Summers Gerald

Biography

"It was simple furniture ... and we were makers of it."

?In 1931 ther English designer Gerald Summers and his partner, Marjorie Butcher (1909-96), opened their London shop 'Makers of Simple Furniture.' A small company, they produced made-to-order furniture, until the firm's closing in 1940. Makers of Simple Furniture produced hundreds of innovative furniture designs in plywood, conceived, in Summers' words, as "furniture for the concrete age." This singular body of work shaped the notion of the modern interior in Britain, as his simple designs captured the ideal unity of material, production, function and form. ?

At this time adhesives did not stand the strain of everyday use and some of both Alvar Aalto and Marcel Breuer's plywood designs had to be modified with spliced pieces and bracing. This was alien to Summers' beliefs: "In pure design we expect each part and member to pull its full weight in making the design suitable for its purpose...". For example, his Bentwood Armchair is made from a single rectangle of ply, sandwiched with the adhesive used in the aviation industry and laid in the mould. After only eight hours the chair was removed and required minimal finishing.

Summers has often been side-lined by the achievements of European and Scandinavian designers of the period. 'Makers of Simple Furniture' was also a small company, producing mainly to order,and lacked the publicity machine of larger workshops. Originally offered through Heals, Harrods and select department stores in the US, examples of Summers' designs are now held by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Vitra Design Museum in Germany