Description
This vintage Fresco range floating laptop desk features a slim and organic shape and offers storage possibilities with two double sets of drawers. There is also a cute little ‘secret’ drawer seamlessly built in to the table top and lined with felt. Alternatively, this piece can be used as a mid century dressing table. Made of teak and afromosia, this piece was designed by Victor Wilkins in the 1960s and has a great retro look to it. This stylish mid-century item was manufactured by G-Plan in the 1960s.
British furniture designer Victor Bramwell (V.B.) Wilkins is best known for his Fresco range for G-Plan. Although all of Wilkins known works were produced by G-Plan, there is little biographical information available on the designer. It can be assumed, however, that he worked as an in-house designer for the British manufacturer for many years.
Although most of the British public reverted to traditional tastes after the war, there was a small but growing market for high-quality, modernist furniture, and G-Plan successfully spoke to this younger, more progressive audience. Through clever marketing campaigns, G-Plan set the standard for modernist, mass-market furniture in post-war Britain. G-Plan’s C Range, with an aesthetic that celebrated its machine production, was launched in 1953, and by 1957 it had become enormously popular.
By the 1960s, the Scandinavian look was sweeping international design, and British-made furniture was being outsold by Danish imports. To compete, G-Plan brought in Danish designer Ib Kofod-Larsen (1921-2003) to create new collections in fine woods, like teak and rosewood. While these Kofod-Larsen pieces have become very collectible today, at the time, they were not well appreciated by the design community—perhaps viewed as lesser variations on the furniture available from Scandinavia. It can be assumed that Wilkins was highly influenced by Kofod-Larsen’s designs as Wilkin’s pieces are often wrongly attributed to Kofod-Larsen.
Structurally sound and in super original condition.
W152 x D46 x H71cm (Kneehole: W51 x H66)
