He found himself collecting first prize for a plywood-and-aluminium storage unit alongside his hero

He found himself collecting first prize for a plywood-and-aluminium storage unit alongside his hero Charles Eames, who won the seating section. There was no possibility of pursuing product or interior design, although these were my main interests,” recalls Day. He considers himself largely self-taught, having soaked up what he could of new developments in America, Scandinavia and Italy from books and magazines.Day’s big break came when he entered a competition to design low-cost furniture held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1949. The professor of the so-called design school was an expert in repairing medieval frescoes. In the Thirties, the RCA was a school for painting, sculpture, ceramics, hand-printed textiles and so on. A scholarship to the Royal College of Art got him out of High Wycombe but not into quite the world he had imagined.”All the time I was at the RCA, I never heard the word Bauhaus.

Born in High Wycombe, Day grew up in the heart of the traditional furniture industry and his first job was as a worker in a furniture factory. Volumes of press cuttings and magazine features from the Fifties and Sixties record the couple’s work and reveal what trendsetters they were, when, for a moment at least, it seemed as if the middle classes might trade in ersatz period style for a modern way of life.Yet when Robin Day began designing, the likelihood of producing modern furniture in this country seemed remote. “I was always interested in making good design available to people all over the world. Travelling to primitive villages in remote parts of Africa, and seeing chairs of mine that are decent to sit on and almost indestructible has given me a lot of pleasure.”At 81, the dapper Day still runs a design studio from the Chelsea house where he has lived with his wife, textile designer Lucienne Day, since the mid-Fifties. The Georgian house, filled with Robin’s handsome and understated furniture and Lucienne’s striking textiles, is an elegant survivor from the height of modernism. The basic adult model still costs less than pounds 15.Day estimates that the polypropylene range has sold at least 40 million to date.

Standard issue for three decades in schools, stadiums and conference halls from Paisley to Poole and far beyond, the plastic chair, born in 1963 using state-of-the-art technology, is one of the most successful post-War British designs. It sounds pretentious, but do you struggle to educate someone here before you work with them, or keep working abroad where there’s enthusiasm for what you do?”Robin DayRCA 1935-39Robin Day, designer, may not be a household name, but there can hardly be anyone who hasn’t sat on one of his polypropylene chairs. Here, well educated people generally gravitate to the City, and deal with money rather than manufacturing. In Italy, if you are a manufacturer you are God, you’re a pillar of society. I go to these people’s homes and they have beautiful oil paintings next to fabulous modern lights and bonded glass tables There’s such a richness. In tune with current fashion, new samples are in pale tangerine and mint green, opaque pastels that look almost Sixties.A mixture of brilliance and bullish ambition has put this designer in the international league, yet he is disappointed by his reception in the UK.”There are some innovative companies, but the British are just not as sophisticated as people who purchase design in other countries. Now Lovegrove is working on the Thermos again, “to keep the product alive by trying to keep pace with contemporary taste”.