STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET, UK — On July 9, Sworders offered items from the estate of architect and interior designer Max Clendinning (1924-2020) and theater designer Ralph Adron (1939-2023). The opening 106 lots of a Design sale comprised items from the couple’s extraordinary homes in Islington, London and Umbria, Italy.
The pair first met in 1960, when Clendinning was already an established name in British design and Adron was a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Both had a passion for collecting.
Adron had bought Victorian design objects and furniture since the 1950s, his first purchase being William de Morgan tiles from a market stall, for which he paid sixpence each.
He held a particular fondness for the Aesthetic movement, including ebonized wood and ceramic mantel clocks designed by Lewis Foreman Day (1845-1910). There was almost half a dozen in the sale, including a sophisticated example with multiple panels in the manner of designer Walter Crane, which sold at £2,200 ($2,845, or $3,555 with buyer’s premium).
However, it was the extraordinary mixture of furnishings from different eras — described by one newspaper reporter who visited the Clendinning-Adron home in 2012 as ‘miximalism’ — that provided the collection with its ‘wow’ factor. A studied blend of styles and periods predominated — always playful, whimsical, and colorful — with few surfaces left undecorated. Morris & Co. furnishings were displayed alongside Picasso and Cocteau pottery and an array of pieces by the Memphis Milano group.
Clendinning first visited Italy in 1953 on a British Council scholarship and Italian design — vernacular, historic, and modern — had enormous impact on both his own design work and his collecting impulses.
The couple displayed Ettore Sottsass pieces in almost every room. Clendinning discovered his three white-glazed Yantra di Terracotta series vases outside a local shop in Umbria — he bought two for next to nothing, and, years later, returned to find a third still there being used as a doorstop. Issued in the 1990s from a design made in 1969, two (Y28 and Y29) earned £600 ($775, or $970 with buyer’s premium) each and another (Y31) £850 ($1,100, or $1,375 with buyer’s premium).
Completing the sale was a series of pieces designed by Max Clendinning for his own home.
Clendinning himself, whose family were furniture-makers in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, is best known for the Maxima collection of flat-packed, slot-together plywood furniture made for Race Furniture as the Sixties began to swing. Cut with a jigsaw from plywood sheets, the curves recalled the computer-like numerals printed on bank checks.
The examples here were bespoke works made in the 21st century because — as Clendinning’s great-niece explained — objects such as this were frequently subject to revision. “Everyone is shocked to hear it now, but Max was seldom precious about the things he created. He would quite often make new furniture and call the council to arrange a skip (dumpster) to throw away the old pieces that he was finished with.”
The leader among the Clendinning pieces was a Maxima type red-painted lounge chair dating to 2003, with cushions provided by Urban Upholstery of London. A piece that appeared at the retrospective exhibition Max Clendinning: A Life in Design at the Ulster Museum in 2006, it was estimated at £200-£400, but hammered for £5,000 ($6,465, or $8,080 with buyer’s premium).
An asymmetrical black, red, and turquoise lounge chair made from a sheet of MDF in 2007 improved on a similar estimate to realize £2,800 ($3,620, or $4,525 with buyer’s premium) while a cruciform black lacquered cabinet with a marble top, specifically designed to accommodate a large Picasso stoneware landscape charger bought in 1976, took £3,000 ($3,880, or $4,850 with buyer’s premium).
