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Watch this space for Atom Retro

Recently,at Christmas in fact, I took delivery of a Roberts WM201 Wi-Fi Internet Radio and Media Player (shown among the above at centre back) as a present. It has become my ‘pride and joy’ with endless hours of listening mainly the programmes playing 50s and 60s music. My radio with its black polished case […]

Though the Moorcroft brand of high quality handmade art pottery grew out of a design studio within a large ceramics factory over a hundred years ago, history shows a re-emergence in the mid-1980s to early 1990s of a strong business model again and the production of the beautiful and colourful designs that are well known […]

In 1966 ,an almost overlooked chair design by Aarnio was ‘discovered’ by a representative of Asko and taken to an international furniture show.The rest, as they say,is history. The “Ball” chair has remained a firm favourite. The resonance with the sixties was reflected in the plastic ’space-age’ white globular shape mounted on a steel […]

Ettore Sottsass (b.1917), who passed away in December last year,was a highly influential,if flambuoyant and colourful , designer and architect, whose powers were at their height in the second half of the 20th century.
During his nearly 40year period as designer and consultant to Olivetti, he produced many designs for office machinery and furniture ,as well […]

From small beginnings in 1961 as a pottery company sprang the homesware business which Portmeirion is today .It has grown to become a significant force in the homesware industry, and justifiably boasts “having a strong international following and an established reputation for high quality and innovative design.”
Though the excellent Portmeirion products have changed over the […]

The elegant ‘egg’ chair design created by Arne Jacobsen and still to be seen in the Ahm house (and up for sale) featured in my last post has remained to this day much sought after , and complements the most ultra modern of furnishings. Jacobsen (1902-1971) designed many other sculptural furnishings including the ‘Swan’ […]

Described in The Sunday Times as :”Probably the best modern house in the world “, the above pictured 1960s house,situated in Harpenden,Hertfordshire, is for sale for £2.5m. through The Modern House.
So, apart from the fact that this is a fabulous looking house built by two eminent Danes, Povl Ahm ( civil engineer) and […]

In the 1960s, stainless-steel tableware was particularly in vogue. The Scandinavians did much to exploit the potential of stainless-steel, and A.S.Stelton were fortunate to team- up with Arne Jacobsen (b.1902,d.1971) who created an award-winning range of tableware between 1964 and 1967, called the “Cylinda -Line”.
The “Cylinda-Line” coffee pot from the range (illustrated above) has the […]

Like many great iconic retro products , the lava lamp was invented from an idea which the inventor stumbled across by accident. That is how the story goes with Edward Craven-Walker ,who was having a quiet pint in a pub one day, when his attention was drawn to a peculiar glass jar, a glass […]