An exciting new development in January followed last autumn’s ground-breaking exhibition on 'Breuer in Bristol', held at the Bristol Architecture Centre. The remarkable ‘Gane Pavilion’ was the centrepiece of this exhibition which showcased the partnership between local furniture manufacturer Crofton Gane and the world famous Bauhaus architect, Marcel Breuer. At a reception held at the Bristol Architecture Centre, the idea to work towards the future reconstruction of the Gane Pavilion in Bristol became a positive aspiration for the first time.
Breuer came to England in 1935 as a refugee from Nazi Germany and over a brief three-year period successfully completed a small number of key Modernist projects with Crofton Gane. This remarkable partnership generated the ‘The Gane Pavilion’, designed by Breuer for the 1936 Royal Show at Bristol’s Ashton Court. It reflected Breuer and Gane’s desire to promote Modernism and provide a contemporary showcase for the new furniture to be made by PE Gane Ltd.
The recent exhibition was sponsored by the Gane Trust, and Ken Stradling, the Trust’s Chairman, saw it as the culmination of a long held ambition to remind Bristol and the world of that remarkable collaboration. Breuer himself is known to have remarked that in his whole international career, the importance of the Gane Pavilion was second only to his UNESCO building in Paris.
Max Gane, who organised the exhibition as part of his own architectural studies, sees his grandfather’s commissioning of the Pavilion as a significant event in Bristol’s history. At a time when Britain was struggling with the Depression and reluctant to engage with Modernism, it was still possible for one Bristol manufacturer to embrace the socially inclusive values of modern architecture and design.
Reconstructing the Gane Pavilion would present an important restatement of a major landmark not only in the history of design, but also of the City of Bristol.