I think we all know she was a cook – or it’s very easy to find this out.  I would like to remember some other things about my aunt.

She could not bear being told what to do.  I’m not sure what led to this, but while still in her teens she ran away from home.  She was fed up with family life, such as it was at Wootton Manor in Sussex, and she had plans to become an actress.  The Oxford Playhouse proved a temporary stop, as she and one of its company, Charles Gibson Gowen, escaped to sea in a barge.  They kept one step ahead of the Germans as war broke out until arrested in Venice and subsequently freed by the American ambassador.  She embraced the chaos of the war, working for much of it at the British Army intelligence library in Cairo.  Afterwards, she wrote cookery books, apparently to prove her worth to another (married) lover.

I first knew my aunt properly when she was recovering from a stroke and had lost her sense of taste. What to do?  My father was her doctor and he suggested, along with others, that she open a shop.  She liked this challenge.  It turned out she had been collecting addresses of potteries, cast-iron foundries, chinaware companies, artisan knife makers and tin ware manufacturers during her repeated trips to France. Her favourite shops were ironmongers, ideally French, where the British bought their cookery ware as no cookshops existed then.  From one trip she bought back a collection of cast brass cup hooks and asked me if I could get them made here as there was no English equivalent.  That was my job, fixing things.  As her nephew my duties included changing light bulbs, building bookshelves and sink cabinets and gassing cupboards for woodworm in her Chelsea terrace.

A bus journey to 44 Bourne St Pimlico found me facing an industrial sized plate glass window in an ugly, modern, narrow shop front. A table placed across the entire width to display basic French tin ware, piled high, looked like nothing I had seen before.  Inside were pots set on garage shelves with straw strewn about and bread crocks on the floor and a staircase leading to a concrete basement.  Visiting the shop was my top priority when escaping boarding school for the holidays.  Liza (as we called her) most often hid in the stockroom (people constantly wanted her advice and she found it exhausting) on a bar stool, knees to one side at an old pine dresser.  This doubled up as desk, samples spot, notice board and waiting-to-be-filed zone.  She dressed in black and white, with black, thick-rimmed glasses. I was always welcome and was offered Nescafe in small white porcelain coffee cups.  The place smelled of disque bleu cigarettes, fresh ones and stale.

Customers and friends from all over the world brought trade samples and seasonal food.  I remember figs, persimmons, walnuts and cheeses.  In the basement the objects took on glamour.  She styled things in her shop in a casual but eye-catching and unusual way, the lighting borrowed from a photographer’s studio.  Stock moved so fast when it first opened that everything was sold within a month. Other retailers quickly caught on, even Terence Conran admitted her influence on Habitat in later years. Independent cookshops sprung up in high streets in USA, Australia and here.

Her own kitchen was full of exotic clutter, freestanding furniture, piles of books and strange cooking equipment.  No units and long countertops for her - just a decent table, a stove and some good few dressers and a capacious old cupboard.  I loved visiting just to hang about in that kitchen.

My aunt’s spirit is captured in Artemis Coopers’ excellent biography, Writing at the Kitchen Table.  She excelled in writing, conversation and enjoyment of being in a kitchen.  One last rebellion – her mother had banned Elizabeth and her sisters from ever going into her kitchen at Wootton to prevent them getting in the cook’s way, but she ended up by practically living in one: I installed a stylish cane day bed in her final ‘winter kitchen’.

Andrew Solomon’s new book Far From the Tree: Children and the Search for Identity is book of the week on BBC Radio 4 and all over the review pages, here and in the USA at the moment – excitingly for me because I had the great good luck to design not one but two kitchens for Andrew, first in London and then in a New York brownstone.  For his Notting Hill house he asked me to focus the design around a versatile table on which he could write, entertain at least eight people and prepare food while facing into the room, all in a tight space.  This called for ingenuity.  We came up with a portable chopping box that could be positioned on and off the end of the table nearest the cooker, to be removed for a dinner party when the guests appeared.

Andrew wrote his book over a ten year period, using the table in both kitchens, aided by tubs of ice cream.

Far from the Tree, a dozen kinds of love is about parents having to adapt to their children turning out entirely different from themselves, offspring that are uniquely challenging rather than reproductions of their parents.  In a sense this is the position of all parents, but the cases researched with the greatest care and dedication for this book are extreme ones that include one of the Columbine massacre perpetrators as well as autism and physical disabilities. It is a rare and moving book that I feel will expand our empathy and tolerance for those who appear different, and explores the question of identity and illness.

His London kitchen: A portable chopping box at the far end of the table raises the preparation surface to the right height but allows for the table to used for dining or as a copious desk when needed.

As many have already pointed out, there is something of a personal connection here between writer and subject matter, given that Andrew Solomon is a gay parent.  Apart from the publicity surrounding the book, he was been in my mind during the recent reporting of the House of Commons debate on legalizing gay marriage.  Hardly surprisingly, I am in favour.  What could possibly be wrong with the criteria for marriage being love and commitment rather than straight sexuality?  The MPs who voted against – or, like ours, failed to support – this change for the better proposed by David Cameron seem to me to represent stultifying   conformity.

In admittedly a very different context I have always fought this kind of thinking.  I always ask why kitchens have to fit tight stereotypes of ‘farmhouse’ (bogus), units-round-walls etc.  Instead, a kitchen can be out in the garden, or a large stiletto heel can support a chopping block. And decoration can come in personal shapes and sizes. Needless to say I enjoyed working with him on both projects and appreciate the amount of trust he gave me to interpret his requirements.

Russian art preferences to reflect Andrew’s experience in Moscow - Constructivist dinner plates, Cyrillic lettering and Coptic patterns on the cornice.*

Andrew’s New York kitchen, above, is more lavish than his Notting Hill house and features Russian script around its walls, as a tribute to time spent with dissidents around his kitchen table, while he worked through their passport applications with them.

You can see him cooking with his three year old son George: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7409112n&tag=showDoorFlexGridLeft;flexGridModule

*To my own benefit the inclusion of his Manhattan kitchen in my book Kitchen Culture may have contributed to its being published in a Russian Edition. It is still in print from Art Rosnik Publishing House, Moscow.

Far from the Tree is reviewed by Tim Adams in the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/10/far-from-tree-solomon-review

Nancy Hiller, distinguished USA cabinet maker and author, writes about Johnny in the Tailgate column in the October edition of Fine Homebuilding magazine.

In a lively and far reaching interview Johnny reflects on why the kitchen has become the most important room in the house, why he became to be a kitchen designer and how he cut his craftsman’s teeth restoring a gypsy wagon.

Available in the UK at specialist foreign magazine newsagents and from bookstores across the USA.

https://www.finehomebuilding.com/design/departments/tailgate/johnny-grey-designer.aspx