G-Plan – mix ‘n’ match furniture for the masses

The ubiquity of IKEA superstores makes it difficult to remember a time when most of the world seemed to be hopelessly in thrall to another manifestation of Scandinavian design.

Originally launched in 1953, G-Plan furniture was the ultimate domestic fashion statement throughout the 1950s and 1960s and, unlike IKEA’s cheap and cheerful flatpack products, was considered the height of chic.

That’s not to say that G-Plan items were ever designed to meet the same price point as students’ favourite IKEA: although rather cheaper (and more pleasingly compact) than the heavy oak furniture of the previous generation, G-Plan was very much aimed at the aspirant middle classes. Given this target market, the manufacturers realised that they would have to create products that were obviously contemporary, yet not too avant-garde or modernistic.

For several years the typical G-Plan table, chair or sideboard was made from light wood, such as teak but, later in the 1950s, this was replaced by tola, a darker African material.

G Plan was not cheap but it did allow fans of its clean, unfussy lines to collect it piece by piece, dubbed by some irreverent journalists as ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ rather like the sweet counter at Woolworths, yet this aspect of G-Plan contributed in a large part to its stunning success. In Acacia Avenues the length of Britain, families sat on their G-Plan chairs at the G-Plan table, occasionally reaching for the G-Plan sideboard to pick up a piece of crockery or cutlery.

If the 1950s and 1960s represented, as many social commentators have asserted, the height of bourgeois social aspiration, then G-Plan was the weapon of choice for many. To own the full panoply of G-Plan furniture meant that one had arrived on the social scene.

There is still enormous interest in – and desire for – G-Plan furniture among connoisseurs of high quality retro household items, while a book entitled The G-Plan Revolution by Basil Hyman and Steven Braggs documents the rise and rise of this still popular brand.

www.retrowow.co.uk

New post on at Wednesday, 23 June, 2010, 9:20 am and is archived in Décor/Architecture/Industrial & Furniture Design. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.