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THE GREAT CANADIAN MALE

NEIL BINGHAM – The Esthete

Text: KAREN BURSHTEIN

Intro | SEP 03

A commercial that ran for Channel Four Films in the U.K. last year showed a collection of fast-paced vignettes of the cool and cultivated doing their thing. In one segment, a man with outsize Clark Kent glasses dances around a house filled with 1950s and 1960s furniture. At the end of the commercial, a voice-over intones two words: "Influential people."

That would be Neil Bingham, Winnipeg-born London-based architectural historian and curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He is also one of the U.K.’s foremost authorities on mid-century modern, the postwar design period that spawned such home interior icons as Ray and Charles Eames and Vernon Panton, and is now regarded as the height of cool.

Bingham translated his expertise on the design period into a book, Modern Retro: Living with Mid-Century Modern Style, which he co-authored with furniture dealer Andrew Weaving. "It’s more a coaster than a coffee-table book," says Bingham, who in conversation displays an engaging, if unlikely, combination of Canadian modesty and Wildean theatricality. The book has been published in 10 languages and has become a sought-after guide for fans of style.

And then there’s the house. Bingham wanted a modern house, despite his expertise in Victorian architecture, and found the perfect envelope for his furniture collection in a 1970s Span house, one of the pedigreed estate houses designed by architect Eric Lyons, in Blackheath, a leafy London suburb. The house is featured in the book. With its groovy modernist deco, it has become a mecca for mid-century enthusiasts.

Tagging along on his nightly round of gallery openings and parties, I see the extent of his influential status. Strangers slink up to him and ask, "Are you Neil Bingham?" They solicit all manner of advice on, say, a panel of 1950s fabric by textile designer Marian Mahler or a Robin Day sofa. "They’re like trainspotters," he whispers to me, bemused.

The hero is eclectic. He displays an affinity for trance music. He loves moving back and forth between the grand rooms of the RIBA and parties at Winnipeg’s beaches (proving that you can go home again, at least for regular visits). It’s all a very postmodern life for a mid-century modernist. [ ]

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