Exmouth's John Astley: 'Design for life'

This takes me logically to a brief discussion about the design of our lives, and in particular the enduring influence of one of my Nineteenth-century heroes, William Morris (1834-1896). Morris once said ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’ I have tried to adhere to that advice, but sometimes it can be difficult.

Surrounded as we are by tat and the shoddy products of mass production can compromise our best intentions. We all know about the ‘super-market’ led focus on cheapness, and given the cost of living it is understandable sacrifices are made.

However, as I have written in these pages before buying cheaply is not usually a sensible option. The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has just published a report showing that during the worst of the recent inflation and high cost of living crisis the cheaper food purchased by most people rose by 29%, compared to 23.5% for people able to pay a bit more.

Morris knew about these pressures and inequalities in his own time and campaigned for better wages and living standards. He was also acutely concerned with the quality of life experienced by people, then as now. He said; ‘I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.’ I think we can all agree that given the last few years of austerity.

Morris was one of the key founders of the Arts & Crafts Movement which has continued to have an enduring influence on all things ‘art’, design and architecture in contemporary society. He has, for example, an inspiration for Terence Conran, perhaps one of the best designers and entrepreneurs of the Twentieth century. He created ‘Habitat’ in the 1960s to bring good quality household products to people at an affordable price, and through his later acquisition of, and work with other firms like Heals, had a significant effect on the quality of our everyday lives. He sought to provide well-made and functional products to add to the overall quality of our lives. Conran said that ‘I have a William Morris-like view about not producing things that only the rich can afford.’

And, given just how much we need to improve the quality of housing for the many, it is worth quoting Nikolaus Pevsner, one of the most important architectural historians of the Twentieth century, who said of Morris; ‘So far Morris is the true prophet of the 20th. century. We owe it to him that an ordinary man’s dwelling-house has once more become a worthy object of the architects thought, and a chair, a wallpaper, or a vase, a worthy object of the artist’s imagination.’

We have a famous example of an Arts & Crafts house in Exmouth, on Foxholes, ‘The Barn’ designed in the 1890s by Edward Prior, a Morris devotee.

When I was growing up in the 1950s some of the best architects and designers in the UK wanted to work for Local Authorities, designing housing and schools. Many such ‘designers’ were inspired by Raymond Unwin’s (1863-1940) book ‘The Art of Building a Home’, where he showed how convenience and comfort mattered when considering how, in what environment, and the meeting of essential needs, were essential criteria for building. We do have some dedicated architects locally now, for example the work of Paul Humphries.

Recent reports on the school curriculum have once again emphasised that ‘the arts’ in the widest sense have continued to be omitted from the everyday experience of children and young people in schools. We are all the losers for this, and we really do need to banish the idea that the arts, admiring and doing it, are just for the few.