Now, because I can, I will revisit the experience that was Habitat, and in particular those years in the late 1960s and 70s when I laid aside comics and other frivolous things and began seriously to think about furniture and design.
And freed from the constraints of the taste of my parents I went looking for all that was chic, modern and not too expensive.
It was a journey I shared with heaps of young people of my generation and by degree it took me to Habitat.
It is a store I have written about and will continue to do so, which means instead of exploring the story I will just select from a collection of pages from the 1972 Habitat collection.*
The “stuff” may look no different from today, but don’t forget most of what you see is a world away from the hand me down furniture and kitchen utensils scrounged from parents or acquired from second hand shops.
And yes I know a lot of it might have been influenced by designers from the 1930s and 50s, but the difference was Habitat was instantly available to us in a shop near by.
In our case it includes three white lamp shades which were advertised in the 1972 catalogue as "big bold shades [which] cast a wide pool of light over a work bench, in a studio above a kitchen table, and cost £3.50 each"
I bought the three in 1979 and survived 4 kitchen make overs in our house on Beech Road.
While Ann still uses her Habitat knives half a century after they left the Manchester store for her house in Chorlton and Glenys is still happy with her Arkana coffee table bought in the early 1970s.
So that is.
Location; the 1960s and 70s
Pictures; from the 1972 Habitat catalogue courtesy of Ann Love
I am reading this by the light of my Habitat lamp which I bought in about 1988/9!
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