CHRISTMAS 2024

A bit of background reading from Mr P.....

Progress and Psychedelia in Modern Britain…
The social-science critique of the prevailing constructs of economy, society and identity
provided the opportunity for a great experiment in the construction, or formation, of a new
social body. This new demographic expressed itself (in the UK at least) through the
unexpected combination of social and cultural libertarianism and economic discipline.
For example, the social impact of 1970s entrepreneurs: Richard Branson, Chris Blackwell,
Michael Eavis, has extended over an almost 70 year period; which bears comparison with
the great enterprises of the 19C. In a subsequent and slightly different context, the legacies
of Vivienne Westwood and Tony Wilson have been as profound and enduring.
As have those of Terence Conran and Barabara Hulanicki in fashion and lifestyle retailing.

The 1960s in Britain provided a threshold moment of social change, that extended beyond the
immediate parameters of Swinging London, as originally conceptualised by Robert Fraser
and Christopher Gibbs,
through the widespread appeal and extended reach of various pop cultural forms.
The appeal to new ideas was widely supported through an expanded cultural production
that reached across music, art, publishing, design and fashion. In the first instance,
these products clustered around the much larger student populations of arts schools,
polytechnics and universities. Later, the same approach was scaled-up to become the
lifestyle-retail of the later 20C. By the end of the 1960s, the student demographic had
become bigger, younger, more politically critical, and more evenly balanced across genders.
In general, the new universities produced hippy-thinkers, and the art-schools produced
various forms of Dada-style disruption.
The ideas and products elaborated within the art-school and new universities were promoted,
beyond reading lists, by the social science Pelican imprint of Penguin Books, the defect
national publisher since WW2 - the famous pale blue and modernist covers of Pelican titles
were easily recognisable and became a badge of counter-cultural and progressive thinking.
In addition to this intellectual base, the new ideas were given visual expression through the
posters and image-culture of critique, protest and consumption. New technologies of
mechanical-production in printing, screen-printing and half-tone especially, accelerated
the production of images and greatly extended their reach.
The larger art-schools: St Martins, the Central, Chelsea, Ealing, Croydon, Ravensbourne,
the RCA etc, each adopted the critical positions of their New University colleagues;
but gave them more engaging visual expression. Michael English and Nigel Weymouth,
working as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, became publishers of decorative psychedelic
posters that gave powerful visual expression to the combination of fashion, music and ideas
as a radical and progressive identity.

The extension of communication design, beyond the traditional limits of the print-economy
were most obviously felt in the transformations of the High Street and hospitality environments.
The elaboration of a contemporary spectacular, distinct from its predecessor variants,
to the sociology of desire. In London, new shops colonised the King’s Road
and Carnaby Street, and later Camden Market, to provide the foundation for the emerging
lifestyle scene of the early 1970s. The Way-In at Harrods, Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba,
and Terence Conran’s Habitat, were all retail environments that promoted new ways
of living and being.

The combination, in Britain, of progressive ideas and lifestyle provided another example
of how design reform could re-shape ideas drawn from William Morris, Liberty, and the
Bloomsbury artists towards a wider public.
Commercial advertising, illustration, publishing and the music industry were quick
to incorporate the new style into the mainstream.
The appeal to feeling in design, in addition to the established norms of functionality
and economy, gave scope for these new objects to provide a threshold moment of
psychedelic transcendence…

We are delighted to offer items that provide a glimpse into this moment of British renewal…
AND OF COURSE OTHER THINGS WE LIKE ...