Sta,—As a retailer and housewife I was interested in Katharine
Whitehorn's article on the 'Designs of the Year.'
In defence of the practicability of the cast iron casseroles which were chosen, I must say that the lids—although they may appear handleless—arc easy to remove and that in a 'utensil of this kind a heavy lid which makes a reasonably good seal is, on the whole, an advantage. Incidentally, Dru--which Miss Whitehorn praises for having lighter lids—does have a heavy one on the oval casserole. The chosen cas- seroles arc one of the very few makes which one can get in a size big enough to hold a whole boiling fowl and the enamelling is of very high quality.
Otherwise, I am in whole-hearted agreement with Miss Whitehorn. Deadly good taste and design for design's sake, with too little regard for practical use, seem to me to be the main pitfalls into which organisations such as the ColD are likely to fall. The former is possibly unavoidable. The latter seems to me to call for an umbrella organisation combining the BSI and the ColD so that anything which is chosen for the Design Centre is also practical and safe in use. It is, after all, more important that articles for domestic use should fulfil their function well than that they should look beautiful—especially when much so-called 'industrial design' is really only 'styling' by people who are better able to provide gimmicky sales-boosting ideas than any basic im- provements to the article concerned and may even impair its function.—Yours faithfully, 2 Jesus Lane,. Cambridge
CECILIA SCURFIELD
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