Our new design ‘coalition’ between freestanding furniture and built-in pieces – in other words, a modern update on the unfitted kitchen – is being finalized in our UK studio now for Decorex, an interior design show in London (September 29- Oct 3rd). Custom-made pieces that fit the unique dimensions of each client’s space will be balanced by freestanding furniture whether, vintage, recycled or off-the-peg. We want our kitchens to be relaxed, well-furnished rooms where you feel at ease.

When I first developed the idea of the unfitted kitchen in 1984, it was a protest against rigid, wall-based counters in a single finish. The new, modern unfitted kitchen is a negotiated settlement between the two. The truth is that it’s hard to use only freestanding pieces to make a highly efficient culinary centre, but it can be done with size-specific pieces.  What’s new to our current design thinking is that the social activities of eating, gathering around and multi-tasking on the table are now considered of equal importance in terms of space allocation. The civilizing aspects of good interior design need to be hard wired into the ergonomics.

We see the customer as a joint designer and collaborator, not just for supplying their personal requirements for the brief, but also assisting us with all aspects of the décor and finding vintage pieces we can incorporate at the heart of the design. The end result should not feel like a visit has taken place by a kitchen cabinet salesman, more like a passing ergonomist who is a space provocateur with a secret interest in long lunches and a passion for art. That does not mean in-your-face design from our end. Our furniture should give pleasure but be modest and easy to live with. Our plate rack prototype below illustrates our intentions.

Tell us what you think about our conspicuous, non-consumptive approach to kitchen design.

William Wordworth’s poetry set the 19th century alight and changed how we view our relationship with nature. He believed that sensitivity to nature transforms our emotional and spiritual lives – a philosophy he lived by. He saw the imagination as a tool for heightening our senses and adding to our happiness. He, his wife Mary and sister Dorothy valued simplicity, hard work and the activities of family life.

It was at Dove Cottage, overlooking Grasmere in Cumbria in Northwest England, he wrote his most celebrated poetry. The family called the room they occupied for everyday living the Houseplace, a local Lake District term for an all-encompassing parlor. Modest in size at about 15 ft by 20 ft, it was cosy, easy to heat and was used in conjunction with the kitchen.

A simple, prosaic word, ‘Houseplace’ is an example of the innovative ways Wordsworth used common language to express his most heart-felt ideas. One of the core beliefs of the Romantic movement was that nature represented something close to heaven on earth, and a simple, rustic way of life gave people access to this.

I recently took my family to stay in a house just above Dove Cottage rented from Landmark Trust. We saw it from our window each day and walked through the garden to reach it. Although a popular pilgrimage for tourists and Brits alike, the tours, room-by-tiny-room, transport you back in time. You can see where Wordsworth wrote his best poems, some of them undoubtedly on the table in the Houseplace. You can still feel its atmosphere and appreciate the worn, aging fabric, panelling and floors, with low light – yes, I feel at home here.

I want to exit with the last few lines of “The Prelude”, which make you realize why the contrast between indoors and being in nature are so complementary:
Those recollected hours that have the charm

Of visionary things, and lovely forms

And sweet sensations, that throw back our life

And almost make our infancy itself

A visible scene, on which the sun is shining

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.”