Was there a George VI style? Now that the story of British architecture and design in the twentieth century is less often distorted by over-emphasis on the modern movement, the variety and quality of what was produced can be appreciated afresh. Alan Powers argues that new stylistic terms are needed for mid-century design, among them the concept of a 'George VI style'

The location of the interface between modernism and the George VI style is a complex matter. Most modern architects went through some sort of transition in or around 1937, and in most cases, this lasted until the early 1950s. It is significant that in his later writings, Roger Fry reasserted the classical values underlying much modernist practice and joined in the reappraisal of British art in 1934, lecturing at the RA exhibition. (24) On Fry's death that year, Kenneth Clark took on his mantle as an active promoter of historical continuity in art in a broad renaissance tradition. He supported the Euston Road School as a counterbalance to abstraction, and famously propelled Henry Moore, John Piper and Graham Sutherland to their status as figures of the modern art establishment. Clark's friendship with Colin Anderson was influential on the latter's selection of designers and artists for Orient Line ships, starting with RMS Orion, launched in 1935. (25) Less well known is his attempt to create a revival of ornament in architecture.

Another theorist encouraged by Fry was Margaret Bulley, whose books Art and Understanding (1937), and Art and Everyman (1951), frame the reign of George VI. She was attempting to create universal grounds for recognising quality in art and design, irrespective of genre or cultural background, in a way that is suggestive of the eclectic inclusiveness of the George VI style. Bulley's method was to pair objects to demonstrate good and bad. Her bad examples are often those we would now call Art Deco, and while in architecture she shows no fear of modernism, she favoured the elegance of late Georgian and Regency. Her taste was well matched in two small but influential design shops in London in the 1930s, Muriel Rose's Little Gallery and Cecilia Sempill's Dunbar Hay. (27)

That taste is usually characterised by a more traditional use of materials and building forms, apparent in Serge Chermayeff's well-known and much admired timher house, Bentley Wood, 1938. Although the shift may appear to be an English deviation from the mainstream, it had sources and counterparts in other countries, and Walter Gropius's The Wood House at Shipbourne, of 1936, is in a tradition of German modernist timber houses. (28) Some architects even reverted to the pitched roof. Architects such as Berthold Lubetkin developed an interest in patterned and decorated surfaces, while F. R.S. Yorke began in 1937 to build in brick instead of concrete. (29) This unheroic sensibility peaked in the Festival of Britain in 1951, after which it was successfully effaced by a younger generation. (30)

At the Festival, a prominent role was played by designers grouped together as Design Research Unit, a project from the 1930s, in which Herbert Read and Marcus Brumwell played formative roles, to create a new cadre of architects, graphic artists and product designers available to industry. Misha Black and Milner Gray emerged as leading figures in DRU, practising in a style that had changed considerably from pre-war modernism, and could be better described as 'George VI'.