History
Robin, Lucienne and Paula with
Lucienne's OBE, 2004
History
Furniture designer Robin Day (1915 - 2010) and textile designer Lucienne Day (1917 - 2010) hold a unique place in 20th century design history. For nearly seven decades they pursued independent careers alongside each other, both making outstanding contributions to British design.
The Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation is a design education Charity set up by their only child Paula Day in February 2012. The Trustees donated the design contents of Robin and Lucienne Day's home to public collections including the V&A Museum and the Geffrye Museum, London. Fiona MacCarthy OBE and Professor Sir Christopher Frayling became Patrons.
We held our official launch at the Royal College of Art on 6th May 2015. Dr Paul Thompson (RCA Rector), Jeremy Myerson (Helen Hamlyn Professor of Design) and Paula Day (Chair of the Foundation) spoke to an invited audience. Paula announced the Foundation's first Awards.
We celebrated the centenary of Robin Day's birth with Day in London, a series of events and exhibitions held during London Design Festival in September 2015. The focus was Robin Day Works in Wood, an exhibit at the V&A Museum curated by Jane Withers and designed by Turner Prize 2015 winners Assemble.
On 5th January 2017, the hundredth anniversary of Lucienne Day's birth, we launched a year-long programme of exhibitions, events and product launches put on by twenty-six partner organisations across the country and publicised under our Lucienne Day 100 banner. Highlights included the Arts University Bournemouth exhibition Lucienne Day: Living Design, the Whitworth Art Gallery exhibition Lucienne Day: A Sense of Growth, and a collaboration with the V&A Museum to launch the Lucienne Day Online Collection on the V&A website.
Objectives and Organisation
Paula Day at RCA memorial event, 2011
Objectives and Organisation
The Objective of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation is to advance the education of the public by:
1. Generating knowledge, appreciation and understanding of the nation's design heritage in general, and the work of Robin and Lucienne Day in particular.
2. Encouraging the provisions of public access to the design legacies of Robin and Lucienne Day.
3. Providing resources and opportunities which will enable the general public or students of educational establishments to further their study of design in general, and furniture and textile design in particular.
The Foundation is an independent organisation chaired by Paula Day and run by a Board of Trustees, all of whom donate their time and expertise to further the charity's objectives.
The Foundation is the proprietor of all intellectual property rights in the works of Robin and Lucienne Day. It is committed to managing their designs in such a way as to maintain the integrity of their legacies. The Foundation endorses and licenses only high-quality, authentic productions of Robin and Lucienne Day’s original designs, and all royalties are paid directly to the Foundation to support its work.
People
Patron
Christopher Frayling read history at Churchill College Cambridge where he gained a PhD. He joined the Royal College of Art in 1979, founding the Department of Cultural History. In 1996 he was appointed Rector and Vice Provost. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by nine universities in the UK and was knighted in 2001 for his 'services to art and design education'.
He has served as Chairman of the Design Council, Royal Mint Advisory Committee, The Arts Council of England and as a Trustee of the V&A. He is Chancellor of the University of the Arts Bournemouth.
Sir Christopher is a writer and broadcasts on national radio and television.
Founder, Trustee & Chair
Paula is the only child of Robin and Lucienne Day.
After reading English at Cambridge, Paula moved to Cumbria, where she completed her PhD, set up a pioneering business running mountain walking holidays for women, and created her home on a steep wooded hillside. She has sung in a world music trio, designed gardens, published and performed poetry, and made wild camping treks across the UK and Europe.
She established the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation in 2012 and currently divides her time between running the charity, writing, and rewilding her 50 acre fell.
Trustee
Mary Mullin is Chairman of the Sir Misha Black Awards for Distinguished Services to Design Education, a Regional Adviser to International Council of Societies of Industrial Design and was Secretary General of the International Council of Graphic Design for thirteen years. She has served as consultant for UNIDO in Latin America and as National Chairman of the Design and Industries Association. She is an Hon. Fellow of the Royal College of Art, The University of the Arts in Bournemouth and the International Society of Typographic Design.
