As a designer who lived and worked in London during the 1980’s, you can imagine what a surprise and honour it was for Bev to be invited to an exclusive lunch and get to meet one of the design industry’s icons: Sir Terence Conran.

My friend Gill Seville, who is KPMG’s Business Development Executive, kindly invited me to join her at a lunch at the Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, in celebration of David Whitehead and Sons bicentenary and re-launch of a range of their 1950’s fabrics.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRqoUL0DqRY]

I jumped at the opportunity – not only was the event in the famous Voysey designed Broad Leys (the Motor Boat Racing Club), which is a superb example of Arts and Craft architecture, but I was able to meet Sir Terence Conran and have a photograph taken with the very lovely Jane Horrocks”

The main purpose of the get together was to firstly celebrate the fact that David Whitehead and Sons have been in business for two hundred years and secondly to re-launch six of their existing designs to the market.   Back in 1951, during the Festival of Britain exhibited twenty fabrics designed by the likes of Sir Henry Moore, Sir Terence Conran and many other design icons. The six designs chosen are from that period when Whitehead’s were at their peak. The designs haven’t changed but the quality of the fabrics and the printing technology means this range is now printed onto pure cotton using today’s state-of-the-art digital printing technology.

Sir Terence Conran was one of the designer’s who worked with Whitehead’s. He is a designer and entrepreneur whose empire of shops and restaurants includes London’s Bluebird restaurant and the Conran Shop. Conran was very fond of quoting artist such as William Morris, and during the time he was setting up the Conran shop, he said “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” We know most designers would agree with that quote.

You would think that having lunch with Sir Terence and Jane Horrocks would be enough of a thrill however during the afternoon all of the guests were asked to suggest new names for the six fabric designs. Bev said

I couldn’t believe how hard it was to re-name the six designs. In the end, I opted for a gut reaction approach and named them spontaneously”.

Spontaneity paid off because Bev’s had one of the fabrics, currently called ‘Flanders’, renamed to ‘Remember Me’.

Bev is really looking forward to seeing the design she re-named and we will let you know when the re-launch happens.