Robin Day | British Modernism Returns

Today marks the much-anticipated reissue of several important Robin Day designs by &Tradition, developed in close collaboration with the Robin & Lucienne Day Foundation. The relaunched pieces include the landmark Daystak Desk, Table, and Side Chair, and the RFH (Royal Festival Hall) Lounge Chair, RFH Armchair, RFH Terrace Chair, and Table, which were developed for the Royal Festival Hall. Originally designed in 1951, both collections were relaunched at 3daysofdesign earlier this year.

Robin Day OBE (1915–2010) is one of Britain's most influential designers, transforming furniture design in the post-war era. He experimented with innovative materials and dedicated himself to developing high-tech, mass-production methods to deliver low-cost furniture. In 1948, he entered MoMA’s International Low-Cost Furniture Competition in collaboration with Clive Latimer, winning first prize in the storage category, marking the beginning of his career in furniture design. This led to Day being commissioned to design furniture for the Royal Festival Hall in 1951 and to establish his long-term relationship with British manufacturer Hille, for whom he designed the original Hillestak collection, reissued today.

Sustainability was a key motivator behind Day’s designs; his economic approach to materials and construction stemmed from the austerity of the war and an unwavering responsibility to conserve finite natural resources by making durable furniture. Pre-war furniture was solid and bulky; his designs were instead pared back and streamlined, as exemplified by the iconic Reclining Chair designed in 1952. 

twentytwentyone has a longstanding relationship with Robin Day, having been fortunate enough to work with him on a series of projects over the last twenty-five years, from Childsply – a charitable project and exhibition in 1996, to the creation of the Avian seating collection (2000) and relaunch of several classic designs, including the Reclining Chair (1952), Slatted Bench (1954) and Chevron Chair (1959), plus two exclusive designs to mark our 25th anniversary. 

Here &Tradition and twentytwentyone join Paula Day – the daughter of Robin and (prominent British textile designer) Lucienne Day and founder of the Robin & Lucienne Day Foundation - in conversation to discuss these latest reissues for &Tradition and her father’s design legacy.   

IN CONVERSATION WITH PAULA DAY

Robin Day’s design history spans decades and his repertoire is vast.

How do you think he continued to create for so many years and with such enthusiasm?  

My father came from a family in very modest circumstances. His dad was a police constable, and his mum had been a nurse. They were living in a very small house on a very limited income, and his parents worked to give the family a good life by being very creative and making things themselves. His mother made all the family’s clothes, his father mended the boys’ boots, made furniture and grew produce in the garden. So, he grew up understanding that, with creativity and imagination, good things could be made using minimal resources.  

Speaking of your father’s childhood, do you have any personal memories of your own of the RFH and Daystak collections?  

The RFH designs sat in the Royal Festival Hall itself and so I wasn’t around those much as a child. But I did my homework on a Hillestak desk and chair – I thought nothing of them as to me it seemed that they had always been there! Of course, I now appreciate the designs and their importance, but at the time I didn’t. So, I have a very personal connection with the Daystak pieces.   

At the time Robin created the RFH furniture, their form, especially that of the lounge chair and armchair, would have been unlike any design available in the UK before.

Do you have thoughts on what may have inspired him?  

I think you have to think of them in the context of the Festival of Britain, which was when the Royal Festival Hall opened in 1951. The whole ethos of the Festival was about renewal, optimism and hope. If you look at the designs and the architecture, they expressed a sort of lightness, festivity, fantasia, celebration. I think that my father’s designs epitomised that. They have a kind of birdlike quality, a sense of levitation. The Festival and my father’s early work are inextricable really. Nothing in his later work has quite that kind of playfulness.

He was quite an austere designer in some ways, understatement was part of his strength. However, in those early pieces, I think he was absolutely responding to that Festival energy, to the Royal Festival Hall architecture and Peter Moro’s Interiors, which have that sense of lightness. 

Hillestak was an incredibly successful, pared-back and robust design which was seen everywhere from private homes to school canteens and even church halls.

How did the Hillestak designs fit into your father’s life?  