Trustee
A graduate of universities in both the UK and Canada Professor Bartholomew has had a career in art and design education. As Dean and Head of College at the University of the Arts London and subsequently as Vice Chancellor at the Arts University Bournemouth he has been instrumental in promoting specialist education in arts media, performance and design. This has been conducted at a national and international level where he has also achieved recognition for the promotion of UK creative industries.
Trustee
Magnus Englund is an author on 20th century design and architecture with half a dozen books to date, often lecturing on the subjects. He is also a director of the Isokon Gallery, a small museum in London. Besides this, he has a thirty-year career as retail entrepreneur in fashion and interiors, having co-founded the homeware and furniture chain Skandium in 1999, amongst other companies. Hailing from Sweden, he has been living in Britain since 1995, and finds the historic cross fertilisation between British and Scandinavian design of particular interest.
Curator
Wilhelmina Bunn is digital archivist and systems developer with a background in art and design curation.
Wilhelmina has organised digital collections and curated exhibitions at the Royal College of Art, the BBC and The Design Council. Since 2014 she has worked with us to develop and manage our Robin and Lucienne Day digital archive, creating the database, arranging photoshoots and accessioning over 8,000 images.
Since her appointment as Curator to the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation in November 2018, Wilhelmina's role has expanded to include handling press image requests and liaising with archivists and exhibition curators at our partner organisations.
Business Manager
Yasmine Luscombe is an experienced design industry administrator with a background in textile design.
Yasmine worked for many years as Senior Office Manager for design retail company twentytwentyone, where she held responsibility for all administrative, financial and internal accounting operations.
She joined the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation in September 2019. As well as general administrative tasks, her role includes working alongside the Chair to develop our design licensing business in line with our commercial objectives and our Endorsement Policies.
Accountant
James is a partner at Haines-Watts, Central London, where the team has a specialism in the creative sector and supports many of London’s leading architecture practises, design agencies, art galleries, artists and dealers. He works with a wide range of owner-managed businesses and charities and is passionate about helping his clients achieve their goals.
Financial Adviser
Louise is a Chartered Senior Private Client Adviser at HFMC Wealth based in London. She provides bespoke financial planning and wealth management services to individuals, families and Trusts.
Legal Adviser
Geoff Smith is a solicitor and partner in HGF Law LLP, the intellectual property law firm. He is a brand management specialist.
Furniture Technician
Amos Marchant is an independent Industrial Designer and consultant with extensive experience designing a wide range of products. In 2001-02 Amos worked with twentytwentyone to realise the production of Robin Day's Avian range.
Amos studied Furniture and Product Design at Kingston Polytechnic and gained an MA in Design Studies from Central St Martins. He was a visiting tutor at Ravensbourne College for 14 years and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Graphic Designer
Born in London, Fernando Gutiérrez studied graphic design at the London College of Printing. He has worked from London, Barcelona and Madrid with high profile organisations including El Pais newspaper, Matador international arts magazine, Colors Magazine, The Prado Museum, Tate Modern, the V&A and the Design Museum.
A former Pentagram partner, he established Studio Fernando Gutiérrez in 2006. Fernando has been a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale since 1997 and was made a Royal Designer for Industry in 2014.
Design Historian
Lesley Jackson is a writer, curator and design historian specializing in 20th century design. Her books include The New Look: Design in the Fifties (Thames & Hudson, 1991); The Sixties: Decade of Design Revolution (Phaidon, 1998); 20th Century Pattern Design (Mitchell Beazley, 2002); Modern British Furniture (V&A, 2013).
In 2001 she curated a major retrospective on the Days at the Barbican, accompanied by the book Robin and Lucienne Day: Pioneers of Contemporary Design (Mitchell Beazley, revised edition 2011).