Sir GORDON RUSSELL

(1892-1980)

Gordon Russell was influential in virtually every aspect of British design in the twentieth century.   He spearheaded the government’s wartime utility furniture scheme , influenced the Festival of Britain, and shaped The Design Council into an institution which has been copied all over the world.   Gordon Russell Ltd, the company he founded at Broadway in Worcestershire, was in the forefront of the small and select group of British companies that sough high standards on mass–produced goods, and the radio and television cabinets made for Murphy Radio under his direction and designed by his brother Dick have become international classics of modern design.

Born at Cricklewood in 1892, Russell spent his early years at Repton, moving to Broadway when his father bought the Lygon Arms hotel in 1904.   He continued his education at the Grammar School at Chipping Campden, and when he left in 1908 he sailed from Liverpool for the River Plate as purser on the SS Veronese, which was captained by his uncle.   On his return four months later he was put in charge of the workshop where three or four men repaired old furniture, much of it for the Lygon Arms.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the territorial battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment.   He became an officer in 1917, and in 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross for organising a counter-attack.      After demobilisation Gordon and his brother Don returned home to the Cotswolds where they joined their parents as partners in the business, changing the name from S B Russell to Russell and Sons.

Gordon began by putting the family antique business on its feet, but soon turned his attention to designing new furniture, beginning with a marriage bed to celebrate his marriage to his assistant, Toni Denning in 1921.   He went on to produce other designs, all of which were individual pieces as opposed to matching suites of furniture, and held the first exhibition of in the art gallery at Cheltenham in 1922. The following year he decided to expand the business and invested in a larger workshop with modern machinery, and he began to develop more sophisticated techniques of management and distribution.   He believed that by creating high quality mass-produced furniture he could resolve the conflict between hand craftsmanship and machine manufacture which had dominated modern design, and he explained his philosophy in a pamphlet entitled Honesty and the Crafts in order to appeal to the new generation of furniture buyers.

In 1929 Gordon Russell Ltd was founded, but within weeks the Wall Street Crash had virtually destroyed the firm’s considerable American market.   The English market for expensive furniture at their new showrooms in Wigmore Street was also seriously affected, but the design and manufacture of the Murphy radio cabinets helped to fill the gap as well as giving Gordon Russell some invaluable experience of the commercial world.

During the next decade his design management put Gordon Russell Ltd in the forefront of the small and select group of British companies that sough high standards on mass–produced goods.   His younger brother, Dick, had graduated from the Architectural Association’s School and taken over the drawing office, his outlook and training proving very important for the development of the company.   He had brought with him from London many distinguished young designers and their new ideas helped to maintain the excellent standards of design set in the 1920s.    In 1940 Gordon resigned as managing director of the company, and was elected Royal Designer for Industry.   There followed a long period of public service, which included a stint as chair for the panel designing “utility” furniture (1943–47), and director of the Council of Industrial Design (1947–59).    In fact he was a member at one time or another of the governing body of almost every organisation concerned with art and design, and in recognition of his services he was knighted in the New Year’s Honours List in 1955 and awarded the Gold Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts in 1962.

Gordon Russell’s health deteriorated in 1978 when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and he died two years later at the family home in Kingcombe.