Design: From Lux Flakes to Marcel Proust

Willie Landels is best known for his furniture. And his risotto. And his magazines. And it's his 70th birthday this week.

WILLIE LANDELS is a master risotto-maker and he brings that rare understanding of how to combine a few simple ingredients into something harmonious, unexpected and celestial to the broader world of design.

And for Landels the design world is broad. He designs his own clothes, other people's furniture, illustrated books for Harper Collins and the menu cards at Annabel's; he paints beautiful abstracts and constructs elegant collages. He perhaps touched the public consciousness most forcefully, in the early Eighties, as the first editor of the newly-amalgamated Harpers & Queen, establishing the reputation of that magazine and introducing his readers to the talents of such figures as Loyd Grossman, Min Hogg and Sue Crewe.

All his work has the same distinctive blend of purity and playfulness.Or it is created by a tension between form and function, as in his elegant Godwin-esque design for a luxurious Oriental daybed.

"Good design always has an element of wit in it," he suggests. And everything that Landels does is enlivened by a Puckish, gentle wit - beneath which there is a sense of order and restraint.

Landels' was brought up in Italy on the shores of Lake Como and his sensibility was forged in a country with an ancient vernacular tradition and an even stronger belief in the virtues and possibilities of the new. "It was all around me," Landels explains, "I loved the ancient Romanesque architecture but also the new architects. Next door to us lived Terragni - who designed the Casa del Fascio at Como. Being around such things got me interested."

Because of World War II, Landels' education was brief. "I went to art school when I was 16. But because I had never been to school before, I treated the place rather like a gentleman's club. I would look in each day at midday before heading out to lunch." Not surprisingly, his stay there school was short. "After that I went to La Scala to paint scenery and it was there that I learnt to paint. One had to paint every day - often copying complex designs, usually working on a large scale. It was a good discipline." It taught him, too, how to achieve striking effects with limited means.

Landels came to England at the beginning of the Fifties and through a family connection he got a job in the London office of the advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson. He rose to become an art director - working with such campaigns as Lux Flakes, Campari and After Eights. "In many ways it was a good time to be in advertising - but inevitably there were frustrations and limitations." From the design perspective he considers advertising a stern school where clarity and communication are essential: "It was at JWT that I learnt about typography and how to use it as an integral part of design."

In 1965, Landels moved into magazine journalism, first at Jocelyn Stevens's Queen, then at Harper's Bazaar and finally - following his own suggestion to the directors of Harper's about the possibility of acquiring their young rival - at Harper's & Queen, where he was the first editor.

His sojourn there was a Golden Age, and he encouraged a whole generation of young writers and would-be editors, photographers, designers and artists. He also recognised - as the over-literary English do not always - that magazines are essentially a visual medium - words may be important but style is everything.

He carried his own style into every aspect of the magazine. Tales are still told of his extravagant gestures and impish wit: when he had raised the circulation to over 100,000 the proprietors asked him how he thought he might improve the magazine further. He suggested getting rid of all the advertising. They failed to see either the potential or the humour of the suggestion.

London, for Landels, was in many ways very liberating: "In England I found much more freedom of expression and behaviour than in Italy. I was also exposed to `feet and inches' which is infinitely easier than the metric system: the units are divisible by two, three, four and six - and there is a humanity about it. One knows that it was based on the human body. The metric system is very cold and intellectual."

But Landels was surprised to discover how limited the design world was in London, and how parochial. Nevertheless, there was a scent of change in the air. For Landels one of the key moments in the development of British design-awareness was opening of Zeev Aram's furniture shop in the King's Road in 1964.

"It was great," Landels recalls, "suddenly we saw for the first time the best of contemporary Italian design and also the remakes of all the earlier greats - Mies van der Rohe, Corbusier, the Bauhaus."

Although more exclusive it was, Landels says, more important than Conran's Habitat revolution. Conran provided a cut-price, debased version of continental style; Aram offered the real thing: "When I think of Habitat," Landels confesses, "I always think of strings of onions hanging up in Hampstead kitchens."

Landels' first pieces of furniture were designed for himself and for his friends: they were made on his own workbench. He developed a technique of working with "one-by-one" lengths of wood ("a kind of Meccano" he calls it) to build up elegant structures for chairs and sconces.

New materials, however, have always exercised the imagination of designers. At the beginning of the Sixties, Landels became interested in the possibilities of inexpensive foam-rubber. When Italian furniture manufacturer, Zanotta, was brought round to supper and saw some of Landels' experiments he promptly commissioned a sofa from him. Landels' design cleverly combined modernism and comfort - a simple straight-sided affair made of PVC-covered foam- rubber cushions set on a wooden frame. It was the model of chic and, importantly, also the model of economy.

"I wanted," Landels recalls, "to design something that would be easy and inexpensive to manufacture, but would also be comfortable to sit on. When designing furniture you must always think of the interests of the human body." The sofa was rather jokingly christened the Throw-away. Ironically, it has become a classic. It is still produced by Zanotta and marketed around the world, although inevitably it has become as expensive as other sofas.

Landels considers that its enduring success is due to its simplicity and adaptability. It is very easy to manufacture and can be made as anything from a two-seater upwards. At the Vogue offices in Milan they have two ten-seaters facing each other across the reception area - one covered in baby pink the other in baby blue.

The model in Landels' own drawing room is a restrained white-covered affair. He hasn't been able to restrain himself from throwing oriental cushions on to it, but they are purely for show. He discards them when he wishes to recline. "It's much more comfortable without them," he exclaimed as I sat down. It was very comfortable indeed. Pleasing to the eye, kind to the human body, and sustaining to the soul - the Throw-away seemed the perfect compliment to the perfect risotto waiting for us in the kitchen.

Willy Landels' furniture is available from Aram Designs, 3 Keen Street, London WC2 (0171 240 3933), his paintings from Rebecca Hossack Gallery, 35 Windmill Street, London W1 (0171 436 4899).