Johnny Grey | THE KBBREVIEW INTERVIEW
what a good kitchen is, we’re still learning...’
As one of the industry’s most high-profile kitchen designers, Johnny Grey has eulogised on the room’s role in history, family and society for decades. For his latest venture, he’s
reinventing the concept that defined him 40 years ago, the Unfitted Kitchen... Andrew Davies went to meet him
F
or anyone in this industry who has ever met Johnny Grey or, through his work and reputation, have an image of what he must be like, let’s start by reassuring everyone that his Hampshire home is exactly how you think it is going to be. Assuringly, that is an enormous compliment for a designer who has spent his career linking people’s individualities and how they live their lives with the role of the kitchen. From the muddy track that leads from the road, the battered Land Rover in the clearing, the wonderfully higgledy-piggledy cottage, the three dogs that run out to greet you (one labrador, two dachshunds) and the spectacular views across the South Downs, it is all the embodiment of the design principles he has lived by. His own unassuming kitchen – “probably 30 years old, with some bits added” – is recognisably his style coupled with a lived-in charm and familiarity that instantly makes you want to put on both your slippers and the kettle despite it being your first visit. To get to his office and mini-showroom you trail through the leafy, deliberately-overgrown garden to a separate building – “Plants, trees and shrubs should be allowed to be themselves, I dislike suburban neatness,” he says on the way. “I’m surrounded by eight or 10 neighbours and on a Saturday morning you can hear the strimmers go…” This avuncular, Dumbledore-ish vibe that Grey gives off as host does, however, belie the work ethic that at 72 shows no sign of abating. In his small showroom sits the newly installed subject of our visit – his range of freestanding kitchen furniture based on the Unfitted Kitchen concept he developed back in 1984.
The idea that kitchens didn’t need to be ‘fitted’ and could satisfy modern needs, while also harking back to a time when they were made up of pieces of actual furniture, was contradictory to contemporary thinking of the time. Teaming it up with his love of curves – soft geometry as he calls it – his signature style was born.
Over the subsequent decades, his eponymous business was built on bespoke projects for individual clients – at the premium price you would expect. However this new range is aimed more at the £40,000 market, with displays sold into individual retailers for their own project designs. Johnny Grey, the industry’s original polymath, is entering the mass market…
December 2023 • Q & A
Q: This new range is based on the concept of the ‘unfitted kitchen’. How did that originally develop? A: It was thinking about times when I was in my teens, cooking with my Aunt (Elizabeth David) in her kitchen and I realised that we were really actually in a kind of living room in which you cooked. It was an assemblage of furniture mostly from bric-a-brac shops put together after the war. Here was this woman who became an incredibly celebrated food writer and cook and she not only cooked beautifully in this kitchen, but also entertained her guests. I realised that you could actually use the freestanding furniture principle as an actual design methodology, as planning with furniture gives you more freedom than planning with units.
Q: How did the concept actually become a reality? A: In 1980, the Sunday Times did a story
with the
headline ‘Why this awful fixation with
pounds – a lot of money for me then. And I got something like 30 enquiries within a space of two weeks, so I realised I was on to something. Eventually,
I went to
Smallbone and together we launched the Unfitted Kitchen as a range. As soon as we did it, the media loved it. We just had so much free publicity because I think then, and now, it appeals to people’s spirits about how they want to live much more than these ‘operating theatre’-style kitchens.
Q: This is 30 or 40 years ago but, as you say, the fitted kitchen is more popular than ever and you could just as easily be making the same points now. A: It is surprising to me as I would’ve thought there would be more innovation in the kitchen industry over the years, but it appears to be
a
It’s not just that I think furniture is more practical, I think furniture is a wonderful opportunity to give people something they can put a story to...
fitted kitchens?’ The journalist could
see that I was doing something different and I began to realise there was an alternative to what was going on. I really felt that fitted kitchens were claustrophobic – this idea that you’ve got to fill the space with wall-to-wall countertops. So in 1984, I put a small advert in The Times, and that was the first time I used the phrase ‘Unfitted Kitchen’. It was about two inches square and cost me £400
bit static I
think. When I set up my own business, a few years later I realised that I was more ana lytical than most people, more interested in history and that I had a great passion for fur niture. I think that runs through
almost all my career. It’s not
just that I think furniture is more practical, it’s that furniture is just a wonderful opportunity to give people some thing they can put a story to.
Q: Is it about being characterful? Playful? It could be argued that’s what
contemporary Germanic-
style fitted kitchens might lack. A: The word ‘modular’ is something I always had a big problem with, but I don’t anymore because I
23
‘Nobody really knows
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