He married my mother, textile designer Lucienne Day, during the Second World War. Their first home, for ten years in fact, was their flat at Markham Square in London. There wasn’t much modern furniture available. There wasn’t much furniture available at all actually, and so he furnished the flat by making most of the pieces himself, from things he’d found in skips and so on. He was interested in how modernist designers like Eames and Aalto had used moulded plywood to make furniture, so he made dining chairs from ply which he cut out and bent with steam from a domestic kettle. These homemade pieces were a primitive precursor of the Hillestak chair, with its moulded plywood seat and backrest. 

His designs were relatively small in proportion and often multipurpose, reflecting the conditions set by the MoMA competition he was successful in.

What do you think he found to be so compelling about these qualities?  

I believe that his upbringing stayed with him the whole of his life and shaped his outlook on things. He understood that many people lived on a budget and in smaller spaces. He was instinctively frugal in everything he did, right down to his economical use of materials and production methods. That outlook continued right through the sixties, when in fact he was a very commercially successful designer. Of course, in his later years, when people began to think about sustainability and the environmental crisis, it all made total sense to him. That was how he understood the world anyway, that there must be limits to how we use resources, and we need to be creative with what we already have. 

twentytwentyone have been long-time admirers of Day’s work and are very proud to have collaborated with him directly and in recent years with the Foundation, creating both new work and re-issuing historic designs.

What are the main challenges in staying true to his designs whilst meeting the evolving needs of a contemporary audience? 

Yes, when he was in his eighties my father created two completely new designs for twentytwentyone: Childsply Chair (1999) and Avian Lounge Chair and Sofa (2000). Since he passed away in 2010, the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation has collaborated with twentytwentyone to reissue three of his designs from the 1950s: Reclining Chair (1952), Slatted Bench (1954) and Chevron Chair (1959). 

The Foundation’s primary responsibility is to maintain the integrity of Robin Day’s original designs, but of course, we respect our licensees’ knowledge of contemporary conditions and market requirements, so a good collaboration is always a constructive ‘conversation’.

One very common challenge is the need to find suitable timbers to replace the unsustainable tropical hardwoods used in many of the original productions. Another issue that crops up is the need to meet today’s stringent impact test standards; for example, we had no choice but to very slightly increase the spacing between the legs of &Tradition’s new RFH Lounge Chair, in order to pass lateral stability testing. 

Another area of discussion is whether (or not) a 1950s design needs to be scaled up, on the basis that people are on average bigger now than in the postwar period. This is tricky, as any change to dimensions has a knock-on effect – for example, increasing the height of a chair’s legs while leaving the seat the same size would alter the proportions of the design. And if a moulded plywood backrest is enlarged, the ply may need to be slightly thicker – which in turn may have a visual impact. A key clause in our Endorsement Policy is that changes should only be made if they are demonstrably necessary and do not compromise the aesthetic – and we’ve found from experience that most (though not all) of Robin’s original designs are astonishingly comfortable for today’s users, without any need to scale up. After much practical experimentation, it was agreed that &Tradition’s new Daystak Chair hits the ergonomic sweet spot when scaled up by just 2% from the Hillestak original! 

This question might be almost like asking someone to choose a favourite relative so feel free to decline to answer but do you have a personal favourite design of your father’s?

Also, which design or range were you most pleased to see reissued? 

Probably the one I’m with at any given moment! So, when I’m on the London Underground it would be his supremely functional and elegant Toro Bench. When I’m in twentytwentyone’s showroom, it could be his charismatic Reclining Chair. And when I’m at home it might be my parents’ original 1954 Hilleplan sideboard, or the beloved elm dining table my father made for me.  

I’m absolutely thrilled that so many of his designs from the early 1950s have now been reissued. The 1951 RFH Terrace Table and Chair are a special miracle, as these lively little pieces were never put into general production. Seventy-three years is a long wait! 

LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL

We’re excited to share as part of a series of events to honour Robin Day during the London Design Festival, &Tradition will take over our Upper Street store window, displaying the new RFH and Daystak collections.

Join us 14 – 29 September 2024.

Our thanks to Paula Day, The Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation and &Tradition.