Oliver Percy Bernard



Oliver Percy Bernard OBE MC (8 April 1881 – 15 April 1939) was an English architect, and scenic, graphic and industrial designer. He was instrumental in developing conservative Victorian British taste in a modernist European direction and much of his work is frequently characterised as art deco.

Early life
Born in Camberwell, London, Bernard was the son of Charles Bernard, (d.1894), a theatre manager, and his wife Annie Allen, an actress. He experienced an unhappy childhood in London and, on the death of his father in 1894, left for Manchester to take a job as a theatre stage hand. He took on his own education by reading John Locke, John Ruskin and others. He ultimately took a series of menial jobs at sea, before returning to London to take up scene painting with Walter Hann. He filled his recreation with boxing and billiards. In 1905, he went to New York to work for Klaw & Erlanger before returning to London to work at Covent Garden. In 1912 he was scenic director of the Quinlan Opera Company during their tour of Australia.

At the beginning of World War I in 1914, he was rejected for active military service on the grounds of his deafness. Now frustrated by the conservatism of the London theatre, and ashamed at his inability to serve in the war, Bernard travelled back to the Americas before returning on the RMS Lusitania in 1915, surviving its sinking. As the ship went down, Bernard made sketches which were published in the Illustrated London News. However, in 1916, he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers as a camouflage officer, serving in France, Italy and Belgium, reaching the rank of Captain, and being awarded the Military Cross and OBE.

Post-war
In 1919, he continued his theatrical work, designing sets for Sir Thomas Beecham's Ring Cycle at Covent Garden. He also overhauled lighting and stage management at the Admiralty Theatre.

However, his work was also moving to display an interest in trade and industry, new materials and techniques and a populist approach to decoration. He acted as consultant to the Board of Overseas Trade and worked on designing displays for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924. He was a consultant again to the British government for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. His work is sometimes characterised among the Streamline Moderne.

J. Lyons and Co.
He was consultant artistic director to J. Lyons and Co., defining much of their later house style and designing interiors for their Oxford Street, Coventry Street, and Strand Corner Houses.

In 1929, he designed a spectacular art deco entrance to the Strand Palace Hotel and worked on the Cumberland Hotel in 1932.

Later work
Bernard also wrote on design and architecture and championed the exploitation of engineering expertise. He worked on furniture design and, from the late 1930s designed a number of industrial buildings, most notably the Supermarine works in Southampton. He was involved in founding PEL (Practical Equipment Ltd) and designed the S.P.4 chair for them.

Personality and family
Bernard was "short in stature with a large head." His former secretary described him as "amusing, utterly impossible, kind, and a bully". He was a cousin to the actor Stanley Holloway (Bernard's father Charles was a brother to Holloway's maternal grandmother), which makes him distantly related to the actor Julian Holloway and former model and author Sophie Dahl; the son and granddaughter of Stanley Holloway respectively.

Bernard was married twice. He married the singer Muriel Theresa Lightfoot in 1911 but the marriage dissolved in 1924. He next married Dora Hodges, an opera singer whose stage name was Fedora Roselli, in 1924. The couple had two daughters and three sons including the poet and translator Oliver Bernard who attended the Westminster School and later published a book of memoirs. Bernard's two other sons were Bruce Bonus Bernard, a photographer and art critic and Jeffrey Bernard who became a noted journalist.

Bernard died unexpectedly of peritonitis in London. His estate was worth £2,950 at his death but he left his wife with heavy debts. Nevertheless, she managed to send the three sons to independent schools.