Gordon Russell walnut and ebony desk 1931

Provenance: Original label

SIR (Sydney) GORDON RUSSELL 1892 - 19801

Russell, who described himself as a ‘Designer of Furniture’, served in France during the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross. This experience of mass destruction focused his ambitions on creating a post-war aesthetic and he viewed modern design as a necessary act of reparation.

During the Second World War Russell turned his factory over to the manufacture of ammunition boxes, high precision aircraft models and parts for the wings of RAF Mosquito planes. Appointed Chairman of the Utility Furniture Design Panel in 1943 Russell took the opportunity to introduce simple, rational design to a wider public. When the Museum of Modern Art of New York organised an international competition for low cost furniture in 1948 they appointed Russell as one of the judges.

Russell became a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 1940 and was appointed the Master of the Faculty in 1947. He was one of the first Fellows of the Society of Industrial Artists (1943) and as one of the original members of the Council of Industrial Design (COID), and Director from 1947, Russell took a leading role in the organisation of the 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition. His company, Gordon Russell Ltd, showed a number of designs and in 1948 Russell was able to demonstrate how various firms, by collaborating with the Royal Designers for Industry (RDI), set about designing industrial products in the Design at Work exhibition organised by the Faculty and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Russell wrote a joint letter, with the RSA Chairman of Council, to The Times supporting the call for a Festival of Britain in 1951. He believed it provided an opportunity for the words ‘Made in Britain’ to be ‘established as synonymous with quality in its fullest sense, and so open the gateway to a new and better era of prosperity’. As well as being involved in the arrangements for the Festival itself, Russell provided the chairs and tables for the reception area of the Royal Pavilion and contributed to the review, Design in the Festival.

The RSA awarded Russell their silver medal for his 1949 talk on ‘The Industrial Designer’s Responsibility’ in which he said ‘nothing is more important today than that a common language of design should grow’. He took part in the RSA discussion evening on ‘The Future of Shop Design and Window Display'. Two years later he gave a talk on ‘The Designer’s Status in Industry’ and in 1960 he spoke about ‘Modern Trends in Industrial Design’. Two years before his death he spoke at RSA on how he had spent his life trying to demonstrate that hand and machine could be used successfully together for mass produced goods, while still retaining the quality of the design. He called his talk ‘Skill’ as it was a word, he said, ‘which conveys something to ordinary people in a way which Design does not’. He wrote obituaries for several RDIs for the RSA Journal: A.B. Read, James Hogan, Percy Delf Smith, Harold Stabler and Walter Dorwin Teague. He sat on the RSA’s committee for a planned exhibition of European Medals 1930-1955, took an active interest in the work of the RSA’s Industrial Design Bursaries competition and opened the 1964 exhibition of prize-winning work.

Awarded a CBE in 1947 and Knighted in 1955 Russell was awarded a second Royal Warrant by Queen Elizabeth II in 1961. On a visit to the Parsons School of Design in New York in 1956 Russell was presented with their Medal for Distinguished Service and in 1962 he was the recipient of the RSA’s most prestigious award, the Albert Medal, ‘for services to industrial design’.

Appointed a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1959 and Master of the Art Workers Guild in 1962 Russell served on many committees and panels to raise the profile of design education and design quality. Russell published Looking at Furniture in 1964 and his autobiography, Designer’s Trade in 1968.