Jack Pritchard

John Craven (Jack) Pritchard (8 June 1899 in Hampstead, London – 27 April 1992 in Blythburgh, Suffolk) was a British furniture entrepreneur, who was very influential between the First and Second World Wars. His work is exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of London. He was a member of the Design and Industries Association.

Pritchard was born in Hampstead, son of Clive Fleetwood Pritchard, a successful barrister, and thus a descendent of Andrew Pritchard, businessman and scientist. He was educated at Oundle School and Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

In 1924 he married Rosemary (Molly) Cooke, a psychiatrist (1900 - 1985); they had two sons, Jonathan and Jeremy, born in 1926 and 1928. Jack also had a daughter, Jennifer, with Beatrix Tudor Hart, a pioneering educator.

For many years he and his wife lived in the famous Lawn Road Flats, also known as the Isokon Flats. They retired to a house named "Isokon" in Dunwich Road, Blythburgh, designed by Jennifer and her husband Colin Jones.

The London-based Isokon firm was founded in 1929 to design and construct modernist houses and flats, and subsequently furniture and fittings for them. Originally called Wells Coates and Partners, the name was changed in 1931 to Isokon, a name derived from Isometric Unit Construction, bearing an allusion to Russian Constructivism.

Unusually for a design company, its directors were the bacteriologist and later psychiatrist Molly Pritchard, the solicitor Frederick Graham-Maw, son of Frederick James Maw, the founder of the law firm Rowe and Maw, and the economist Robert S Spicer. In actuality, the company was run by Molly's husband Jack Pritchard whose initial involvement was to handle the economics, publicity and marketing, but who later went on to hire designers and direct the company. Jack Pritchard had become the British marketing manager for the internationally successful Estonian plywood company Venesta in 1926 and had hired Charlotte Perriand through Le Corbusier to design a trade fair stand for the company at Olympia, London in 1929. Despite his involvement with Lawn Road Flats and the Isokon Furniture Company, Jack Pritchard continued to work for Venesta until 1936.

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