Made in Canada

>> Author and curator Rachel Gotlieb promotes our design heritage

by JULIET WATERS

"It was fun. Definitely," says Rachel Gotlieb about the time she spent in Washington as a teenager in the '80s. Her father was the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. while her more notorious mother, Sandra Gotlieb, was a columnist and A-list hostess who fell from grace when she allegedly crumbled under the stress and slapped an assistant in public. "Oooh, I'm a princess," Rachel continues, gently mocking her younger self.

There's nothing stressed out or self-important about this Gotlieb. In town to promote Design in Canada, which she co-authored with journalist Cora Golden, she comes off as what she is: a museum curator with the very practical mission of showcasing Canadian design to Canadians. As curator of Toronto's Design Exchange and with this book, she also wants to give young designers and collectors a sense that they're not working in a vacuum.

How many people know, for instance, that the chrome dome electric kettle was an appliance exclusively made and used by Canadians? This design originated when an engineer working at a steel-stamping factory turned the headlight of a Buick upside down and discovered that it was the perfect receptacle for an electric coil. Fifty years later, designer Fred Moffat's son, Glen, would go on to develop the first all-plastic electric kettle.

If that seems like a Heritage moment, consider that Canadians also invented the wedge shaped Contempra phone that would go on to replace the generic black rotary dial model that dominated North American phones for decades. Not to mention the ubiquitous two-tone plastic thermos; the Ball-B-Q (those grills that used to be contained within big spherical covers); the space age Project G stereo that was a staple in every bachelor pad of the '70s; the translucent Garbo garbage can and those stackable plywood moulded chairs you find in church basements. These are all items that we can proudly claim as examples of contemporary Canadiana, and that you might want to keep an eye out for at local garage sales.

But beyond these standard and novelty items, Canada, and especially Quebec, have a rich tradition of innovative designs in lighting, furniture, electronics and appliances. If Gotlieb had to pick one item that would impress the folk on Antique Road Show, it would probably be Jaques Guillon's all-nylon rope chair. Strong enough to hold 3,380 pounds, tens of thousands of these simple, fragile looking chairs, were manufactured in Montreal in the early '50s. Riding a wave of interest in cheap, innovative furniture design, many of them now have permanent homes in decorative design museums around the world. One would probably sell today for around $800. As for a recent design that might become a high-end collector's item, Gotlieb suggests taking a look at designer Michael Santella's elegant minimalist aluminum Compackt CD holders, first manufactured at his Montreal studio Dibis. A hundred thousand of them have been produced to date and MOMA's design store sells them in its catalogue.

Quebec has always been way ahead of the rest of Canada, Gotlieb admits, when it comes to taking pride in design skills and in funding design initiatives. Expo '67, Montreal's massive world fair, created full employment for Canadian designers for one glorious year, and helped showcase Canadian designers to the world. Today the Institut de design Montréal gets significantly more money from our provincial government than Design Exchange, its Toronto counterpart. Quebec also gives 40 per cent tax breaks to industries that use local designers. Still, in the last couple of decades the stronger economies in Toronto and Vancouver have done a lot to help designers in other provinces catch up.

Design in Canada is an interesting coffee-table read just for the pictures. Text wise, because it's angled more towards industry people, it may be too dry for the common reader. It is, however, an important step in getting the ball-B-Q rolling towards a greater consciousness of our design heritage.

Design in Canada: Fifty Years from Tea kettles to Task Chairs, by Rachel Gotlieb and Cora Golden, Knopf, hc, 274pp, $75