Loncraine Broxton: Innovations & Executive Toys 1969-1997

‘Anyone of a certain age will remember a time when Loncraine Broxton doodads, gadgets, games and gismos could be found on every coffee table and office desk. This marvellous book, as beautifully designed and happy to handle as one of their famous fluid puzzles, brings back that time, and tells the story of two brilliant, raffish, inspirational designers, and joyously original and inventive thinkers. Now, when digital design absorbs our hands and eyes, half or wholly achieved by AI, it is more than refreshing to be taken back to a time when haptic rewards came from real touch.’ — Stephen Fry

In the late 1960s, former art-school friends Richard Loncraine and Peter Broxton formed a partnership to make sculptures and desktop toys for the burgeoning UK gift market. With a background in kinetic sculpture, concrete poetry, and the experimental art scene of 1960s London, Loncraine Broxton imbued their products with flair and inventiveness.

Their first design, Ballrace, a stylish chrome version of Newton’s cradle, became the defining executive toy of the 1970s and 1980s. It was followed by a series of memorable, playful products such as elegant kinetic sculptures, games for the home and garden, as well as items which revealed the pair’s knack for the outlandish: a giant match concealing a cigarette lighter, a double-sized deck chair, a pen disguised as a red mullet fish, address books with perfectly tailored jackets. Their liquid puzzles like the Mercury Maze with a real blob of mercury, or their Perrier and Champagne games, wittily characterise the mood of the 1980s.

‘Loncraine Broxton’s Executive Toys were so clever and beautiful that I was inspired to design one of my own...the “perfect gift” for an Exec trapped in the Orwellian nightmare of my film, Brazil.’ — Terry Gilliam

‘Richard is a very creative person, filmmaker and designer. He is always so full of energy and passion and what Loncraine Broxton did was way ahead of its time.’ — Paul Smith

This new book brings together the huge range of Loncraine Broxton products with commentary by Richard Loncraine and Peter Broxton, telling the story of how they spent three decades devising unlikely ideas for products to amuse and delight.