Robin Day was without doubt one of the most influential British furniture designers of the 20th century. He is best remembered for his polypropylene moulded stacking chairs but Robin’s achievements and his influence on post-war modernism go much further than that.
Day won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London but it did not meet his expectations as he found the courses of the 1930’s to be “all painting and sculpture” rather than three-dimensional design. Whilst at the College at an RCA dance in 1940 that he met a fellow student, Lucienne Conradi. This was the beginning of a lifelong partnership and 2 years later they married and it was, for its time, a very modern marriage. Both the Days rose to the very top of their professions, Robin in furniture and Lucienne in textile design and although they did not normally work together in a formal sense, they shaped each others work by suggestion and discussion working on back to back drawing boards in their Cheyne Walk Chelsea studio which they shared for nearly 50 years.
In 1948, in partnership with Clive Latimer, he won the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA). It resulted in Day being invited to design furniture for Hille who at the time specialised in the manufacture of high quality reproduction furniture. With Day’s guidance working with Ray Hille, her daughter Rosamind and son-in-law Leslie Julius the company underwent a complete transformation and began to produce ranges of modern furniture.
Robin and Lucienne Day became Britain’s most celebrated design couple with this recognition being helped by the fact that they brought a much-needed dose of glamour to postwar Britain. Together they featured in countless magazine spreads and, in 1954, as a debonair couple in a Smirnoff vodka advertising campaign, surrounded by their furniture and textile designs. They also played a key role with high street retailer John Lewis behind the scenes for 25 years between 1962 and 1987, overseeing the introduction of a comprehensive new house style.
Day also designed the interiors of several Waitrose supermarkets and John Lewis department stores, notably Milton Keynes in 1979.