The Chihuly chandelier

I was in Toronto in the late 1990's scouting the Royal Ontario Museum as a venue for the Grand Design exhibition, when I got a call from Gail Lord, a museum consultant whom I had known for some time, inviting me to visit their office. Along I went, and it soon became clear what was being sought. The new Museum of Glass was being developed at that time, with Gail's involvement, and they were looking to send some of the museum's collection, mainly works by Dale Chihuly, on tour. Would the V&A be interested? I looked through the slides and was bowled over by the sheer bravura of Chihuly's work in glass. It was unlike anything I had seen before - using centuries-old techniques but creating installations and pieces that were completely, dramatically modern.

As it happened, the timing for an exhibition would not fit with our schedule, so that went nowhere. I mentioned Chihuly to the glass curators and was intrigued to find that the V&A actually had a couple of smallish pieces by him. There didn't seem much interest in acquiring anything else. However, not long afterwards, the V&A was having one of its periodic debates with itself about how it could be seen as a thoroughly modern institution, not an old-fashioned attic. And as usual the conversation turned on branding, or at least promotion. I said at a meeting that a large part of the perception of the V&A as old-fashioned derived from first impressions - the immediate effect when a visitor walked in through the front door. It just was old-fashioned, in almost every respect. And writing a memo to director Alan Borg later, I said that a big installation piece by Dale Chihuly in the V&A's main entrance hall could very easily transform that perception and link the old to the present day.

Nothing appeared to happen, I heard nothing back, but then the word started going round that the V&A was going to commission a chandelier piece from Dale Chihuly for its main entrance. People from Chihuly Studio visited. Sketches appeared. A huge team arrived to assemble the piece on site from vast numbers of boxes of glass. The huge chandelier was created. Dale himself arrived, and although the work was done, plainly wasn't very pleased with it. It turned out that (rightly) he felt it was still too small for the space. So, months later the team came back again and almost doubled the size of the chandelier, and it was finally done in 2001.

Dale himself was/is a marvellous one-off. Built a bit like the late Eduardo Paolozzi, a patch over an eye lost in a glass-blowing accident, shoes covered with splatters of paint and hair going every which way, he was a benevolent tyrant, running his studio much as I suppose a Renaissance master's studio must have been run. His team were superb, dedicated, imaginative, charming.

I still have a couple of catalogues given to me by Dale, but so far I still haven't ever been able to afford one of his pieces! So the books will have to do. I'm happy to have played a part in getting a big piece of his into the V&A.

Also at the National Gallery...

A curator colleague who started work well before me had an introductory session on his first day with the rather patrician Deputy Director. "I see your name is Michael" said the DD, "and we already have one Michael on the staff. It will be so confusing - would you mind if we called you John?"

Fortunately, his original identity remained intact, and confusion seemed to be avoided, even though later yet another Michael joined.

Changing room

When friends of mine Richard and Anne got married in the 70s, the ceremony and reception were held in Berwick, where her parents lived, and I decided to drive down from Edinburgh. The challenge was how to do this without rumpling the hired morning suit, so I planned to take the suit with me in its carrier with the necessary shirt, tie, socks and smart shoes, and find somewhere close to Berwick where I could quickly change. As I drove down I was keeping an eye out for suitable spots, and eventually spotted a quiet little side road that looked promising. And so it proved; I drove down it, travelled under a bridge and there in front of me were a couple of grassy fields looking out over the North Sea. Nothing in sight seaward and a high embankment behind, it was totally secluded. Emboldened, I hopped out of the car, got out the clobber and quickly stripped off down to my shorts, before pulling the dress shirt on over my head. This was a bit of a struggle. I had put in the cuff links already, and it took a minute or so to ease my hands through the cuffs. So there I was, with the shirt still over my head, blind to the world and waving my arms about, when I heard a loud hiss behind me. Alarmed, I wriggled more vigorously and eventually got both arms and head outside the shirt, and was able to look round. To find, on top of the grassy embankment, a London to Edinburgh express train, which had coasted to a halt exactly alongside my secluded spot, and from which amused passengers had been watching my struggles with the shirt - for how long I don't know.

