Simple Furniture from a pioneer: A Gerald Summers collection

Gerald Summers and his partner Marjorie Butcher opened their London shop, Makers of Simple Furniture, in 1931. For a decade, until the firm’s closure with the onset of the Second World War, Simple Furniture produced more than 200 designs conceived in the modernist creed as “furniture for the concrete age.” The emphasis was very much on function, modern materials, and machine methods of manufacture. “

Like so much of British inter-war design, Summers’ work was largely forgotten by the market until the advent of the 21^st century. However, increasingly today he is seen as a pioneer and his works the precursor to the moulded plywood chairs made later in the century by Charles and Ray Eames.

Martha Deese, an authority on Gerald Summers who will publish a book on Simple Furniture next year, has penned an introductory article to the catalogue. She writes: Simple Furniture’s products found an enthusiastic audience among forward-thinking members of the British public. Today, as more and more of his designs come to light, we, too, can experience first-hand the rare combination of simplicity, utility, and beauty that distinguishes Gerald Summers’s work and makes his furniture as compelling to us in the 21st century as it was to the avant-garde in the 1930s.”

The collection includes a fine example of Summers’ best-known design, his armchair c.1933-34 made form a single sheet of birch plywood. Summers had the ingenious vision to try and construct a chair that would require no joins and create very little waste, relying instead on simple incisions and mould bending. The example here was purchased new by the Oxford artist Juliette May Lucille Edwards (1909-2011) and acquired by the vendor from her estate in 2011. The estimate is £7000-9000.

Another piece with a provenance to its original owner is as a set of three nesting tables c.1935 estimated at £1500-2000. These came by descent from Cecil Handisyde (b.1908), one of a team of architects who designed the Lansbury Estate in Tower Hamlets.

A stained ash plywood and brass trolley c.1936 is Summers' only documented design for Isokon, the design firm founded by Jack Pritchard and Welles Coates. Both Isokon and Simple Furniture used the same birch plywood manufacturer Venesta in their furniture making. 

Although a series of copies were produced in the early 2000s, only 20 or so original trolleys were thought to have been made before plywood became difficult to source with the onset of the Second World War.

A similar piece (perhaps this one) featured in the Bent Wood and Metal Furniture 1850-1946 exhibition organised by The American Federation of Arts which travelled to nine institutions around the US in the 1980s. Estimate £12,000-18,000.

A set of three nesting tables by Gerald Summer c.1935 with a provenance to architect Cecil Handisyde. Estimate £1500-2000 as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s Modern Made sale.

A high back chair in stained birth plywood with later upholstered seat c.1934 by Gerald Summers. Estimate £4000-6000 as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s Modern Made sale.

A birch plywood two-tier occasional table by Gerald Summer c.1934. Estimate £1200-1800 as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s Modern Made sale.

A high back chair in stained birth plywood with later upholstered seat c.1934 by Gerald Summers. Estimate £4000-6000 as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s Modern Made sale.

This stained ash plywood and brass trolley c.1936 is Gerald Summers' only documented design for Isokon. Estimate £12,000-18,000 as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s Modern Made sale.

A birch plywood sideboard by Gerald Summer. Estimate £700-900 as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s Modern Made sale. In 1937 The Cabinet Maker reviewed a display at Harrods and described this piece as "white birch furniture in the Baltic style" and also commented "note the curious graduation in the size of the drawers".