Elizabeth David and the origins of the Unfitted Kitchen

This was essentially an unfitted kitchen in all but name. On moving there in 1950 she chose the pre-war extension built over the back garden for her kitchen, leaving six foot of garden space and an inward facing room with little natural light. Three unmatched antique pine dressers, chosen on visits to antique shops, each with different historical pedigrees, dominated the layout. To these two freestanding cupboards completed the functional requirement of a kitchen. She found a carpenter to make a sink cabinet and a basic scrubbed pine table. A chaise-longue at one end sufficed as her comfort spot, also ending up as useful place to pile books and a look-out for Squeaker the cat. Oh and I should say she placed a gas stove in between two dressers so that there was a place to cook. All this may sound random in terms of a proper working kitchen but it was simple to install and surprisingly functional, and although it had a few oddities there was also plenty of charm.

Crucially, it was not just a cooking space. All my aunt’s entertaining was done at the kitchen table and she wrote her books there. The kitchen was a landing spot for the large amounts of cookery gear she bought and tested, and a place to display her favourite objects. Exotic (to me)things covered almost every surface including the walls. Wooden pegs above her cooker stuck out to hold heat spreaders -punctured metallic discs – and conical sieves. Visitors might be reminded of a medieval kitchen as the dressers held a yet more intriguing mix of her cookware: decorative, practical, international and local, vessels for cooking and eating from regional European cultures.

The shelves of the dressers displayed many bulbous shaped terracotta pots (what could they be for?), white China saucepans that made a young boy wonder how a gas flame wouldn’t crack them and beautiful Pillivuyt soup tureens and plates. All these complemented each other with their different styles, materials, texture and craftsmanship. Hand-madeness was celebrated as well as industrial techniques, elegance versus wonky or rustic. Piles of books, many in French or German, waited on the table with Post-it notes poking out, next to bowls of fruit or nuts. One time I was invited to lunch. I remember an orange Le Creuset pot on the kitchen table, the scent of roasted fennel and cheese somehow leaking out from under its cast iron lid.

Next to all this promising abundance there might be a small piece of olive wood for cutting up a nearby bunch of the herbs and then finally just enough space for your plate, fork and wine glass. This blended domestic workshop and all-day living room set-up was perfectly normal to me from the age of five onwards. It became a blueprints for my ideal working kitchen. By the age of eighteen I found myself working as a carpenter to make my aunt a replacement sink and acting as the kitchen caretaker, the household comptroller, building bookcases and decorating.

Elizabeth David leaning on the sink cabinet I made for her in 1971. (Photo: Cecil Beaton)

My aunt and I often discussed kitchen design and our mutual suspicion of the slick fitted kitchens just on the market from Germany with their cold plastic surfaces and relentless use of repetitive facades and cupboards crowding up all available wall space. She disliked the way a fitted kitchen lost its civilising aspect of accommodating freestanding furniture and craftsmanship. Why would you want to live in a room full of cupboards doors, she asked me, when you could have furniture? And why wouldn’t you want to enjoy the sight on your dressers of the beautiful things you cook with?

In defiant contrast to fitted units, my aunt’s most special cupboard was a seventeenth century armoire from Lyons made of walnut with elaborately florid carved frames on the doors, though rustically worked with an adze on the back (for years I wanted to reverse the doors!).She kept this stacked with pots and pans of many kinds behind its dark ornate doors. It contrasted with the paler pinewood dressers that had accumulated character and taken on a soft sheen of wax over their hundred or so years of life. The opportunity for arranging vessels appealed to her on many counts, including her appreciation of colour. Her collection of earthenware pots perfectly complemented her favourite fresh blue-grey paint on the walls.

Elizabeth David’s Georgian linen cupboard used for her spices and China. It had the advantage of sliding doors and height, offering plentiful storage and avoiding the problems of wall cupboards in fitted kitchens being short, with the doors opening into your face.

This kitchen had evolved the way it did for all sorts of reasons. One was necessity, as it came into existence during post war austerity using what my aunt could find. While it expressed Elizabeth David’s personality and met many of her needs, I also came to understand that in it she felt increasingly frustrated by the dominance of antiques and the lack of light.

Part two coming soon – Read my next blog to find out what happened as a result.