Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • AnOther Magazine

    THE HOUSE OF BEAUTY AND CULTURE

    Mar 23, 2023 13 minutes
    n"I was really inspired by this generation of creators that came up in the Eighties - including Judy Blame, Christopher Nemeth, the Buffalo crew. London then was an apex of culture in a lot of ways and it was really before there were any proper commercial opportunities. There was a purity to the creative expression. I bought lots of Christopher Nemeth stuff. There was such a texture to what he did, and a rawness. He and Judy taught me what luxury was - that luxury is what something is imbued with rather than its monetary value. It doesn't have to be cashmere or silk to be luxury. It's the process and the work and the love that you put into something that makes it exquisite. That was one of the inspirations I took from that generation of artists and designers and performers. And also how it was a cross-pollination of everything in a small, compressed area. The House of Beauty and Culture, which was a crafts collective with a shop downstairs and a studio upstairs, has been referenced and celebrated more in recent years - as it should be, because it was such a special moment in English design.”

    Interview with Alan Macdonald

    Alan Macdonald was one half of the furniture design partnership Frick and Frack during the 1980s. He was close friends with John Moore and set up the House of Beauty and Culture with him and Judy Blame, making tables both for display and for Moore to use in the workshop upstairs. The other half of the duo was Fritz Solomon who also worked on the interior of the shop and who created the interior of the Old Curiosity Shop in a style with several similarities. Their design for the shop included a red cement floor with coins dropped into it and narrow planks of wood covering the walls. Their furniture was raw-looking, often made of unpainted wood and found materials. Macdonald continued to make furniture before moving into set and production design, initially with director John Maybury, for films including Love Is the Devil, Kinky Boots, The Queen, The Edge of Love and Florence Foster Jenkins.

    5.30pm, Tuesday 12 April 2011

    Alan Macdonald's home in Covent Garden, London

    ALAN MACDONALD

    Yes, of course you

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from AnOther Magazine

    AnOther Magazine1 min read
    I Hope We Will, Too. What? Meet Again Sometime. We Have¹
    1 From the 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Scottie (played by James Stewart) and Madeleine (Kim Novak) become close after their first encounter, but they've actually met before and Madeleine is in fact Judy, hired a
    AnOther Magazine4 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
    All-in
    Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø wince at the idea that All-In — an independent magazine and fashion brand operating from within the white heat of Paris's in-crowd — might be considered a litmus test for who and what are perceived to be cool. “
    AnOther Magazine2 min read
    Tala Madani, Artist, On Navigating The Now
    “How do we hold the present, the effects of conflict, when it's so devastating? How can we hold it in a historical way without being overcome by it? Since MeToo and Black Lives Matter, there has been a refocusing of power — people who have never had

    Related Books & Audiobooks