Consuming Interest

Promoting Good Design

By LESLIE ADRIAN THE Council of Industrial Design's exhibition 'Designs of the Year' has had a panning from the design critics. Speaking not as an expert • but as a consumer, I agree with the criticism : this is a dull and „ unimaginative collection: Of the twenty exhibits of carpets, textiles, table ware and light fittings, there was not one which I would be tempted to buy for my home. , This is an unhappy state of affairs, particularly as the judges state, in their report that the designs chosen 'are outstanding as much for the lead they give in a particular industry as for their intrinsic merit.' It is also somewhat puzzling. During the past year I have visited the Design Centre in the Haymarket many times; sometimes on business, but often for pleasure. As I suggested some months ago, it is nearly always full of interest and stimulating ideas.

What goes wrong, then, when a panel of dis- tinguished judges are asked to select twenty out- standing designs from the hundreds shown? This year's panel consisted of Mr. Noel Carrington, a vice-president of the Design and Industries Association; Mr. Geoffrey Dunn, chairman of a Bromley store; Professor Wyndham Goodden, of the Royal College of Art; and Mr. Jack Howe, architect arid industrial designer. Apart from the fact that, although the majority of these exhibits directly concern the housewife, there was no woman on the panel, I can find no fault here.

But I wonder if the trouble does not start at an earlier stage in the selection, when the Coun- cil's staff put forward their suggestions for the awards from the hundreds of designs they have handled through the year at the Centre. These are then considered by the judges. Perhaps the staff are too familiar and too close to the subject to give a spontaneous, objective view. And surely other influences must come into play : there are few organisations without some house politics, and it is human, on occasions, to be tempted to please everyone with the safe, diplomatic choice.

This is the second 'Design of the Year' selec- tion; and reactions to the earlier awards were only slightly more favourable than those for the current exhibition. I suggest that the Council con- siders changing its methods of preliminary selec- tion. Instead of Council staff they might use BBC listener-research methods and invite a panel of interested outsiders to give their comments. I am sure there are enough people who care who would willingly undertake to visit the Centre several times a year and make a selection of favoured designs.

I should also like to see some fresh thinking about the way these exhibitions are mounted. We now have a clearly recognisable Council of Industrial Design style—latter-day Festival of Britain, with that constantly. recurring picture of black and white panels, metal posts and the ever- eager profile of the Duke of Edinburgh peering at some perfectly flawless piece of ceramic ware from Stoke.

Even the type-face to the display captions has become a convention; and convention, I feel, has no place in an organisation created to stimulate and promote good, new design.

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• I would not have believed it possible to pro- duce an altogether new idea for a cookery book: but Josephine Emlee has done it, I believe, in her Cooking for Texture (Faber, 15s.). Her thesis is simple : that we think in terms of taste, tem- perature, colour even, but pay far too little atten- tion, as cooks, to texture. She lists close on a hundred adjectives which describe texture; some of them, admittedly, words which few of us have used (flocculent, glabrous, grumous, suent) and others which we are unlikely to use in this con- text (lubricious, unctuous); but the majority of which we do (or could) apply as terms of appro- bation, or more usually of disapproval, to the food we eat. Her object is to see that when we cook we keep texture in mind, so that vegetables do not come up mushy, or fried fish soggy. A sensible idea.

When praising the idea of Brides' Lists for wedding-present buyers the other day, I ought perhaps to have warned that some firms which advertise them have no idea how to run them. One well-known London store, a correspondent tells me, sent her a list on which only three of the items were priced, and none had been deleted as having been bought already. Can I, she asks, sug- gest reforms? Yes : do business only with those houses which have built up a reputation for this field.

Harrods, The General Trading Company, Fortnum's, Peter Jones and Liberty's were those which I named. You cannot be absolutely sure of efficient service, of course, because even in the best-run stores the turnover of staff is apt to be high; you may be unlucky and get some inexperienced or incompetent packer. But you ought not to do so badly as my correspondent did, if you stick to those stores which have experience of the lists.

Which reminds me: a correspondent has written to suggest that, in default of a bride's list, a sensible alternative is to make use of a gift service; and she recommends Rosemoyne Irish Linens on the grounds that, these days, no bride is likely to find she has been given too much linen. She may consider herself lucky if she gets any at all. I have had good accounts from other sources of the Rosemoyne product. Table cloths and sheets can be made to customers' specifica-

tions (with hand-embroidered monograms if wanted); and the packing is particularly good, with a kind of waterproof paper which would defy even British Railways' damp. The firm's address is Jordanstown, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland.

I am interested to hear from the Eldorado company that they have been marketing a true dairy ice-cream for the last few years, under the name 'Velvet Lady.' It was originally produced for the American forces in Britain, to their formula; and it is made of butter, full-cream milk powder, eggs and sugar—powder being used, the writer claims, on account of production and

storage problems. Although 'Velvet Lady' baS not been nationally advertised its sales have risen every year, in spite of the competition of th:s commoner and clic ersatz ice-creams. Tins is good news, for the usual reply of the larger companies to suggestions that they should 01 to get away from the ersatz product is that tb° public are not interested.

There are TV chairs, tables, `dumpies,' snacks' sandwiches and toasting forks. My latest addition to the inventory of telly ad-mass trivia is 11 footlets,' a kind of abbreviated bedsock : Pric° 7s. 3d. in the Burlington Arcade.