An exhibition of over ninety designs produced by SCP from 1985 to 2025, including prototypes, production pieces and ephemera.
SCP
135 Curtain Road
London EC2A 3BX
Tues-Sat 9:30-18:00
Tickets not required
The Imperfect Archive
Author: Duncan Riches
In early 2014, SCP’s founder Sheridan Coakley and I visited the studio of James Irvine in Milan, to look at some drawings in his archive. SCP were in the process of re-issuing one of his 90s SCP products at the time, coincidentally, called the Archiver. Very sadly, James had died the previous year, at the tender age of 54. It was a great loss to his family, and also to the broader design community (who he treated like family), as he was a sparkling and vivacious talent; kind, open-spirited, and one of the great connectors of people. We met his wife Marialaura Irvine, who is the Creative Director of the studio, along with senior designers. At the time, they were working closely with Phaidon on the publication of James’ monograph, so were already deeply immersed in the studio’s archive.
To our amazement, when we explained which product we wanted to research, they took us to a well-organised library section of the studio, which had beautifully made black box-file holders for each project James had ever worked on. Upon opening the box related to the Archiver, we were greeted with a perfect representation of the project. Every single item relating to it was there: drawings, letters, faxes, material research, costings, and so on. If James had done a rough sketch on the back of a napkin while at lunch (no doubt at one of the many glorious Milanese establishments that he knew so well) – it was there. If James has sent an inconsequential fax to Sheridan related to his new Jaguar car – it was there. It was all there, everything. What that did, was give us, not just the nuts and bolts of the information we needed to re-issue the Archiver (re-issued in 2015), but something more. It gave us context and atmosphere. It allowed us to imagine what it was actually like when the Archiver was first made by SCP in 1995, not just how it was made. That’s the thing about archives, they are all about atmosphere. Can an archive conjure up the atmosphere of another time mostly lost to memory?
The James Irvine archive is what you could call A Perfect Archive. One that had been carefully ordered and thought about over time. It’s the kind of archive we all wish we had, but few of us actually do. The SCP archive is something much more familiar, and we have chosen to call it The Imperfect Archive. It has mostly been stored on warehouse racking in a barn in Hampshire, on some land on Sheridan Coakley’s property. It is bursting with original and rarely seen content, but it is also an archive that is truly reflective of a fast moving small company, rather than one of a single minded designer. So it has a patina, it is far from perfect. It contains SCP prototypes, one-offs, experiments, drawings, slide transparencies, and even some pieces saved from a historical warehouse fire. It has original PEL designs from the 1930s which SCP used to sell. It has numerous pieces of ephemera related to the company: from the opening night guest book, to Coakley’s endless parking tickets, to early SCP logo designs by Peter Saville. It is sprawling, convoluted and complicated – but it is incredibly powerful in conjuring up atmosphere, and to a certain extent, that seems the most important thing about an archive.
The Imperfect Archive at SCP tells a story about a small company that has punched above its weight for forty years. It tells us about Sheridan Coakley, whose passion for contemporary design is unrelenting, and whose determination to bring the best furniture and lighting to a British audience has remained undimmed. It tells of the emergence of world-leading British designers and architects who would help shape their epoch. It contextualises the development of the design industry in Britain, while also showing the change in attitude towards modernity over the period. And lastly, it touches on the recent history of Shoreditch, a border place with a rebellious spirit that has become a key outpost of creativity and commerce in London.
In early 1985, when Sheridan Coakley wandered past an empty shop on Curtain Road with a “for rent” sign, he saw the potential for a little more warehousing space for his fledgling furniture company. Little did he know that it would be the starting point for a cultural renaissance that would still be reverberating forty years later. We hope this SCP archive show has the power to captivate in all its glorious imperfection. And we hope the next generation of design lovers are inspired to shape the next forty years – however they see fit.
SCP at Forty
Author: Deyan Sudjic
Sheridan Coakley started making furniture in 1985 when he set up SCP. As a brand name, it showed a certain degree of self awareness. He had begun his career with a shop located off London’s Portobello Road selling PEL products, vintage tubular steel chairs made before World War II by the brilliantly titled company Practical Equipment Ltd. Choosing to use three initials for his own business could be seen as a kind of tribute.
SCP is more than a quotation. Like PEL, or a handful of other prewar British manufacturers such as Isokon, established by Jack Pritchard and Wells Coates, and Gerald Summers and Marjorie Butcher who set up their business Makers of Simple Furniture, Sheridan was looking at a particularly English form of modernism. It was modernism infused with the bracing atmosphere of Suffolk, Marcel Breuer working in plywood, Walter Gropius building a village college at Impington outside Cambridge, the intellectually improving orange spined Penguin paperbacks, and the sensibility that comes from craftsmanship.
Without accurate records, we estimate that SCP has produced over 200 different designs over the last 40 years. It was impossible to include them all in The Imperfect Archive, either because of a lack of space to display them, or simply because we don’t have a piece to display. We would like to extend our thanks to all the designers we have worked with over the years, even if their pieces are not in the show. We would also like to extend a big thank you to Jon Harrison for the exhibition design and to Mark Farrow and Gary Stillwell from Farrow Design, who have looked after all of our graphic design requirements for three decades.
