Johnny recently wrote about about Alice in Wonderland’s imaginary kitchen and asked for ideas inspired by this theme. He wrote that fairy tales and children’s stories are great source material. When I think about Alice in Wonderland, I am reminded of Mary Blair, one of my favorite artists.

An unassuming quiet-spoken woman, she dominated Disney design for half a century. The stylishness and vibrant color of Disney films in the early 1940s through mid-1950s came primarily from her brush. In her prime, she was an amazingly prolific American artist who enlivened and influenced the not-so-small worlds of film, print, theme parks, architectural decor, and advertising. Her art represented joyful creativity and communicated pure pleasure to the viewer. Her exuberant fantasies brimmed with beauty, charm and wit, melding a child’s fresh eye with adult experience.

Animator Marc Davis, who put Mary’s exciting use of color on a par with Matisse, recalled, “She brought modern art to Walt in a way that no one else did. He was so excited about her work.” Mary’s unique color and styling greatly influenced many Disney postwar productions most notably The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. Mary assisted in the design of the It’s a Small World attraction for the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair (blame the music on the Sherman Brothers). She contributed to the design of many exhibits, attractions, and murals at the theme parks in California and Florida, including the fanciful murals in the Grand Canyon Concourse at the Contemporary Hotel.

As Johnny mentioned, the literal translation of ideas can capture atmospheres and events, similar to the way scenes from films capture an emotion or experience we identify with. Mary Blair’s art perfectly captures the scale and color of my early boomer childhood, and takes me there with the speed of PF Flyers to hideouts and imaginary forts of blankets over furniture. Though much of Blair’s work veers toward abstraction, her use of color and the storytelling aspect in her pictures, especially the underlying emotions expressed in much of her art, somehow transport me to a cozy and dreamlike place.

Instead of a single color or one veneer, we playfully use a mixture of color and wood in a painterly fashion.  Legendary animator Frank Thomas said, “Mary was the first artist I knew of to have different shades of red next to each other. You just didn’t do that! But Mary made it work.”

Like Carroll’s surrealist creation, a kitchen can bring such imaginative pleasure. Johnny says to escape is a great release; to dream and not quite understand is in some ways like visiting Venice, Machu Picchu or Gaudi’s Parc Guell. Blair’s biographer John Canamaker perhaps put it best when he wrote, “I feel great pleasure merely gazing at a work by Mary Blair. It’s as delicious as feasting on rainbows.”

“Cooking is an art. By art I mean a lot of creativity and some necessary chaos. Food is a natural product and whatever is natural comes with surprising and unruly elements.”

So wrote Jeanette Winterton in Saturday’s Guardian in an article entitled “For the Love of Food.” She continues: “Our culture has endeavoured to make food as artificial and synthetic as possible – then it is predictable and can be controlled.”

This statement is applicable to our entire food culture, including the environment in which it is created. Winterton’s piece was a memorial to Rose Gray, the co-founder of the River Café, London’s most revered Italian restaurant.

Gray passed away last week. Winterson refers to my late aunt, food writer Elizabeth David, as Rose’s chief mentor and explains also how ED’s (as family and friends called her) writing changed British food for the better. This struck a personal chord for me, as Elizabeth David was also my mentor both personally and in my early days as a kitchen designer.

British food was dreadful during late 19^th and most of the 20^th century, just as British kitchens were anti-social, back rooms that made cooking a drudgery. Could there be a link? Was British food better before the industrial revolution? Elizabeth David felt that it was, and that our best or most ‘real’ cooking was historically done in the nation’s farmhouses, not in restaurants, in a similar manner to how things are done in France.

From local cheeses to cured meats, these farmhouses were the source of regional cooking.  It is no coincidence that the most endearing model for the kitchen is the ‘farmhouse kitchen’. It conjures up happy thoughts, ideas of abundance, rough and ready but homely meals being served up on a refectory table, with the the entire family gathered around.

So perhaps Winterson could be describing not just food but British (and American) kitchens too, with the industry making them artificial and predictable so they can be controlled, i.e. turned out efficiently from factories, easy to sell and install.

For years, I have had an aching desire to capture some of the transferable pleasures of eating – the sociability, the feeling of living well – to the place where we eat and cook. I don’t want these spaces to be organised as an expression of commercial ease, but rather to be private expressions of ourselves. So when Winterson goes on to say ‘real cooks only follow a recipe once’, and then they build on it with inventiveness and reinterpret it according to available seasonal ingredients, I would agree.

The same applies to kitchen design. It’s a messy and creative process and no formula exists that works twice. Every house, family, space has its own unique footprint and way of living. I want to offer a big thank you to Jeanette Winterson for her thoughts that allowed me to make the connection. How about a new saying for modernists, that function follows food? Let’s hope real food brings more love to real kitchens in the future.

Take a name, the Goddess of water, add vision, a great designer or two, find an industrial furnace and pile of metal flakes, model the mix, sprinkle with fashion and technology and then bake until done. Keep at it for six years, invite guests to lunch, create unexpected entertainment and encourage conversation between kitchen designers and fashion designers. This is a roundabout, whimsical way of describing an event held last week by Brizo faucets during New York Fashion week, Where I was introduced to their products and company philosophy.
 
I never imagined that so much thought – and resolution of opposing ideas – could go into the making of home hardware. Fashion and function, sitting side by side, are at the core of the design of these faucets. I love that it defies the conventionally modernist way of doing design. I now have more respect for these control mechanisms for dispensing water and realize we need intelligent taps or advanced functional faucets. (Excuse my interchangeable use of “tap” and “faucet” ; this is an example of UK and UK English at its most confusing).

 
Brizo launched three new products: Venuto with clean, modern; Virage, a fluid, gentle twist that is also quirky and unexpected; Talo, inspired by organic shapes with hints of steam punk.

All are chock full of technological features as well. SmartTouch replaces grip handles, while Magnedock is a pull-down, handheld nozzle, kept in place by a magnet. Do we really need this new technology for taps? From an environmental perspective, it is crucial way of limiting water use.
 
There are witty touches too. Talo, which is inspired by bluebell shapes, has a vase for holding fresh herbs or flowers. Who would of thought of this to include behind your sink? There is also a bathroom collection in the same style where shelf brackets and a tilting wall mirror add surprise to their faucet collection.
 
Never before did I realize I needed a education in taps and faucets or enjoy it so much, along with the twenty other design bloggers from all over the USA who flew in to share the same experience. Brizo is a company that welds fashion into implements that control water. Sound ridiculous? Not anymore.