Sir Terence Orby ConranCH RDI FCSD (4 October 1931 – 12 September 2020) was a British designer, restaurateur, retailer and writer.[1] He founded the Design Museum in Shad Thames, London in 1989.[2] The British designer Thomas Heatherwick said that Conran "moved Britain forward to make it an influence around the world."[3] Edward Barber, from the British design team Barber & Osgerby, described Conran as "the most passionate man in Britain when it comes to design, and his central idea has always been 'Design is there to improve your life.'"[4] The satirist Craig Brown once joked that before Conran "there were no chairs and no France."[4]
Conran's first professional work came when he worked in the Festival of Britain (1951) on the main South Bank site. He left college to take up a job with Dennis Lennon's architectural company, which had been commissioned to make a 1/4-scale interior of a Princess Flying Boat.[6]
Conran started his own design practice in 1956 with the Summa furniture range and designing a shop for Mary Quant.
In 1964, he opened the first Habitat shop in Chelsea, London with his third wife Caroline Herbert, focusing on housewares and furniture in contemporary designs. Habitat grew into a large chain, the first retailer to bring such designs to a mass audience.[4]
In the mid-1980s, Conran expanded Habitat into the Storehouse plc group of companies that included BhS, Mothercare and Heal's but in 1990 he lost control of the company.
His later retail companies[7] included the Conran Shop[8] and FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) wood furniture maker Benchmark Furniture,[9] which he co-founded with Sean Sutcliffe in 1983.
He was also involved in architecture and interior design, including establishing the architecture and planning consultancy Conran Roche with Fred Roche in 1980. Their projects include Michelin House (which he turned into the restaurant Bibendum) and the Bluebird Garage, both in Chelsea.[10] Conran had a major role in the regeneration in the early 1990s of the Shad Thames area of London next to Tower Bridge that includes the Design Museum. His business, Conran and Partners, is a design company comprising product, brand and interior designers and architects, working on projects all over the world. Conran designed furniture for Marks & Spencer, J. C. Penney, Content by Conran, Benchmark, and The Conran Shop.
Conran's architecture and design practice also worked on projects in North America and Asia.[11] In 2009, he licensed the Conran Shop to a partner in Japan. In September 2014, Cassina IXC Ltd acquired the entire business of The Conran Shop in Japan[12] where it still thrives with four stores.[13] In 2019, the Conran Shop opened in Seoul, South Korea.[14][15]
In 1997 he appeared as himself in “In the Smoke”, S5:E7 of Pie in the Sky.
Restaurants
Besides Bibendum, Conran, with Joel Kissin, created many other restaurants in London[16] and elsewhere. In 2005, he was named as the most influential restaurateur in the UK by CatererSearch, the website of Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine. In 2007, 49 percent of the restaurant business was sold to two former managers, who rebranded it as D&D London.[17]
In 2008, he returned to the restaurant business on a personal basis by opening Boundary, a restaurant, bar, café, and meeting room complex in Shoreditch, East London. This was followed in 2009 by Lutyens, a restaurant and private club within the former Reuters building in Fleet Street London.[18] In 2018, Lutyens, together with two other related restaurants, closed as Conran's hospitality venture with Peter Prescott went into administration.[19]
Books
He wrote over 50 books which broadly reflect his design philosophy, selling over 25 million copies worldwide.[citation needed] The majority of these books were published by Conran Octopus, a division of Octopus Publishing Group, a cross-platform illustrated-book publisher founded by Conran and Paul Hamlyn.
He won the Lifetime Achievement Award at The Catey Awards in 2017.
In 2019, Conran was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by The Furniture Makers’ Company, the City of London livery company and charity for the furnishing industry.[24]
Conran married architect Brenda Davison in 1952 at the age of 19; the marriage lasted six months. Conran married his second wife, journalist Shirley Pearce, in 1955 with whom he had two sons – Sebastian and Jasper – before they divorced in 1962. Conran married his third wife, cookery writer Caroline Herbert, the following year. The marriage lasted for 33 years and produced three children – Tom, Sophie, and Edmund – before ending in divorce in 1996.[27] Conran married his fourth wife, Victoria Davis, in 2000.[28][29]
Death
Sir Terence Conran died on 12 September 2020, at the age of 88.[30]
Bibliography
The House Book. Pub. Mitchell Beazley, 1974. ISBN 0855330414.
The Kitchen Book. Crown Publishers, 1977.
The Bed and Bath Book. Crown Publishers, 1978. ISBN 0-517-53399-5.
The Cook Book. with Caroline Conran. Crown Publishers, 1980. ISBN 0517540185,.
The Vegetable Book. Crescent, 1984. ISBN 0517446456.
Terence Conran's New House book. Villard Books, 1985. ISBN 0-394-54633-4.
Terence Conran's plants at home. with Susan Conder. Conran Octopus, 1986. ISBN 1-85029-056-3.
Terence Conran's France. with Pierrette Pompon Bailhache, Maurice Croizard. Little, Brown, 1987. ISBN 0-316-15327-3.
Terence Conran's Home Furnishings. 1987. ISBN 5-551-98206-8.
Terence Conran's do-it-yourself with style. Simon & Schuster, 1989. ISBN 0671687190.
Tableware. with Jeremy Myerson, Sylvia Katz. Pub. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.
Conran's Decorating with Plants. Smithmark Pub, 1990. ISBN 0-8317-2169-3.
Terence Conran's garden style, with John McGowan. Ed. Roger DuBern. Crown Publishers, 1991. ISBN 0517584638.
^"TERENCE ORBY CONRAN - Company Director Check". www.flixens.com. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
^"Conran Shop". Archived from the original on 19 August 2005.
^"Contemporary Furniture Handmade at Benchmark - Benchmark Furniture". Retrieved 4 February 2015.
^"Bibendum Oyster Bar reopens with new design by Sir Terrence Conran and new menu from Matthew Harris and Simon Hopkinson" Archived 11 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Brompton Design District. Accessed 29 October 2015.
^Correspondent, Marcus Leroux, Retail. "Conran Group switches its focus to the potential of Asia". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 14 September 2020. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^"ABOUT US | CASSINA IXC. Ltd". www.cassina-ixc.jp. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
^株式会社, LmD. "THE CONRAN SHOP | ザ・コンランショップ". THE CONRAN SHOP | ザ・コンランショップ (in Japanese). Retrieved 14 September 2020.
^"Sir Terence Conran named Royal Designer for Industry". Design Week. 17 November 2010. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
^"Design icon Sir Terence Conran presented with Lifetime Achievement Award". ACID - Anti Copying In Design. 16 May 2019. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
^"News > University of Pretoria". Archived from the original on 16 September 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
^"UCA ceremony as Sir Terence Conran becomes honorary professor". BBC News. 4 May 2012. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
^Brown, Mick (9 September 2011). "The taste maker: interview with Terence Conran". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
^Blackhurst, Chris (1 May 2002). "The shattering of a dynasty". Evening Standard. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
^"Sunday Telegraph Mandrake column 20 January 08 – update on Ned Conran headed 'Conran's artful son says stop shopping'". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 21 January 2008. Retrieved 20 January 2008.
^"Designer Sir Terence Conran dies aged 88". BBC News. 12 September 2020.
Further reading
Fiell, Charlotte; Fiell, Peter (2005). Design of the 20th Century (25th anniversary ed.). Köln: Taschen. p. 175. ISBN 9783822840788. OCLC 809539744.
External links
Conran.com
The Brits Who Designed the Modern World Artsnight - Series 4: 7, BBC Two
Obituary by Stephen Bayley, 12 Sep 2020
The transformation of London dining in the 1980s and 1990s