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In 1931, designer Betty Joel opened the newly decorated “lounge” of her Knightsbridge showroom to the public. Attracted by reports on unusual interior2,000 visitors came to see his nutshell in nuts in nuts, stored library and tweed tweed in scarlet and jade against apricot walls.
At the time, Joel was a familiar name. Known for its rationalized contemporary furniture, its eponymous company has also produced carpets, fabrics and interiors for customers such as Lord Mountbatten, Sir Winston Churchill and the Claridge hotel. But in 1938, perhaps because of the breakdown of her marriage to her commercial partner David Joel, she retired. Today, it is largely unknown outside design circles.
A new book by his back new clive Stewart-Lockhart, an artistic advisor, aims to restore his reputation. He spent a decade looking for Joel's inheritance in museums, archives and auction houses. Several of his projects – in the Art Deco St Olaf house on the Thames, or the elegant interior at the house of Cigar of a house on rue Harley – have survived.
Born in 1894, Joel grew up in China, where his father was a civil servant. She was proud of her “non-bourgeois” education, explains Stewart-Lockhart. This, combined with the “realism” inherited from his Scottish father, has shaped his character; Determined and ingenious, she succeeded in the world of design dominated by men.
In 1921, Joel and her husband, a former naval captain, moved into the house they had designed on Hayling Island, near Portsmouth. Joel was frustrated by the choice of new furniture on the market and, despite a lack of training, found her own creations, which her husband made in the garage. The avant-garde parts have bitten the interest of friends, who ordered theirs. A company began. In 1928, they opened an exhibition hall in London.
Joel understood the brand. It appeared in advertisements, adjusting its look to adapt to current trends: pre -raphaélite locks to a harvest “to the boy”. The delivery van, shaped from a Rolls-Royce, was sprayed in jaw yellow to match its front door. Inspired by Chanel, she produced a house scent. In 1933, 2,500 radios designed by Betty Joel were sold in one day. In 1937, a pictorial carpet won the first prize for a competition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. There were also waterfalls, like a rotary bed shown at the Royal Academy in 1935. “She liked to shock,” said Stewart-Lockhart.
However, his was a kind of very English modernism. His furniture was contemporary but not radical, pairing simple and simple with classic carpentry. She stained fashionable glass and chrome (examples survive in the Daily Express building) but wood – Sycomore and silky oak of Queensland in particular – was her favorite material. Several of his craftsmen had trained, because the yachts and innovative characteristics of the space economy were common in his work, such as the deep cabin beds or the extendable round table with petal leaves.
For the Park Lane apartment in Lord Mountbatten, she produced cedar storage furniture with practical drawers for discs. The radiators were hidden behind grids modeled on those found on ships, and the walls were decorated with a world -painted world card.
At a time when women were responsible for household work, Joel also designed parts that make life easier for them: rinsed handles and smooth surfaces or bases meant that it was not necessary to pass the vacuum cleaner under the furniture. Details that we can all appreciate today.
“Betty Joel” by Clive Stewart-Lockhart; Token Press, £ 55
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