Sachgebiete

Beschreibung:

64 Seiten; zahlr. Illustrationen (s/w); 24,5 cm; kart.

Bemerkung:

Gutes Exemplar; Einband (illustr.) berieben. - Englisch. - Practical Equipment Limited (PEL) are still one of the larger manufacturers of steel furniture in Britain. Nowadays the firm is best known for its products - in steel and wood - for large furnishing contracts and probably most specifically for their wide range of products for educational use. In the early 1930s, however, their production (initially as part of Accles and Pollock) was directly aimed at the domestic furniture market and, difficult as it may be to realise now, to the avant-garde design interests in tubular steel construction. Initially, the firm was extremely design conscious and used the services of notable British architects and designers. Pel also freely plagiarised new furniture designs in tubular steel from the Continent of Europe. This catalogue and the exhibition with which it coincides concentrates on the pre-war designs and productions of Pel and seeks to set the work in a broad international context. It also attempts to provide a history of the Pel firm and a record of the various models produced by Pel in date order. The illustrated sections of the catalogue provide a comparative analysis of available models indicating type, finishes, sizes and original market costs. As the catalogues themselves have now been elevated to museum status and are virtually unobtainable the illustrated section will, we trust, serve as a definitive catalogue raisonne of Pel's design and production record. The catalogues reveal, among other things, the changing emphasis of the firm: the first one (1932) stresses the artistic side of their output, the second one (1936) less so, while the last pre-war catalogue (1939) reflects the popular market demand and the exigencies of mass production. The importation into Britain of Finnish moulded plywood furniture and the new designs of Jack Pritchard's 'Isokon' firm (by Breuer and others) after the mid-1930s certainly contributed a new emphasis of its own replacing to a certain extent the interest of designers and architects in bent-metal furniture of the first half of the decade. ? (Vorwort) // INHALT : Introduction ----- A Visual Chronology of Tubular Steel ----- Tubular Steel and the Public ----- Thonet ----- Gispen ----- Tubular Steel in Britain ----- Accles and Pollock and the Foundation of Pel ----- Tubular Steel Furniture Production and Technique ----- The Retailers ----- The Designers ----- The Companies ----- Catalogues ----- Pel ----- Cox ----- Steelchrome ----- British Ideal Patents and Furniture.