 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 the Arts
  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.   This  family was from a strong strand in  English religious and other society structures. Two migrant brothers came to New Zealand and then one of their nephews, Charles Laurence Tuke, 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. moved to London* Layla raised in London, 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.

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

One FAMILY link TO Architectural Journalism