Husband-and-wife design team stuns Australasia

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34086, 25 February 1976, Page 6

Husband-and-wife design team stuns Australasia

Enormous bees suspended on big, bold stripes. A huge chequerboard in black and white. Stylised horseshoe prints.

It takes the design skills and enterprise of a couple like Helen and Ken Abson to make people want thinks like that hanging around the house.

Australians like them, and now the Absons are bringing their bold ideas about decor to New Zealanders. They returned home to Australia from a trip to Europe just when Australians and New Zealanders were beginning to acquire a taste for contemporary European design. Both are trained architects, graduates of Melbourne University, and they designed some fabrics for fun.

People went mad about them, to quote Helen Abson, who still sounds pleasntlj’ surprised about it all five years later. She spent a year initially establishing their design business. Zab furnishings and fabrics is now a thriving enterprise in which wife and husband are both design and business partners.

''Ken does a hit here, and I do a bit there,” said Helen Abson yesterday. “I do a l the colouring and a lot of the fabrics, while Ken does most of the furniture design.”

They share the business side.

The couple were in Christchurch during a visit to their New’ Zealand importers. They are also negotiating to have their furnishing designs manufactured in New Zealand. After finding the quality and price of production in Australia unacceptable they looked across the Tasman, and are very hopeful about a satisfactory deal.

So, it seems, Australian designs could well be produced here and imported into their homeland.

The fabrics are the biggest element in Zab. Pure cotton, they are a firm, close weave that works equally well as drapes or upholstery' fabric. Acquiring satisfactory printing of the big, bold designs has taken some time and produced plenty of headaches.

Finally, a contract was negotiated with a highlyskilled .Japanese company, with which the Absons are delighted. The designs are not standard, and printing is an expensive, difficult process.

They plan to expand the furniture side if the New Zealand deal proves satisfactory’. At present they are marketing a contemporary wooden chair and table that comes in kit-set form. Both items can be put together in easy pieces, simply slotting together, sometimes with a small ball socket. Mrs Abson does much of her design work from her Melbourne home which is always, she confesses, in a mess. The Absons try their new fabrics and furniture

for effect in their house which sounds like a delight- 1 ful combination of artist’s] studio and designers’ work-] shop. Unlike large manufac- i turers, they do not tie themselves to producing a specific ‘ number of new designs each I season. Many prints go on year after year. This year, however, they ]are phasing out two of the ’earliest, smaller patterns? (Demand for the really bold,] ‘once very unconventional, ■ patterns and colour-ways' ■shows increasing sophistic-: ation of Australian tastes,' says Helen Abson. A blown-up newsprint pattern in primary’ colours is i proving one of the most: popular among New Zealanders. People, it seems, i want some humour in their ■

decor, and it is also much in demand for children's bedrooms. For those customers who worn - that the very boldness of the patterns —which is their main attraction —will be over-powering. particularly in small rooms, the Absons have provided a solution They are now including a range of plain fabrics to mix and match with the prints. Helen Abson believes that the patterns, although big, are not busy. In fact she finds them restful, probably because they are well proportioned and spacious. When they first went into business, the Absons found some resistance to a home-. grown product. “The Scandinavians had the name for this sort of design.: Qi-id riAnnlA natnrallv thmiohf

theirs was the best. Rut thi has largely gone now, and w are accepted,' she said. Soon the Absons nti really prove their point b\ n enterprise that sounds lik taking coals to Newc.<st:r Several Scandinax tan patties are interested tn p: ducing their designs “We would like that, smiled Mrs Abson.

The Burtons again:— Thi on-again. off-again marriagi of Elizabeth Taylor am Richard Burton is off agam But friends and assort ec spokesmen are declining 't sav whether their separ ation. five months after thex married again in an Africa: village, is headed for the di vorce courts for a seconc time. — New York (P.A.i