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Inside the interwar British design store that pioneered midcentury modern plywood furniture
“It was simple furniture … and we were makers of it.”
In 1931, the English designer Gerald Summers (1899-1967) and his partner, Marjorie Butcher (1909-96), opened their London shop Makers of Simple Furniture. A small company, they produced made-to-order furniture. Until the firm’s closing in 1940, Makers of Simple Furniture produced hundreds of ingenious furniture designs in plywood. Conceived, in Summers’ words, as “furniture for the concrete age,” this singular body of work shaped the notion of the modern interior in Britain.
Makers of Simple Furniture tells for the first time the compelling story of the firm and its dedicated proprietors. Drawing on Butcher’s vivid recollections and a wealth of unpublished material-including never-before-seen images, personal correspondence, workshop documents and illustrated specification sheets-the book reveals the magnitude of their achievements and restores a neglected chapter in the history of modern design. This publication is made possible in part by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Author Biography
Gerald Summers (1899-1967) is one of the most important furniture designers of the twentieth century. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and worked as an engineer before beginning his career as a designer. In 1931, together with his partner Marjorie Butcher (1909-1996), he opened the company Makers of Simple Furniture in London. For almost a decade, the company produced a wide range of furniture for the modern home. In 1940, wartime exigencies brought an end to the enterprise, whereupon they turned their energies to Gerald Summers Ltd, a supplier of engineering parts.
Martha Deese is an authority on Gerald Summers. She earned a master’s degree in decorative art history from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum / Parsons School of Design, New York, and worked for three decades as an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her groundbreaking 1992 article published in the Journal of Design History remains the definitive work on the designer.
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