The Art of Habitat ………………

Now if you are of a certain age, the word Habitat means style, exciting designs, and a way of living which marked you off from what your parents liked.*

Added to which during its early years, Habitat was relatively cheap, allowing you to fill your first home with innovative furniture, bold light fittings, a range of kitchen stuff and some “quirky other things”.

And even on those lean months, there was enough smallish inexpensive items for you to splash out a couple of quid on something which was fun to look at and had a use.

No Saturdays would be quite complete without a visit to the store on John Dalton Street, and occasionally out to Wythenshawe, while growing up in Eltham offered up a trip to the store at Bromely.

We still have lots of odd Habitat bits knocking around, but all pretty much come from its heyday in the 1960s and 70s.

Sadly, none of the well-thumbed catalogues survived, although I do have a Habitat head, which Virginia bought for a few pennies as a present for me.

It had been part of a marketing campaign, and with that stunning business acumen after the campaign was over the company sold the  heads off.

And over the years I bought into these silly items, including a set of cardboard Penguins from 1978 and a couple of bizarre looking fish.

All of them proved talking points for years, but only the head has survived.

Perhaps other people have some similar remnants of those Habitat campaigns or perhaps even a catalogue which they would share with me.

We shall see.

Location; our dining room

Pictures; The Art of Habitat, circa 2002, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Habitat, Our Heritage, https://www.habitat.co.uk/help/our-heritage