Ernest Race was a fabric and furniture designer, and one of a wave of new modernist designers that came to the fore after the end of the Second World War.
After studying interior design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, he found employment as a model maker and lighting designer, before setting up Race Fabrics, to sell handwoven textiles and carpets in the years immediately before the war.
However, it was his formation of Ernest Race Ltd. in 1945 and the success of his first design for the company, the ‘BA3’ dining chair, at the 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition that launched his career nationally and internationally. They combined a lightness and elegance, that saw over a quarter of a million examples of this chair produced between 1945 and 1969, and Race was awarded a prestigious gold medal at the Milan Triennale in 1954 for his design.
Following on from this he created the ‘Springbok’ and ‘Antelope’ chairs, used at The Festival of Britain in 1951 and the ‘Unicorn’ chair for the British Pavilion World Fair in Brussels in 1958.
The demand for his furniture soon took off and he was commissioned by the likes of Lyons teashops and the P&O shipping company, alongside retailers Heals. Over his career Race was awarded three ‘Design of the Year’ awards by the Design Centre, a reflection perhaps of his philosophy that it was important not to merely copy a design from one material to the other, but to exploit the material to its full potential.