ANTONY Armstrong-Jones, later the Earl of Snowdon, and husband to Princess Margaret, was a celebrated photographer who also had a lifelong interest in design.
That latter aspect was on show in April 1961 - the year in which he would be appointed to the Council for Industrial Design, in London - when the royal couple, who had married only the previous year, visited Glasgow and Cumbernauld. While his wife attended to her own engagements in the city, Armstrong-Jones, as he then was, drove to the Scottish Design Centre in West Regent Street on a visit hosted by the Council’s Scottish committee. He inspected a special delay of garden tools and equipment. The Glasgow Herald reported that he was particularly interested in Scottish-made goods as diverse as mohair stoles and cast-iron stoves.
At the furniture section he expressed his appreciation of the room-sets in which the exhibits were displayed, and he lingered there for a time, his eye having been caught by a white metal garden chair. In the photograph he is shown chatting with workmen who were building an extension to the centre. He told one of his committee hosts, Ian Wilson, that he had enjoyed meeting a lot of people in Glasgow. “I like the city,” he said. “I think everyone is warm and friendly and it has a lot of character.” “Coming from the design centre in London,” Mr Wilson told the Herald, “I think he appreciated our difficulties.”
The Earl of Snowdon died in January last year, aged 86.
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