John George Obituary
5 April 1931 – died 26 June 2008
Founder of the Marketing Society, director of the London Building Centre for almost twenty years, and co-founder of CRASH, the Construction and Property Industries charity for the homeless.
John George was a man of considerable energy, imagination and charm, with a wide range of interests. He had an early background in marketing with Beechams and de la Rue and, in 1959 he founded the Marketing Society, at a time when the discipline of marketing was fairly new. Founder chairman of the Society, John’s lead started the impetus which has made it the leading network for senior marketers in Britain, running such prestigious events as the Annual Awards for Excellence. Now the principles of marketing are applied much more widely through a wide variety of businesses such as financial services and the media, and the Society has 2700 members. John’s influence continued when he became director of Commercial and Industrial Public Companies. Ahead of his time in many ways, as managing director of Potterton in the 60s, John introduced the then unusual scheme of incentive bonuses; he offered employees who met their targets for boiler installations a prize of a week’s holiday for their wife.
In his thirties John George became increasingly interested in the field of architecture and the building industry, perhaps at that point wishing that instead of geology and meteorology, which he had read at UCL, he had chosen architecture. Following these interests he became managing director (1970s) of the London Building Centre and Building Centre Trust, the exhibition centre for architecture and building technology. Here John established a progressive gallery that presented a wide variety of art and architecture related work. During this time he played an important role in responding to the new information needs of the construction industry at a time when it was changing radically with the rise of new procurement methods and new media – especially information technology. Through the Educational Trust he initiated a number of influential projects which examined how the industry was changing. Particularly memorable was a series of lectures entitled Art, Architecture and the Environment, co-hosted by the Arts Council of Great Britain and staged at the Tate. The series involved presentations given by leading architects including Richard Rogers and Bernard Tsumi. John, always with an informed and discriminating eye for good food and drink, insisted on excellent catering to accompany the series. He had an excellent ability for nurturing young talent and new organisation: many industry institutions found their first home at the Building Centre and the young exhibition directors cut their teeth on exhibition projects supported by the Building Centre Trust. Through these activities he had considerable influence in breaking down the professional barriers which exist in the construction industry. He also conceived and organised a number of exhibitions and lectures on illustrators and designers, including William Walcot, Piranesi, Rosenhauer, Decimus Burton, Victor Horta and many others.
For twenty years John was consultant/adviser to Barbour Index on architectural and construction design matters, and, in 2001 became a trustee of the British Architectural Library, where he was involved in organizing its move from the RIBA to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
John George worked with Tony Denison to establish CRASH, the Construction and Property Industries charity for the homeless, in 1991. He brought to this both his management skills and his social awareness and compassion for the problems and needs of those who had become homeless. Troubled by the sight of people sleeping on the streets of London, their solution was to enlist the support of leading figures in the construction and property sectors to convert empty offices into temporary cold weather shelters. In some cases, architects gave their professional services free of charge to convert derelict buildings, which those needing accommodation helped to restore themselves with materials and expertise provided by the charity. That same winter, the Government created its Rough Sleepers Initiative and made funds available to allow agencies to operate these temporary shelters. CRASH also benefited from John George’s belief in the need for practical research, which he had actively developed at the Building Centre.
In October 1995 John and a small group of people interested in the inheritance of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Surrey, initiated a Society bearing that name. John George became its chairman. The Society is extremely active, with a series of country-wide professionals lecturing each winter in the Watts Gallery in Compton, visits to Arts and Crafts strongholds in the Cotswolds and the Lake District, outings to houses and churches. The Society, backed by John George’s affection for Watts Gallery, also took an active part in the restoration of Mary Watts’s memorial chapel at Compton, and reprinted her book on its symbolism, ‘The Word in the Pattern’, and published a memoir of Richard Jefferies, the curator who had given the Society help and support.
John became a member of the Collections Committee of the Watts Gallery Trust and was a champion for developing Compton as a centre for exploring Victorian art, social history and craft. He instigated the annual Watts Symposium which next year will take place at the Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s, both of whom are hosting a Watts exhibition, with the participation of luminaries such as Professor Sir Christopher Frayling. He helped the Gallery establish strategic partnerships with the Courtauld Institute, whose Witt Library was originally housed at Watts Gallery during the war, and the University of the Creative Arts in Farnham. The Archive Study Room at the newly- furbished Gallery, which will reopen in 2010, will be named after him.
Looking more deeply into his lifetime’s concerns about social cohesion in the work place John completed an MA in Christian Spirituality at Sarum College in Salisbury in 2003, his dissertation – ‘Spiritual sources and Social Concerns of the Arts and Crafts Movement – head, heart and hand working together.’ John was passionate about Ruskin, and Ruskin provided his model for the breadth of understanding of art, painting, architecture and society. A commitment to the Church underlay John’s life, from being a choir boy to serving. Despite all the changes in his life, he attended early communion (James version) without fail.
John George’s other roles included memberships of Surrey University Arts Committee, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Architecture Club and he was chairman of DETR –funded research projects.
Always elegant, sometimes impatient that the particular project of the time was not moving fast enough, John demonstrated an underlying and heartfelt Christian kindness. With his rich enjoyment of his allotment, taking particular pleasure in harvesting his own vegetable, John mirrored his maxim of head, heart and hand working together. He will be sorely missed. He leaves a wife, two daughters, and three grandchildren.