With an appropriate mix of dignity and speed I pulled on the trousers, and the train pulled away, leaving me alone again with the sea.

The wedding was a great success.

Red carpet - ah, the glamour

Both at the Science Museum and at the NMFI in Bradford there was an IMAX cinema, and because of this somewhat tenuous connection with the world of film we received one year a couple of invitations to the BAFTA awards, held at the Odeon in Leicester Square. Being without limo and as the evening was wet, we met before the event began at a pub round the corner, and eventually opened our umbrellas and walked round to Leicester Square onto - The Red Carpet. Now, this was a formal event and I was in my dinner jacket, with the best pair of black shoes I had been able to find, an old pair of well-polished Oxfords from the back of the wardrobe. These were outwardly fine, but rather worn as to the soles, with the result that as we walked along the sopping wet red carpet my shoes gradually filled with water. Luckily everyone was squelching along, so apart from the occasional spurt of cold water up my trouser leg, nothing could be noticed. However, the carpet had obviously been recently shampooed, and as the stars walked along it in the rain, the residue of this was churned into a bubbling white foam eventually entirely covering the carpet ankle-deep. It was really not a romantic start.

At the later dinner, however, I had the opportunity of shaking Peter Jackson by the hand and congratulating him on LOTR, the first part of which had just won an award. Also drank too much tequila....

D

During my teenage years, one of the regular purgatories was attendance at country dances. The format for these was that individual groups would gather in advance at someone's parents' house and then set out for the dance, which would be at some large establishment and could involve several hundred people. And we would lurch through a sequence of Scottish reels and waltzes, the boys in each group scrupulously taking turns to dance with all the girls. For me, intensely shy and socially inept, with no conversation, these occasions were awful. So it was a relief to meet a quiet girl, D, who seemed about as shy and quiet as I was. Every now and then we would find ourselves in the same group at one of these events, and it was a pleasure dancing (quietly) with her.

This pattern of chance meetings at dances went on for six or seven years. We may have met on occasion at other social events, but that was it. Really. We didn't ever go out together.

Then one day I got a call from her asking if I could come round to her house. I suppose by now I was about nineteen or twenty, and getting a bit hippy and arty in appearance, in fact probably downright shabby. Anyway, I went round as asked, and D very solemnly told me that she had met someone - an Australian sheep farmer - and she was going to marry him and live miles away from civilisation in the Australian outback. I offered my congratulations, as you do, and after some chat she left the room. At which point someone, an uncle of hers I think, leaned over to me and hissed: "she's going to marry a REAL man!" I thought at first that was just a remark about my long-haired appearance. And then with an awful horrifying clarity I realised that what he actually meant was: "... and NOT YOU." D had obviously been carrying a serious torch for me all these years and I guess had assumed that I had felt the same for her, and that our futures were intertwined. It was like being ducked in ice-cold water. I had been rejected without ever realising I was a suitor. I slunk away feeling disgraced and somehow guilty - had I been leading her on?

Putting aside the fact D will have had a far better marriage to the sheep farmer than she could ever have had to me, the answer has to be that I was just too self-centred and stupid to be aware of what might have been going on. But it has brought home to me the corrosively selfish nature of shyness - in concentrating so much on one's own inadequacy, one is blind to the feelings of others. At the very least I should have sensed what she was feeling.

Dell and Della

Dell created a website (originally called Della) to appeal to women buyers. It generated a howl of protest about stereotyping, and they changed it quick. Afterwards, there may have been less pink on the site but all the other advertising stereotypes seemed to still be there in spades. No "real" people - all the models straight from the agency shelf: young, slim, good-looking, no kids, perfect skin, and of course from a full spread of ethnic backgrounds. There was the standard heads-together-on-the-sofa shared-experience shot that seems to be trotted out for everything from fruit juice to panty-liners. The Tech Tips section (since renamed Tips) - presumably to convey serious DIY stuff - was fronted by a model with glasses (now gone)! And although this is apparently a site not aimed only at women, there was not a man to be seen in DellaWorld. Lazy stuff.

