Gilbert
Bromsgrove
A soft, silvered sage. Calm and tonal, with timber, stone and quiet neutrals.
From £159 per metre
The story
Derry & Toms, Kensington
A frieze above the lifts
In 1933 the sculptor Walter Gilbert designed a run of relief panels for Derry & Toms, the great Art Deco department store on Kensington High Street. Known as the Fountain, Hinds and Birds frieze, the bronzed panels sat above the store’s eight lift doors: deer leaping between stylised fountains and palms, with swallows wheeling overhead.
The panels were made by the Bromsgrove Guild, the Arts and Crafts workshop behind the gates of Buckingham Palace. Four decades later the building became Big Biba, Barbara Hulanicki’s legendary store, and Gilbert’s frieze watched a new generation of shoppers ride the lifts. An original panel is now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
99 Kensington High Street
A building made by craftsmen
Derry & Toms was finished in bronze, ironwork and carved stone, and its famous roof gardens still bloom above the street. Gilbert’s frieze belonged to that world: decorative art made to be lived with every day, not kept behind glass.
Bronze fascias on the building. Photograph by Phillip Medhurst, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped.
