Circles In Furniture

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31198, 24 October 1966, Page 2

Circles In Furniture

Most married couples furnish their homes twice during their lifetime when they are first married, and again years later after the children have grown up and the original furniture is worn and shabby. Now a company in Lancashire, in the north of England, has come up with an idea in furniture which is designed' deliberately to be strong, durable—and cheap enough to be thrown away as it becomes scuffed and worn by young children. Called •‘tomotom." the furniture is based in design on: the circle, and is contoured \ so that there are no sharps corners. It is made erf paper chipboard and wood chipboard' coated with high gloss enamel. It is easy to clean, noninflammable and resistant to heat and liquids.

, With it, for chairs, there is | a range of P.V.C. cushions: •filled with kapok, which are: easily cleaned with a damp: : cloth or warm water and mHd I {soap. TTie furniture is available: in bright, attractive shades of ■ red, blue, yellow, and purple,, as well as black and white. A designer, Bernard Hollo-: '{way, and his wife Shirley dis-' I: played the furniture at a re-t J cent London exhibition in a ,' setting which showed how to ; : make one room into two by .{arrangement of the furniture. An outer perimeter kept • free of furniture, to provide i{children with a play circuit 11 for running round the room i: without banging into furni■iture or parents. H Inside this perimeter the ■ room is divided into two sec- ■ tions, denoted by different col'ours and furnishing the i children’s part had special

{furniture from the "TomoItom” range such as armchairs,' i a circular play desk, even a. I play cylinder with holes to I crawl through. { Although the furniture was] {designed with the needs ofj {parents with young children! lin mind, it is finding ready I j markets in many other places,’ :and has been ordered fromj i France, Switzerland, Western j : Germany, The Netherlands, { Japan, South Africa and the: United States. It is being used in schools. •: youth hostels, offices and wait- i rooms, restaurants and hotels' —places where marks on cenventional furniture convey an! air of shabbiness, but where: “tomotom” can be quickly re-| placed because of its inex-i pensiveness. The picture shows an easy chair from the "tomo- I tom” range. 1