This is the sixth essay in a collection of twelve written by Byron Ferris for the "Design Sense" feature of the Sunday Northwest Magazine insert of The Oregonian during 1984 and 1985. – Ed.
If the public art pieces on Portland's Downtown Mall are all waterproof, and if Los Angeles' art has to be smogproof, at least the art in London no longer must be fogproof.
A foggy day in London town is not so foggy anymore: Peat and coal fires have been banned from the central city. The rooftop chimney pots stand disused, the chimneys that, during Victorian times, poured into the sky tiny particles of smoke ash that formed the nuclei for water vapor and helped cause London's pea-soup fogs.
Sherlock Holmes, perhaps, would not recognize the new, cleaner London, and Queen Victoria would be surprised by what has happened to her beloved Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A, just a few blocks down the road from Harrod's famous department store, is a gigantic museum that took its present shape in 1900, dedicated to showcasing the decorative industrial arts of Victorian England. Victoria and Albert, her prince consort, believed in manufacture and commerce, and the museum collections preserved the products of that period.
The building, about the size of four downtown Portland blocks, was heated with a coal-fired boiler system. When coal was banned from central London, the basement coal bunkers were emptied, and the rooms, freshly painted and brightly lighted, became the home for a new gallery, the Boilerhouse Project. The Boilerhouse is funded partly by the Conran Foundation, supported by the Conran stores, which offer well designed housewares and furniture to what we would call the Yuppie generation, the young, upward-moving consumers with more taste than money.
The Boilerhouse and the Design Council Gallery in Haymarket are favorite destinations in London for those of us of the design persuasion. Both are open to the public — and free, another persuasion. Queen Victoria, though, might have been shocked by the Boilerhouse exhibit during last year's Christmas season. Product design may mean invention and innovation, but Philip Garner's presentation of "Better Living" might have gone too far.
This Hollywood "designer's" exhibit claimed to "attempt to set down the nostalgia of the future." Garner filled the brilliant Boilerhouse gallery with inventive prototype models he had brought forth in his devotion to the "taming of the world's resources by applied technology." He showed a "Six Pack Belt," a colorful webbing in Indian motif that linked six cans of beer across the back rather like the bullets in a gun belt. Above this, the wearer could strap on the "Jog 'N' Blend," a sort of backpack to hold fruits, liquid and an agitator ball, so that useful work might be done during jogging.
The "Tie-Sav-R" is a small clip that can be worn on the finger, to be put in use to roll up a tie and to clip near the shirt collar designed for use with soup at lunch. The "Pocketie" provides a small pocket in the face of the necktie for business cards, with discreet embroidery: "Take One." Two pairs of dance shoes are joined permanently at the toes, woman's pair to man's pair, so that the dancers will never be out of step on the ballroom floor. The ultimate happy joggers' shoes have pre-inked letters on the soles, to leave a trail of "Have a Nice Day" through the neighborhood.
For table use, a penknife has a ball point pen for a handle, in case the diner wants to take notes on the tablecloth. The "Slumb-R-Mat" is a table-setting placemat that inflates to become a pillow when the conversation is dull. "Pet-A-Vision" is a series of cassettes for use on a home video recorder, with tapes of "Dog," "Cat" and "Rabbit" to bring the joy of pet ownership without the mess. For more-exotic households, "Sloth" and "Wombat" are available.
What the British public thought of this Los Angeles "inventor's" exhibit of "absolute necessities for contemporary survival" is hard to say, but I do know one thing: As I wandered through the exhibit in a roomful of viewers, the framework kept the visitors in a state of awed silence. Not until I started laughing out loud at the pure ridiculousness of "Barefoot Heels," with no toes or soles, did other persons in the gallery drop their reserve - and the room broke into giggles and snorts of delight.
Could that be my contribution to England's museum art?