Design Review: Volume 4, Issue 3 (June-July 1952)

Shopping

Everybody knows how difficult it is if you want to furnish your house or even your room—to find some decent modern furniture.

So we have decided that it may be of some help to our readers if we try in this column of our magazine to draw attention to various fittings, which are available in New Zealand. It is a widely held opinion that it is the lack of taste of importers, overseas buyers and New Zealand manufacturers that is solely responsible for the modest level in taste which we see in many objects, especially furniture and fittings in the shops. To us this point of view seems unfair to importers and manufacturers. It is rather the public which is to blame; and certainly it is only the public which can bring about a change. Individually designed and made chairs are a contradiction to modern methods of production. A certain minimum sale is required to make production of new models worth while. We are well aware that this fact is used as an excuse for the lack of enterprise of manufacturers. We know that most of the stock-in-trade ware is produced in relatively small lots and not industrially mass produced, as, for instance, a bent plywood chair. This point is essential, and offers the possibility of producing objects of better design under New Zealand conditions of production. That is to say if the public encourages the manufacturer by buying his better-designed models.

The objects we are showing this time are not specially designed and evolved; they are the product of current commercial trends overseas. But if the interest for modern furniture increases enough, there would be hope that objects designed and developed by New Zealand artists could be commercially produced. In the meantime we will look round and show what we can find and think worth buying.

The furniture shown on these pages is available at “Furniture Fashions”, 40 Willis Street, Wellington. The photos are by John Ashton, 12 Cashmere Avenue, Wellington.