Robin Day was without doubt one of the most influential British furniture designers of the 20th century. He will of course be best remembered for his polypropylene moulded stacking chairs which have sold around 50 million units since the launch of the Poly side chair in 1963 but Robin’s achievements and his influence on postwar modernism go much further than that. Robin Day was born on the 25th May 1915 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, a town renowned for its furniture manufacturing. Recognising his drawing skills, his parents enrolled him as a junior day student at High Wycombe Technical Institute and later won a scholarship to High Wycombe School of Art. It was during this period that he was summoned to the home of Lucian Ercolani, founder of the furniture maker Ercol, who offered Day a job with the promise of £1,000 a year. Although tempted, Day had other ideas, and won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London. The RCA did not meet Day’s expectations as he found the courses of the 1930’s to be "all painting and sculpture" rather than three-dimensional design.
Whilst at the College at an RCA dance in 1940 that he met a fellow student, Lucienne Conradi. This was the beginning of a lifelong partnership and 2 years later they married and it was, for its time, a very modern marriage. Both the Days rose to the very top of their professions, Robin in furniture and Lucienne in textile design and although they did not normally work together in a formal sense, they shaped each others work by suggestion and discussion working on back to back drawing boards in their Cheyne Walk Chelsea studio which they shared for nearly 50 years. On graduating from the RCA in 1938 there were no obvious openings in the furniture industry, so initially Day made models for architects. The outbreak of the war did not improve his prospects. Ruled out from active service by asthma, he taught at Beckenham School of Art, where he devised an innovative course in three-dimensional design. It was there he met a fellow teacher, Clive Latimer, who went on to share Day's first great success as a designer when, in 1948, the pair won the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Winning the MOMA prize was a breakthrough for Robin, and a stimulus to British designers in the bleak years of post-second world war austerity. It also resulted in Day being invited to design furniture for Hille who at the time specialised in the manufacture of high quality reproduction furniture. With Day’s guidance working with Ray Hille, her daughter Rosamind and son-in-law Leslie Julius the company underwent a complete transformation and began to produce ranges of modern furniture. The 1950’s saw ranges featuring moulded plywood, then moving on to polypropylene in the 1960’s. In 1951 Day was commissioned to design the seating for the Royal Festival Hall which further enhanced his standing. As well as designing many furniture ranges Day was also responsible for the artwork, brochures, showroom design, exhibitions as well as the Hille logo. His influence on everyday living widened further with television and radio designs for British electronics company Pye as well as aircraft interiors for BOAC and carpet designs for Woodward Grosvenor.
Robin and Lucienne Day became Britain’s most celebrated design couple with this recognition being helped by the fact that they brought a much-needed dose of glamour to postwar Britain. Together they featured in countless magazine spreads and, in 1954, as a debonair couple in a Smirnoff vodka advertising campaign, surrounded by their furniture and textile designs. They also played a key role with high street retailer John Lewis behind the scenes for 25 years between 1962 and 1987, overseeing the introduction of a comprehensive new house style. Day also designed the interiors of several Waitrose supermarkets and John Lewis department stores, notably Milton Keynes in 1979. Day continued to design furniture for Hille for many years to come with the Toro and Woodro beam seats around 1990 which set the standards for public area seating and the RD wooden chair in 2008 as well as being an important source of inspiration knowledge. Sadly Robin Day died aged 95 at home on November 9 2010.
Lucienne died 9 months earlier on January 30 2010 aged 93, their daughter survives them.It is now estimated that 50 million of the chairs are in circulation. Designed in 1962 and inexpensively moulded from the then-new thermoplastic material of polypropylene, it is often credited as the first plastic shell chair ever created. More than half a million are still made each year. But Day was responsible for far more than this one artefact, and his name will remain associated with postwar modernism as a whole. With his wife, the textile designer Lucienne Day, he produced work that reflected the mood of a society recovering from the privations of war. Throughout a seven-decade career he aimed to bring contemporary design to a mass market at an affordable price. Though he had little time for the increasing role of fashion in his business, he remained convinced that good design could improve quality of life. Robin Day was born on May 25 1915 at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, a town once renowned for its furniture manufacturing.
He studied at High Wycombe Technical Institute, where he learned technical drawing, and later won a scholarship to High Wycombe School of Art. Although tempted, Day had other ideas, and won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London. (He did eventually design for Ercol, producing a chair in 2003). The RCA was a disappointing experience, as Day found it "all painting and sculpture" rather than three-dimensional design. But he maintained close ties with the institution after he graduated in 1938, taking advantage of its table tennis facilities if nothing else. It was at an RCA dance in 1940 that he met a fellow student, Lucienne Conradi. Neither danced, but they "talked and talked". Keen to help Lucienne with her diploma show, Day stepped off a ladder on to the decorated dinner plates that she was planning to exhibit. Two years later they married. Asthma ruled out active service during the war and Day taught at the Beckenham School of Art instead. There he met a fellow teacher, Clive Latimer, who went on to share Day's first great success as a designer when, in 1948, the pair won the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Three years after winning the competition Day received his first major commission, to design seating for the Royal Festival Hall. He also designed a series of rooms for the Homes & Gardens pavilion at the Festival of Britain, which he filled with radical steel and plywood furniture. When Day found it impossible to find any modern textiles to accompany his work, he asked Lucienne to create something suitable. The result was Calyx, an abstract floral pattern produced by Heal's furniture store. Later that year the pattern went on to win the Gold medal at the Milan Triennale. Though the couple worked side by side in their studio at home on Cheyne Walk in London for nearly 50 years, the collaboration during the Festival of Britain was one of the rare occasions when they worked directly together. By the time the five-month-long festival was over, however, they had become Britain's first design stars. This recognition was helped by the fact that they brought a much-needed dose of glamour to postwar Britain.
By then Day had been working for five years with the British company Hille, which he was instrumental in transforming from a small cabinet making firm into a producer of innovative and modern furniture. Nor was Day short of marketing nous. When he came up with the Polyprop chair, for example, he sent several hundred of the chairs to architects, designers and journalists. Soon the stackable chair was being described in the press as "the most significant development in British mass-produced chair design since the war". Durable, stylish and cheap, it was bought in bulk by airports, canteens, hospitals and restaurants. That same year, 1962, Lucienne Day was named Royal Designer for Industry for her textiles. The award came three years after Robin Day had won the same distinction for "sustained excellence in aesthetic and efficient design for industry". Though best known for his furniture design and public seating for the likes of the Barbican Centre, London Underground and Gatwick Airport, Day also created televisions and radios for the British electronics company Pye.
As the Sixties got into full swing he even worked on aircraft interior design for BOAC, as well as on bold carpet designs for Woodward Grosvenor. As fashion and economic conditions changed in the 1970s and 1980s, however, there was less appetite for Day's particular brand of modernism. Lucienne applied herself to creating one-off art fabrics; Day worked for Hille. The couple also continued the consulting work they had been doing with John Lewis since 1962, during which time they developed the store's "house style". In the 1990s Habitat started to include some of Day's most celebrated pieces of furniture in its collection, including the Forum sofa (designed in 1964), and the Polyprop. This, along with new projects with companies including the British manufacturer SCP and the Italian firm Magis, brought Day's work to a new generation of admirers. Aside from design, Day was passionate about outdoor pursuits. He embraced extreme sports at an unusually advanced stage in life, explaining they allowed him to "switch off", and explored the Atlas Mountains, the Himalayas and Munros in Scotland.