Description:
Prokop's meticulous history restores Jacques and Jacqueline Groag to their rightful places in the pantheon of Viennese Modernists.
Prokop explores their individual careers in Vienna and Czechoslovakia, their early collaborations in the 1930s, their lives as Jewish émigrés, and the couple's unique contributions in Britain for postwar exhibitions, monuments, furniture and textile design, even a dress for future-queen Elizabeth II. Full color edition, supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Review Quotes: The Festival of Britain, the third and much the largest of the post-war design bonanzas is now regarded mainly as the start of the mass-public acceptance of the 'modern' design and architecture. ... It opened up the possibilities inherent in designing and influenced the whole development of the modern multi-disciplinary design office. The Festival was British, extravagantly so, ... but it is ironic that many of the main designers of the Festival in the post-war periods had in fact arrived from abroad: Stefan Buzas, Jacques and Jacqueline Groag. ...Where would British design have been without this foreign input?
- Fiona McCarthy/Patrick Nugents, Eye for Industry, Royal Designers 1936-1986