Spacy

The space race brought us more than just man walking to the moon and communications satellites.

Not everyone was going to be a John Glenn or a Buzz Aldren, but everyone could have a little of the final frontier all of their own.

Ignoring World War Two, industrial and commercial designers picked up more or less right from the Art Deco period to develop a style which influenced buildings, cars and interior furniture - known as Raygun Gothic.

This Carlton Ware plate is an example of the genre. Called 'Orbit' it ignores the conventions of crockery.

It's rectangular, has abstract patterns and a vivid splash of red on one side.

As a single piece it has a certain a retro novelty but in the Carlton Ware style nothing exceeds like excess and during the late 1950s and 1960s Orbit platters (warning, gratuitous pun alert) spun off into cruet sets and coffee sets.

BTW, Nora loves the Seattle Space Needle, a building she knew long before she saw a photograph of it - as did every re-run cartoon watching child of the 1960s and 1970s.

It's where The Jetsons lived!