The London-based Isokon firm was founded in 1929 by the English entrepreneur Jack Pritchard and the Canadian architect Wells Coates to design and construct modernist houses and flats, and furniture and fittings for them. Originally called Wells Coates and Partners, the name was changed in 1931 to Isokon, a name derived from Isometric Unit Construction, bearing an allusion to Russian Constructivism.
In 1925, Pritchard had become employed as a sales and marketing manager for the British company Venesta, a subsidiary of the large Estonian plywood manufacturer A. M. Luther, based in Tallinn. After having met in Paris, Pritchard hired the designer Charlotte Perriand through the architect firm of Le Corbusier to design a trade fair stand for Venesta at Olympia, London in 1929. Despite his involvement with Lawn Road Flats and the Isokon company, Jack Pritchard continued to work for Venesta until 1936. Pritchard used Venesta to make his Isokon plywood furniture.
The Isokon company was never commercially successful. The end came with the outbreak of World War II when its supply of plywood from Estonia was cut off due to the Soviet invasion of the Baltic countries when the A. M. Luther company in Tallinn was confiscated. The Isokon Furniture Company ceased trading in 1939 but was restarted in 1963. Since 1982, the furniture is made by Isokon Plus, formerly known as Windmill Furniture, under licence from the Pritchard family.
Isokon's key project was the Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, called the Isokon building since 1972, which was formally opened on 9 July 1934. It was designed by Wells Coates after a brief by Molly Pritchard, based on the Minimum Flat concept presented at the CIAM (Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne) conference of 1929. In March 1931, Wells Coates, Jack Pritchard and Serge Chermayeff had visited Germany, including the Bauhaus school and the Törten Estate in Dessau, both designed by Walter Gropius, which possibly influenced the design of Lawn Road Flats. The building process and the opening event was photographed by Edith Tudor-Hart (née Edith Suschitzky) who was educated 1928-30 at the Bauhaus school in Dessau, but also a recruiter for Soviet intelligence. Intended to be the last word in contemporary living, the block of flats was aimed at young professionals. It contained 22 single flats, four double flats, three studio flats, staff quarters, kitchens and a large garage. Services included shoe cleaning, laundry, bed making and food sent up by a dumb waiter at the spine of the building. In 1937, a restaurant and bar designed by Marcel Breuer and F. R. S. Yorke named the Isobar, located on the ground floor with a decked outdoor area, was added to the building. Its second manager was Philip Harben, who after World War II became the first TV chef at the BBC. Jack Pritchard also set up a supper club called The Half Hundred Club, so named because it could have no more than 25 members who could bring 25 guests. They dined at the Isobar, at Pritchard's penthouse flat in Lawn Road Flats or at more exotic locations, such as London Zoo.
Pritchard remained in London during World War II while Molly Pritchard and their children Jonathan and Jeremy left for America where the children were put in a boarding school in Canada while Molly moved in with Walter and Ise Gropius in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Lawn Road Flats was popular as a residence during the war due to being made out of reinforced concrete, and despite near bombs, survived the Blitz. It was repainted brown during the war as it was feared its white surface would serve as a navigation aid for German bombers.
In 1955, Pritchard staged a 21st-birthday party for the building on its roof top terrace. Philip Harben returned to make the food, architectural writer Nikolaus Pevsner made a speech and letters from Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Agatha Christie were read out. Wells Coates as well as many pre-World War II residents attended the event.
From 1966, Jack and Molly Pritchard increasingly spent their time at a new home in Blythburgh, Suffolk, designed by Jack's daughter Jennifer Jones (née Tudor-Hart) and her husband Colin, although they kept the penthouse at Lawn Road Flats until the mid 1970s. The modern bungalow, also called Isokon, is still owned by the Pritchard family.
Pritchard sold Lawn Road Flats in 1969 to the magazine New Statesman, who demolished the Isobar and converted it into flats. They then sold the building to Camden Council in 1972 for twice the price. The building was listed Grade II in 1974 by English Heritage and listed Grade I in 1999. Despite this, it received poor maintenance from Camden Council and deteriorated badly. During this period, it was chiefly used to house single men with drug, alcohol and mental health problems. After a long campaign to save the building, it was sold to the housing association Notting Hill Housing Group in 2003, in a joint bid with Avanti Architects, headed up by architect John Allan, with the pledge that a museum would open in the building. It now contains 36 flats, most that are owned on Equity sharing basis by key workers such as nurses and teachers. In July 2014, the building's garage was converted into a permanent exhibition that tells the story of the building, its residents and the Isokon company. It is operated by the not-for-profit charitable Isokon Gallery Trust and is open 11am to 4pm each Saturday and Sunday from early March until the end of October every year.
