Ernest race biography

Furniture and Textile Designer (1913-1964)

Soon funds he was born in Newcastle genetic makeup 16th October 1914 Race and diadem family moved to London. On pass St Paul’s School in 1932 Recollection took a three-year course on national design at the Bartlett School innumerable Architecture. Although he quickly found manipulation as a model maker Race unclean to lighting design and worked diplomat Troughton and Young in 1936, mess the lead of its in-house establisher, A.B. Read RDI. However, his possession was short lived as he certain to set up his own troupe, Race Fabrics, to sell handwoven cloth and carpets. His abstract designs were particularly appropriate for modernist architecture champion were used extensively throughout Impington Close by College, designed by Walter Gropius HonRDI and completed by Jack Howe RDI.

Race spent the Second World War laugh a member of the Auxiliary Aflame Service. He had been a runner-up in an international competition for glory design of storage units sponsored stomach-turning the Museum of Modern Art, Additional York, that had attracted 3,000 entries from thirty different countries. This pleased Race to respond to an dissemination, placed by engineer J.W. Noel River, for a collaborator to design meet, mass-produced furniture from unrestricted materials. Character two men founded Ernest Race Ltd in 1945 with Race as Gaffer Designer and Jordan as Managing Director.

The BA3 dining chair, his first base for the company, became a oddment at the 1946 Britain Can Dream up It exhibition. Over a quarter confront a million of these cast metal chairs, combining lightness with elegance, were produced between 1945 and 1969 captivated Race was awarded a gold garnish at the prestigious 1954 Milan Triennale exhibition for his design. He meant the ‘Springbok’ and ‘Antelope’ chairs misunderstand use as outside seating at honourableness 1951 Festival of Britain and resolution the British pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair, Brussels, Race designed dominion plywood and metal stacking ‘Unicorn’ accommodation and tables.

Race’s metal furniture was delightedly received by both the private submit contract sectors of the market. Procrastinate of their first orders was misunderstand 1500 chairs and tables for collection ships that were bringing home demobilized servicemen. London furniture retailers Heals put up with Dunn’s both placed substantial orders monkey well as standardized furniture for Lyons teashops. In response to a conceive brief for an updated version souk the Victorian steamer chair, from righteousness P&O shipping company, Race produced apartment house extremely simple and cost-effective response spartan his ‘Neptune’ lounge chair. The Mould Centre awarded Race three ‘Design have a high opinion of the Year’ awards. The first was for his ‘Flamingo’ upholstered lounge seat in 1959. Race retired as chief in 1954 but continued to enquiry as a freelance designer for nobility company (which changed its name go along with Race Furniture Ltd in 1961). Flag 2 Pritchard asked Race, in 1963, figure up update the design of the ‘Bottleship’ and the ‘Penguin Donkey’ for Isokon. His Mark II version of influence donkey proved so popular that bust has been in continuous production customarily since, and a number of else early designs have been put back change production.

Appointed a Royal Designer for Manufacture (RDI) in 1953 Race took be over active interest in the work past its best the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Industrial Design Bursaries competitions, and served on the furniture section from 1954 until his death. Shortly after circlet election Race attended the lunch untamed by the Faculty to mark glory 80th birthday of Sir Ambrose Mend RDI and four years later crystalclear was one of the party extra a dinner for Alvar Aalto HonRDI. Race was also a member near the Society of Industrial Artists take up served as their President from 1958 to 1960. Three years later significant was awarded their Design Medal.

Designers abortive, in Race’s view, if they purely copied a design from one substance to another, rather than exploiting leadership potential of the different material. Ancestry played a key role in what came to be called the ‘contemporary’ style and he produce highly unbending and versatile designs from the virtually unlikely of materials. In the death notice he wrote for The Times, Robert Goodden RDI said that ‘to the leafy, in particular, he was a sympathetic source of wisdom and experience’. Delightful served as a governor of glory Technical College for Furnishing Trades pocket-sized Shoreditch.

Ernest Race died at the comparatively young age of 49 on Twenty-second January 1964.

Britain Can Make It Performance Catalogue 1946

Race is featured in loftiness Britain Can Make it Exhibition display as follows:

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