Bookshelf Gallery

'Mr. J. C. Pritchards sitting-room in the Isokon Lawn Road Flats', 1936. Artist: Unknown

'Mr. J. C. Pritchard's sitting-room in the Isokon Lawn Road Flats, London, England, designed by Wells Coates', 1936. Walls in panelled Venesta birch, carpet by Heal & Son Ltd, electric heating unit designed by Wells Coates. Adjustable bookshelves of birch, rubber plant on stand of aluminium alloy, designed by Marcel Breuer, sofa-bed designed by Alvar Aalto with fabric designed by Otti Berger. Berger and Breuer were pupils at the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius. Velvet curtains by John Lewis & co, London. The Isokon building opened in 1934 as an experiment in minimalist urban living. Most of the flats had very small kitchens as there was a large communal kitchen for the preparation of meals. From Decorative Art 1936 - Year-Book of The Studio, by C.G. Holme. [The Studio Limited, London, 1936]

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Marie Curie, Polish-born French physicist, 1925. Artist: Unknown

Marie Curie, Polish-born French physicist, 1925. Marie Curie (1867-1934) in her office at the Radium Institute, Paris, of which she was director of research from 1918-1934. Marie and her husband Pierre Curie continued the work on radioactivity started by Henri Becquerel. In 1898, they discovered two new elements, polonium and radium. Marie did most of the work of producing these elements, and to this day her notebooks are still too radioactive to use. She went on to become the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in France, and continued her work after Pierre's death in 1906. In 1903 the Curies shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Becquerel. Marie won a second Nobel Prize, for chemistry, in 1911.

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