Acapulco Vs Crystal Tipps Vs Gaytime

The late 1960's were a heyday for 'out-there' design.

The psychedelic music. fashions and artwork of the underground scene inevitably spilled out into mainstream design and were incorporated into everyday products.

English Ironstones Beefeater plates are a great example relatively easy to find today

Have a look at the full range here.. Psychedelic Bull Plates. There was a very prehistoric looking fish range too!

Today, though, we're looking at two remarkably similar ceramic ranges that seem to have had their own spin off cartoon series.

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In 1967 Villeroy & Boch released their Acapulco design into the wild...a pattern so eyecatchingly bright and vivid it's become an iconic image in the world of retro.
The shape, by Ludwig Scherer, had been used before but the design, by Christine Reuter inspired by a Mexican holiday, was something new, and here it was available in cups, saucers, coffee pots and even kettles and fondue sets. 

Here is one of the coffee pots, along with a milk jug, that's just come into Space
           Villeroy & Boch Acapulco

Gorgeous, aren't they?  Although, I can't help thinking, would you want to eat your dinner from one of these plates?

The line was revived in the 1980's (with a brown base mark instead of blue) and has recently been redesigned and made available again as
             NewWave Acapulco






Around the same time (well, you know, perhaps just a little bit later!) , Lord Nelson Pottery in the UK, were producing Gaytime, another huge range of white china with a psychedelic bird and flower design.

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A coincidence? Probably not, the name of the designer has been lost to time and the pottery long since closed but this is easily the funkiest thing they ever did in their long years of production.
A few years later in the early 70's, this happened...

Crystal Tipps and Alistair was possibly the weirdest cartoon ever. A young girl with huge purple hair and a mini dress and a big grey double jointed dog.  Created by Hilary Hayton and Graham McCallum they got up to various adventures every 5.40 for 50 episodes from 1972 with the colours and styling making Magic Roundabout look like a Party Political Broadcast.
Regular friends were a trippy bird and butterfly bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Acapulco design, especially when hiding  in the vegetation shown here in a tie-in book.

Are there designs around now that will so fondly remembered in 50 years time?

Here's the birds together (I've thrown in a Carlton Ware money box for good measure)