Bauhaus in Britain
In 1935, Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, became Controller of Design (effectively creative director) for The Isokon Furniture Company. He had arrived in England on 18 October 1934 with his wife Ise Gropius. They lived in flat 15 at Lawn Road Flats until March 1937, when they left for the United States after Gropius was offered the post of Professor of Architecture at Harvard University. A month before he left for the USA, Gropius recommended Marcel Breuer, a former colleague at the Bauhaus who had moved into flat 16 in the building in the autumn of 1935, as his replacement as Controller of Design. The furniture Breuer designed whilst at Isokon are highly influential pieces of the modernist movement, and included chairs, tables and the Long and Short Chair.
László Moholy-Nagy, another former Bauhaus teacher who also lived briefly in the building with his wife Sibyl Moholy-Nagy and daughter Hattula, became involved with Isokon when he arrived in Britain from Holland in May 1935. Moholy-Nagy designed promotional material for the Isokon Furniture Company, including sales leaflets, show cards and the logo of the Isokon firm itself, which was an outline of a curved plywood chair. He later founded The New Bauhaus in Chicago, soon renamed the IIT Institute of Design.
The fourth Bauhaus resident at Lawn Road Flats was Naum Slutzky, a Russian born goldsmith who had taught at the Bauhaus school in Weimar. He remained in Britain until his death in 1965.
Pritchard revived the Isokon Furniture Company in 1963. Pritchard hired Ernest Race, former furniture designer for the Festival of Britain. In 1968, Pritchard licensed John Alan Designs, based in Camden, London to produce the Long Chair, Nesting Tables and the Isokon Penguin Donkey Mark 2 designed by Ernest Race. The Isokon Penguin Donkey Mark 2 became a sales success due to the support of Allen Lane, the founder on Penguin Books. In 1982, Chris McCourt of Windmill Furniture was handed the baton by Jack Pritchard to manufacture the historical Isokon furniture pieces. The first furniture to be added to the collection since 1963 was designed by the duo BarberOsgerby. Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby had recently graduated from the Royal College of Art when they designed their first piece, the Loop Coffee Table, in 1996. The bent plywood design was to be the first of several furniture pieces that the designers created for what is now named Isokon Plus. The most recent is the Bodleian Chair for the University of Oxford's historic Bodleian Libraries.
Original Isokon furniture designs
Isokon Long Chair, designed by Marcel Breuer, Isokon Furniture Company, 1935
Isokon/Venesta Stool (designer unknown, 1933)
Isokon Book Units (designed by Wells Coates, 1933)
Desk made from Isokon Book Units (designed by Wells Coates, 1933)
Aluminium Waste Paper Basket (designed by Walter Gropius, 1935)
Side Table (designed by Walter Gropius, 1936)
Isokon Nesting Tables (designed by Marcel Breuer, 1936)
Isokon Dining Table (designed by Marcel Breuer, 1936)
Isokon Stacking Chair (designed by Marcel Breuer, 1936)
The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He is a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar (1919). Gropius was also a leading architect of the International Style.
Isokon Flats, also known as Lawn Road Flats and the Isokon building, on Lawn Road in the Belsize Park district of the London Borough of Camden, is a reinforced-concrete block of 36 flats, designed by Canadian engineer Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard.
Wells Wintemute Coates OBE was an architect, designer and writer. He was, for most of his life, an expatriate Canadian who is best known for his work in England, the most notable of which is the Modernist block of flats known as the Isokon building in Hampstead, London.
The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925–1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany.
Marcel Lajos Breuer, was a Hungarian-German modernist architect and furniture designer. He moved to the United States in 1937 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1944.
The Haus am Horn is a domestic house in Weimar, Germany, designed by Georg Muche. It was built for the Bauhaus Werkschau exhibition which ran from July to September 1923. It was the first building based on Bauhaus design principles, which revolutionized 20th century architectural and aesthetic thinking and practice.
