Sylvia Reid
S
YLVIA Reid, who celebrated her 96th birthday in August had a long and successful career as an architect and a consultant designer. So successful in fact that items she and her partner John designed in the 1950s and 1960s are highly sought after by fans of modernist design, often seen for sale online and in showrooms today. One of their graphic designs, from 1967, can be seen on the back of just about every electrician’s van in the UK today. Intrigued? Read on. John and Sylvia Reid met at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London at the beginning of the Second World War. There they formed a relationship which was to sustain them throughout a fruitful and prolific design partnership and become the foundation of their happy, lifelong marriage until John died in 1992. One of the defining features of their design partnership was that it covered
22 | Probus News Magazine | Issue 252
their entire output. In contrast to other famous designers of the period such as Robin and Lucienne Day or Charles and Ray Eames, they did not have independent projects but collaborated on everything they did. They established their practice, John & Sylvia Reid, in 1948, working from a rented flat in London. In her transition from student to architect and designer, Sylvia worked for Maxwell Fry and Jane