Brands

Some of my thoughts from a current online branding discussion.

I look on branding as more akin to PR (what others say about you) than advertising (what you say about yourself). A brand is also (because unless it represents some fundamental truths it is purely cosmetic) essentially stable: it can't be ripped jeans one moment and pin-stripes the next - unless your brand is schizophrenic of course. So I find myself a bit at odds with the notion of a brand story that can quickly and reactively be recalibrated. This sounds to me more like re-casting the product proposition in response to changed market conditions. Your brand is essentially who you are, and if that can suddenly change overnight then either it's not a brand at all, or you have been horribly wrong all along, or customers should perhaps be worried. Right now, I think a lot of people will be looking for certainty as a desirable brand component.

I don't for example believe that the McDonald's brand has very much to do with what is on the menu. To me McDonald's is (or wants to be) about convenience, welcome, cleanliness, dependability, familiarity (or perhaps universality) and various other factors that create the brand wrapper for their product offering (which is a different if connected thing). Maybe I'm making meaningless distinctions.
Yes, brands can and must evolve, but they can't flip-flop about implicitly making one promise one day and a different one the next. Constantly heaving at the brand's tiller as one wave or another hits the boat is to me a sign of brand weakness and irresolution, just when the opposite would seem to be most desirable. It smacks of brand as mask rather than brand as soul.
I think it all depends on what your definition of brand is. For me, the Apple brand is that thing that makes everything "clearly and identifiably Apple", not its environmental activities or its product line-up. These are things that can change rapidly as circumstances demand, can be re-calibrated. But the Apple "thing" is much more deep-rooted than that, way down in culture and ethos, in conversations about what they are and what matters to them most. Apple's brand is the equivalent of its magnetic north. Apple can recalibrate its compass from time to time, and may choose to steer a different course, but north stays north. And Apple's remarkable success is due in large part to its brand consistency throughout its significant changes in product and market. I don't believe Apple has changed its core brand values at all since Jobs got them back on track (they lost sight of their magnetic north a bit while he was away). Nor do they need to. They may well adapt in all sorts of ways to external forces, but Apple are not, and I suspect never will be "about" the environment. The environment is not something that makes Apple what it is. So any responsive moves by them in that area are doubtless smart business, and may be wholly sincere, but they're (in my humble and uninformed opinion) not about the Apple brand.

To Mark Thompson, BBC re Gaza Appeal

Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, recently decided not to air a television appeal by a group of UK charities on behalf of the people of Gaza, on the grounds that it would be seen to compromise the BBC's "impartiality". Thompson defended his decision on the BBC website, to which I sent this response:

Sir,
I have little to add but endorsement to the overwhelming view that says you were completely wrong. Your reasons are inadequate and unconvincing, and if you (BBC) are incapable of drawing a clear line between politics and human suffering you are simply incompetent as journalists and inept as a public service. It is completely inadequate for a media organisation to say that the matter is "contentious" when you have the means to distinguish one story from another. This was not about who was right or wrong, but about what people in the UK might do to help the victims - the dying, the wounded, the hungry, the homeless and the terrified. This was a matter of simple humanity. Had all the devastation or similar suffering been on the Israeli side I would have equally expected an appeal for help to be broadcast by the BBC for them. But the situation is in Gaza, and however it has come about, it is one in which ordinary people need help, that is all.

The sort of impartiality the BBC should show is not about scurrying to avoid to offence to "sides" as much as having a clear moral framework of humanity, decency and respect that applies to all. I see your response and action as being those of a time-serving back-watching bureaucrat, not those of the leader of a purportedly authoritative and independent (less alone humanitarian) broadcaster. You have taken the BBC down by yet another notch rather than strengthening it in any way, and you should consider your own position.

Childhood myths

Putting blotting paper in shoes would make you faint, by sucking the blood to your feet. This was a ruse supposed to be a sure-fire way of getting out of exams. Didn't work.

