Ideal Home: Biba beans + biscuit tins + wallpaper by David Bowie + Barney Bubbles
Can of Biba own-brand baked beans. Packaging design: Whitmore-Thomas Partnership, 1973.
Chelsea Space director Donald Smith has invited me to contribute items from my design collection to his forthcoming show Ideal Home, which features the work of more than 50 artists and designers spanning 1913 to 2011.
The exhibits are loaned from private archives, Chelsea College of Art and Design’s special collections and direct from artists and designers with links to the gallery such as Mark Titchner and Steve Thomas.
With Tim Whitmore, Thomas created interiors, signage, advertising and packaging for the so-called “Big Biba” department store in Kensington High Street in 1973, including the wrappers for the outlet’s own-brand baked bean cans.
Biba biscuit tin. 1973.
The can in the photograph at the top of this post was given to me as a birthday present in 1973. Another fine example of the Deco/Thirties revival in British design circles of the period is this Biba biscuit tin.
I have also contributed a rack of 25 variations of Barney Bubbles LP cover for the 1979 album Do It Yourself by Ian Dury & The Blockheads. These featured in last year’s Bubbles exhibition Process.
For the DIY project Bubbles supplied 28 different front covers made from Crown wallpaper sample designs.
LP sleeve variations, Do It Yourself by Ian Dury & The Blockheads. Design: Barney Bubbles, 1979.
Lucian Freud wallpaper fragment. Design: David Bowie, 1995.
The dominance of established companies such as Crown in the UK DIY market in the 70s was challenged by “design”-conscious boutique labels such as the home decor wing of the Laura Ashley fashion brand.
Since Ashley’s daughter Jane is among other contributors to Ideal Home, I offered the fragment of Lucian Freud wallpaper by David Bowie , which was printed on a Laura Ashley sample for a fundraiser in 1995.
Ideal Home – which features a diversity of work by the likes of Patrick Caulfield, Damien Hirst, Roy Lichtenstein, Gavin Turk and Richard Wentworth – is a London Design Festival event and runs from September 22 to October 22, 2011.
More here.