Rosamind Julius

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Rosamind Julius (born November 30, 1923 in London ; † May 19, 2010 ) was an English entrepreneur and furniture designer . Together with her husband Leslie Julius, she was a style-defining factor in Great Britain in the period after the Second World War.

Life

Rosamind Julius, née Rosamind Goldman, was the heiress of the Hille furniture manufacturer. The company was founded by her grandfather, Salamon Hille, who had come to England from Russia in 1900 while fleeing the pogroms against the Jews . His daughter Ray married Maurice Goldman. After the family initially bore his name, they changed it to Hille after the birth of their daughter Rosamind. Ray Hille took over the management in 1932. Ray expanded the production program, which was originally specialized in high-quality handcrafted furniture in Chippendale and Hepplewhite styles, to include a mixture of lacquer furniture in the Chinese style, Bauhaus design and modern furniture of his own design.

Rosamind Julius began training as an architect, but then served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during World War II . During this time she met Leslie Julius. The couple married in 1944. After the war both started working at Hille.

On a sales trip to the USA in 1946, they both became acquainted with the modern American style, influenced by designers such as Charles Eames and Herman Miller . In New York they met the young British designer, whose name would later become a synonym for Hille: Robin Day . Day graduated from the Royal College of Art . He and his colleague Clive Latimer had just won first prize for their cabinet system in the international competition for inexpensive furniture. Her piece was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art .

Back in England, the Julius' contacted Day. They met in a pub in Walthamstow , east London - the beginning of a very fruitful collaboration. Their first products were the stackable Hillestak chair and the Hillespan cabinet system. Day and Hille won prizes at the Milan Furniture Fair in 1951 and 1954, which helped them to become internationally known. In the early 1960s, Day constructed a cheap, stackable polypropylene chair for Hille , which sold in millions of copies. Almost everyone in the UK has sat on one of these chairs.

The public taste for style was backward in those years; the furniture business was dominated by conservative retail. Rosamind Julius, who now uncompromisingly focused on modernity, came to the conviction that she had to establish direct contact with the architects and end customers in order to implement her program. The architect Ernő Goldfinger was commissioned to design a modern factory in Watford. This was put into operation in 1961. In 1962, an exhibition space designed by Peter Moro opened on Albemare Street in the heart of London.

This room with its spectacular spiral staircase became a meeting point for well-known architects, designers, journalists and intellectuals and the venue for much-noticed parties. Among the guests were Alison and Peter Smithson , Reyner Banham , Richard Hamilton , Eduardo Paolozzi and Terence Conran .

Hille's first major foreign order was to furnish the Istanbul Hilton . In the early 1970s, the company had license agreements in more than 50 countries. The Festival of Britain , the Royal Festival Hall and Gatwick Airport were furnished by Hille. In 1972 Rosamind and Leslie Julius jointly received the Royal Society of Arts Medal for their advancement of art and design. In 1981 there was a major exhibition on Hille in the Victoria and Albert Museum .

A little later the company was sold. However, Rosamind Julius retained her prominent role on the international design stage. Together with Kenneth Grange , she presided over an international design conference in Aspen . The audience was introduced to David Hockney and Bruce Oldfield , but for general amusement also satirical criticism of contemporary British furniture design from the television show Spitting Image . In 1998 Rosamind Julius was recognized as a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art .

In 1989 Leslie Julius died. Rosamind and Leslie Julius leave behind a daughter, the journalist and art critic Corinne Julius, who also received an award as a Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 2008 .

literature

  • Fiona McCarthy: Rosamind Julius . In: The Guardian . July 2, 2010, p. 26.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Fiona McCarthy: Rosamind Julius . In: The Guardian . July 2, 2010, p. 26.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Julius, Rosamind
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goldman, Rosamind (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English entrepreneur and designer
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 2010