Objects of Substance - Classroom_furniture final

My next three years at Grammar were spent in different classrooms in the Western wing and the furniture there was considered “modern” in comparison. Students sat at individual wooden desks with a lift-up top for all of your books and writing equipment. The chairs were wooden too and, though they looked hard, they were really quite comfortable and certainly helped your posture. What was interesting was that, although these were individual desks, they were organised in pairs. A legacy of the older versions, perhaps? We had no lockers and no way to secure our books and other equipment but we did have hat hooks and bag racks. One past student from the 1950s remembers something Miss Lilley said to incoming students: “Girls who leave their names on desks never leave them on honour boards.” I wonder if the opposite is true: desks leave their mark on the students who sat at them all day, week after week. In those years when most of the lessons were taught in the same classroom, you had your own desk in the same place in the one room. The feel of that smooth wood, the knowledge that all your hard-won notebooks just under your hands, and even the indent for your pens and pencils were all comforting and familiar. Modern desks may look stylish and bright but sometimes they fail to stir that intimate connection to place that is much more than space.

Kristine Cooke [Harvey 1967] Director of Information Services

1971 garden furniture