A Day Out on the Brompton Road Quarter

A top shelf crown of amber bourbon hues illuminate the front of a 10ft warehouse window five times, in this snazzy, swanky loft style conversion, at the collection. This day starts with lunch.

             First scallop carpaccio - its quality dwarfs is quantity, with subtle tastes rivalling the best generosity, sharing is out the large windows with what is essentially a one man-mouthful and delicious buffalo tartar with a central quails egg, the meal and day starts well. Followed by perfect steak and a somewhat dry pistachio tartlet with Pommery and a lovely red, I’m full and drunk before I even begin to peruse the boutiques and studios of the Brompton road.  

   Shop windows such as this dominate with expensive well designed products you definitely don’t need but will transiently want.

             In addition the west London design studios opened their doors for London Design festival showcasing the work of their best. This blind by (..) of (..) I especially liked as it was cut from a single branch, I would be interested to see how well it would work in a room, if it made an organic bridge between the inside and outside or if it would look too rough. 

             The Danish Cabinet Makers hosted an inspiring chair exhibition. It’s always nice to see objects nominally of the same type white and chair with such a diverse array of styles and materials, demonstrating the personal uniqueness of a designer’s imagination.

The Brompton Quarter has a heavily commercial vibe, contrasting the more playful, crafty, design for designs that can be found in east London. However if you have the money to buy the appreciation to look, or the ideas to steal you can find a lot with a day out on the Brompton road.

Kenneth Grange – Making Modern Britain

An array of products considerately placed around the perimeter of a large white room span the development of 50 years of Kenneth Grange’s prolific career. Soft lines, an attention to simple detail and rounded forms dominate. Parker pens, Anglepoise lamps, the Intercity 125 train, Kenwood food mixers and the new London black cab all feature. The work has uniformity, its functional, it has a simple subtle beauty in its lines and form, and it does what it set out to do and better than it was done before. Largely plastic with pastel colours his work is familiar, everyday, and commonplace. Apart from the couple of items that stand out nostalgically from my childhood such as the iconic Kodak camera and some of his working notes the mudanity of the exhibition leaves me longing to be wowed.

The supposed highlights of the exhibition are the designs you saw on the way there, the new taxi, the bus stop and bench. There is little in the way of notes to accompany these items, and your left thinking you could have just stood on a busy street, looked under your sink or your dads bathroom cabinet and you would have ticked off a proportion of the exhibits. This however, shows the breadth and impact of Kenneth work. When you look its everywhere and you realise slowly that Grange is a hero. Still it bores, but it is precisely because of this that he should be championed. Imagine a world where every functional object set out to wow, or impress, it would be a chaotic cacophony of mismatched styles all grabbing at your attention. Its in granges modest subtle style that seamlessly inoffensively fits into our world you realise he’s a master of design.

The items exist too weakly in isolation and the exhibition flops. Grange does not. I’m more interested in the man, the history and background and the processes. Which do not feature heavily enough in the exhibit.

For design that truly is mesmerising beautiful and borders between science and magic, check out the V & A’s Design Festival trail and be wowed.