Newbury Arts Society Lecture by Clive Stewart-Lockhart, Betty Joel: Glamour and Innovation in 1930s design at Arlington Arts, Snelsmore
Review by Alan Childs
THERE was no nonsense about Betty Joel. When her carpenter husband failed to sell some furniture he had made, she told him it was because it wasn’t very good. So she designed some herself.
From then on, Betty Joel was at the forefront of the British Art Deco movement in furniture, rugs, interior design of all kinds – for banks and churches, homes and offices, Clive Stewart-Lockhart told the Arts Society Newbury.
The Great War was over and things were changing for women. There were fewer housemaids, and middle class women needed different things for their home – such as electric fires to replace the girl who carried the coal..
In 1925 art deco was, Joel wrote, “a whole new world”.
She brought fabrics and colours from Paris, she was the first person in England to sell Chanel No 5 perfume, her factory produced an enormous amount of furniture, and she designed sets for film and theatre, as well as for individual clients. Her attention to detail was “almost mad” said Mr Stewart Lockhart, such as the rounded inside corners of drawers, so dust would not collect.
Although surrounded by men – she employed 80 at her factory – she was always in control. Her stands at the Ideal Home exhibitions were sited and designed to attract women, and a small gift was sent to every girl whose engagement was announced in The Times.
Although she is almost unknown now, 1000 people went to see the flat she furnished for advertising, and her name was used to sell other products – such as the “Betty Joel designed” radiogram.
Then the world changed again. In 1939 she left the business and never designed another thing.
Even in her long retirement, Betty Joel remained the feisty modern woman. Aged 80 and invited to tea at the Victoria and Albert Museum, she harangued the director for 20 minutes because one of her rugs on display had been cleaned incorrectly.
Next lecture: Opium :Seduction, Greed, Art
May 20, Arlington Arts
theartssocietynewbury.org.uk