Modern furniture refers to furniture produced from the late 19th century through the present that is influenced by modernism. Post-World War II ideals of cutting excess, commodification, and practicality of materials in design heavily influenced the aesthetic of the furniture. It was a tremendous departure from all furniture design that had gone before it. There was an opposition to the decorative arts, which included Art Nouveau, Neoclassical, and Victorian styles. Dark or gilded carved wood and richly patterned fabrics gave way to the glittering simplicity and geometry of polished metal. The forms of furniture evolved from visually heavy to visually light. This shift from decorative to minimalist principles of design can be attributed to the introduction of new technology, changes in philosophy, and the influences of the principles of architecture. As Philip Johnson, the founder of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art articulates:
"Today industrial design is functionally motivated and follows the same principles as modern architecture: machine-like simplicity, smoothness of surface, avoidance of ornament ... It is perhaps the most fundamental contrast between the two periods of design that in 1900 the Decorative Arts possessed ..."
John Craven Pritchard was a British furniture entrepreneur, who was very influential between the First and Second World Wars. His work is exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of London. He was a member of the Design and Industries Association.
Philip Morton Shand, known as P. Morton Shand, was a British journalist, architecture critic, wine and food writer, entrepreneur and pomologist. He was the paternal grandfather of Queen Camilla.
Barber Osgerby is a London-based industrial design studio founded in 1996 by British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. Historically named variously Barber Osgerby Associates, BOA, Barber & Osgerby and BarberOsgerby, the practice has been called Barber Osgerby since 2008. Barber and Osgerby's work encompasses interiors, furniture, lighting and product design as well as art and architectural-scale projects.
Bauhaus Dessau, also Bauhaus-Building Dessau, is a building-complex in Dessau-Roßlau. It is considered the pinnacle of pre-war modern design in Europe and originated out of the dissolution of the Weimar School and the move by local politicians to reconcile the city's industrial character with its cultural past.
The Gane Pavilion, also known as Gane's Pavilion, the Gane Show House and the Bristol Pavilion, was a temporary building designed by the modernist architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer with F. R. S. Yorke and built in 1936 at Ashton Court near Bristol in England.
The Isokon Long Chair is a chair designed by Marcel Breuer for the Isokon company in 1935-36. The chair is considered one of the most important pieces of furniture to emerge from the inter-war modern movement and it is in the permanent collections of several internationally renowned museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Alan I W Frank House is a private residence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and partner Marcel Breuer, two of the pioneering masters of 20th-century architecture and design. This spacious, multi-level residence, its furnishings and landscaping were all created by Gropius and Breuer as a 'Total Work of Art.' In size and completeness, it is unrivaled. It was their most important residential commission, and it is virtually the same today as when it was built in 1939–40, original and authentic.
Highfield was a large house situated at 128 Selly Park Road in the Selly Park area of Birmingham, England. Built in the 1860s, it was bought in 1929 by Philip Sargant Florence and his wife Lella Secor Florence after Sargant Florence was appointed as a professor at the nearby University of Birmingham.
Erich Consemüller was a German photographer and architect who studied and taught at Bauhaus art school. He worked alongside the photographer Lucia Moholy documenting life at the Bauhaus.
Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau is a World Heritage Site in Germany, comprising six separate sites which are associated with the Bauhaus art school. It was designated in 1996 with four initial sites, and in 2017 two further sites were added.
Farkas "Wolfgang" Ferenc Molnár (1897–1945) was a Hungarian architect, painter, essayist, and graphic artist. He is associated with the first generation of Bauhaus movement, and was active in Budapest.
References
Cantacuzino, Sherban. 1978. Wells Coates: a monograph. London: Gordon Fraser Gallery. ISBN978-0900406591.
Pritchard, Jack. 1984. View From A Long Chair. Sydney: Law Book Co of Australasia. ISBN978-0710202314.
Cohn, Laura. 1999. The Door to a Secret Room: A Portrait of Wells Coates. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN978-1840146950.
Grieve, Alastair. 2004. Isokon: For Ease, For Ever. London: Isokon Plus. ISBN0-9548676-0-2.
Powers, Alan. 2007. Modern: The Modern Movement in Britain. Merrill Wilcox House. ISBN978-1858944050.
Darling, Elizabeth. 2012. Wells Coates. London: RIBA Enterprises. ISBN978-1859464373.
Burke, David. 2014. The Lawn Road Flats: Spies, Writers and Artists. London: Boydell Press. ISBN978-1843837831.
Daybelge, Leyla and Englund, Magnus. 2019. Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain. London: Batsford. ISBN978-1849944915.
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