One FAMILY link TO Architectural Journalism
Mangakuri River outlet. Hawkes Bay. 7.00am 2016. Photograph by Stephanie Beth.
Great Grandmother Lucy's portrait artist was Tennyson Cole
1862 - 1939
A relative educated in Architecture, descended from Lucy' first daughter Mary Tiffen (nee Tuke), is Layla Dawson. 1949- 2015
LAYLA DAWSON
The family line that Mary Tiffen, first child of Lucy and Fred Tiffen, married into, was the Tuke family. Two brothers Tuke came to New Zealand, then one of their nephews, Charles Laurence Tuke. Charles came out to his education at St John's College (Anglican).
The Tuke's last girl, Mavis, was grandmother to Layla Dawson. Layla was daughter to Diana Shah, a Barrister educated in Auckland who moved to London* Layla was raised in London. She became an Architectural journalist.
Two Dawson essays:
(1) Layla Dawson: "At your service". in Konkret, Issue 5, 1990, pp. 67-69 (2) Layla Dawson: Second-hand fantasy. The German school of welders and Black & Decker workers. In: Eßlinger Zeitung, April 25, 1992, p. 25
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/203625740/diana_rosemary-shah
Dawson made a focus on furnitureLayla first married Dawson.In her second marriage, she lived with a German Graphic Art Designer, Christoph Krämer, for twenty years. Upon his death and with illness, she came home to New Zealand to die.
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Architects: Behnisch & Behnisch, July 2002. Stock Dawson D 29/2Tanks with antennas: Layla Dawson as the author
Essays
A recurring theme in Layla Dawson's numerous essays and magazine articles was the design of furniture, which she described with vivid pictures. For example in an article about desk systems:"Some of these conspecifics wear anthracite-colored armor and have extended antennas with lighting fixtures on them, the unreal glow of which looks like the glow of radioactive fuel rods when you look at them through the lead glass separating panes." But there is also another type, the one with the former lives in symbiosis: “You slide with your legs apart on castors over the soft floors. Sometimes they are covered with leather skins that creak when touched, sometimes they disguise themselves as colorful butterflies that stand out from the awe-inspiring dark monsters with an iridescent iridescence ”.Dawson didn't leave the furniture in designer heaven, but picked it up there, brought it to the floor of the working world and explained what this design is for: “The less the worker is a force, the more it needs the semblance of power. If nothing changes, working hours stay the same, wages stagnate and social security declines, then at least at the cost of the feeling of being raised in status. ”(1)
Layla Dawson also analysed this game of appearance and reality with the Furniture creators:"Your elevator guarantees' street credibility '- the scene-like brush cut, the single earring, the ladder in the black tights, heavy make-up and chunky shoes or medieval butts. Although they look as if they have just stepped out of a Kreuzberg squatters' house, they are in reality architects, photographers, painters, filmmakers and industrial designers. " (2) This is how she described the creators of the "Trans Möbel" exhibition in Milan in 1991. The exhibits were shown very trashy-chic in freight wagons on a siding.
Perhaps the sentence that Layla Dawson formulated on the occasion of a review of the book "My Life as a Man" by Philip Roth also applied here: "We like living dangerously, but second-hand." (3)
(1) Layla Dawson: "At your service". in Konkret, Issue 5, 1990, pp. 67-69 (2) Layla Dawson: Second-hand fantasy. The German school of welders and Black & Decker workers. In: Eßlinger Zeitung, April 25, 1992, p. 25 (3) Layla Dawson: Des Mannes Dreifaltigkei. In: Literatur-Konkret 1990, pp. 90-91
Bibliography
Layla Shah: The world is colder without you. 2014 https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Die_Welt_ist_k%C3%A4lter_ohne_dich.html?id=7y64AgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
Bibliographic informationTitle The World Is Colder Without You: A Story of GriefAuthor Layla ShahTranslated by Christel DormagenPublisher Rowohlt E-Book, 2014ISBN 3644507112, 9783644507111Length 224 pagesSubjects Self-Help › Death, Grief, Bereavement
Biography & Autobiography / MemoirsSelf-Help / Death, Grief, Bereavement
My sister Angela and I with the one cat strain that we kept as family. 1954
Childhood coastal summer home
Cousin Julia Feickert Sister Angela Tiffen. Hastings. c 1954
Angela and Stephanie. On the farm at home, we lived off one rainwater tank, hence no lawn watering allowed! Hawkes Bay. 1959 Photograph by Phyllis Tiffen.