By the end of the 1950s (and at last after the doom and gloom of the immediate post-war period) the economy was beginning to pick up and money jangled in people’s pockets. As the decade turned the promises of a better, more prosperous Britain seemed close at hand and expectations began to rise.
Nowhere was this more prevalent than in the one thing that most people saw each day of their lives: their own homes. Now thoughts turned to redecoration to rid for once and for all the sameness of the previous decades and bring colour and excitement in place of the drab and the mundane. Stores embraced the new designs and went out of their way to present something different to attract customers and take their share of the burgeoning market for furniture and decorations.
Waring and Gillow, a major retailer and manufacturer of furniture was one of the foremost stores at that time and put on a display that consisted of a real wooden bungalow inside which rooms had been decorated in a modern, vibrant but inexpensive style. Their aim was to catch the new younger consumers anxious to purchase something new and revolutionary for their new houses.
But it was not just furniture that was on offer but designs, patterns, in fact a whole, complete modern way of living, the exhibition being titled the ‘House Of Young Ideas’.
This is one example of the enthusiasm that gripped the nation for something new and different, something modern and quite different from what had gone before. As far as the country was concerned Britain was on the move and the revolution that was the 1960s began in the design rooms up and down the country.
The table above was one of the designs created by Design Associates for the new house. It’s a simple design yet it is a design that is still being sold to this day. For a larger look at this image see my Flickr page here.
