others of the series’ key concepts have taken root in the public consciousness over the last forty-two years, it’s hard to imagine the impact this must have had on its first screening. In fact, audience numbers were a little low, blamed on Kennedy’s assassination that day and also on power failures in certain regions. The first episode was repeated the following week, and an increase in viewers (up to 5.9 million) was noted."