Chewing gum if swallowed would wrap itself round your intestines and kill you. Any accidental swallowing of chewing gum was followed by days of panic in anticipation of a gruesomely painful death. Luckily none of us died.

B&W memories

A regular if infrequent feature of life at Craigflower, my prep school, was the showing of a film.  The stacking chairs, metal tube frames with canvas seats and backs usually fraying at one or more corners, were set out, the projector was spooled up, and the shutters closed.  The films were all black and white, with the most evocative opening effects, as the numbers counted down and the Rank gong-beater or the Gainsborough lady appeared to usher in the main feature. These were predominantly WW2 tales of heroism - Ill Met By Moonlight, Appointment With Venus, Reach For The Sky, The Wooden Horse, and so on - with such suitable male role models as Kenneth More and Dirk Bogarde (well, who knew?).  There was a sprinkling of Ealing comedies - The Lavender Hill Mob, Passport To Pimlico - and other upright fare - A Night To Remember and A Kid For Two Farthings. The last of these made me sob for hours, and many films make me cry to this day.  

The joy of these sessions was partly the escape from the reality of school for a couple of hours, and also the chance to dip a finger-tip into a smuggled-in tin of Cremola foam crystals.  This was a sugary powder which when mixed with water made a completely delicious fizzy fruit-flavoured drink of very synthetic taste and colour.  But for the best effect, it was consumed straight from an indelibly stained finger under the cover of flickering darkness, as the passengers clung to the lifeboats and the band played Abide With Me.

Cars - Renault 14TS

It was a Giant Test in Car magazine that clinched it. By late 1983 the much-loved Citroen Dyane (JES) was in terminal decline mechanically and structurally, and while all that was fixable the recent arrival of our very precious daughter Kate had raised awareness that driving in the Dyane was like being inside a crumple zone - passenger protection in any significant accident was non-existent.

So the hunt was on for something a bit more solid. It had to be French, for the summer holidays, so it was between Citroen, Renault and Peugeot. The Car article was a comparative test between a Renault 14TS, a Fiat Strada and an Alfasud, all mildly tweaked versions of the standard cars. The Alfasud won of course, as it was Car's favourite machine at that time. However, the Renault acquitted itself well performance-wise, had a good 1.4 litre engine, handled much better that the rather spongy standard version, and was well equipped for the time. Car's verdict was something along the lines of "if you like lots of buttons to press, this is the car for you". Well, after the Dyane, the thought of electric windows (front only) and a fifth gear was mouth-watering. I wanted buttons, lots of them, so the 14TS it was.

I tracked one down eventually, in white, at a showroom in St Martin's Lane, now the site of a Pret A Manger sandwich bar. This was NLM 711V, a couple of years old and in very good condition, and as the 14 had just been discontinued it was also going for a reasonable price. The Dyane broke down - electrics - on the drive up from Southampton to effect the part-exchange, but we did the deal and I proudly drove the Renault home.

There was a long hill on the M3 up which the Dyane had always laboured, forcing a change down to third long before the crest, while heavy lorries thundered past. On this first trip I found that not only did the Renault not slow down, it could accelerate in top gear from halfway up! 1.4 whole litres! This was an uplifting moment.

NLM stayed with us for just over three years, and was a delight. Unlike the experience of many others, I found it reliable and dependable. Although the suspension was slightly stiffer than standard it still rode exceptionally smoothly, but could press on along back roads when required. The fifth gear meant that it could cruise comfortably on motorways. It was roomy for four adults, and had a surprisingly large boot under its hatchback.

Its styling had always caused comment, and it had been marketed disastrously on its launch as a "poire", something from which it never recovered. It was rounded, almost plump, with a strong scalloped line on the flanks curving down to the rear wheel arch. I liked it, however, and now feel that it was way ahead of its time in both its design and the marketing campaign. Certainly it was much more characterful than the drab (but no doubt safer) design that Renault brought out to replace it.