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George Hardie's Rules
16 February 2006
From 14 March to 15 April 2006 we are exploring the invention of the standardised portable measuring system – the rule
Collections are wonderful: most of us collect something, even if we are unaware that we are doing it until one day we wake up and realise that we have a…collection.
Back in the late 60s and 70s, George Hardie was creating legendary record covers with Hipgnosis including Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and ‘Wish you Were Here’; the cover for Led Zeppelin’s first album (and ‘Presence’); and the illustrations for Genesis’s ‘Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’.
Over the years Hardie used the rule and its family (the ruler, the tape and the surveyor’s pole) as a symbol in many drawings. In turn, this led him to collect rulers, from the cheap to the valuable. In between are rarer items: the tape measure for knitting socks for the troops in the First World War; Japanese bamboo rulers; very short rulers; and folding rulers.
There are also enigmatic rulers: the curved tailor’s ruler from Japan and the circular ruler attached to scissors.
As Hardie says, “There are no rules for this collection. As a collector I am not a completist. By its nature this collection can never be completed. Drawing the line to nowhere.”
Hardie is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, a professor at the University of Brighton and has recently been elected a Royal Designer for Industry.
14 March to 15 April 2006 (extended by popular demand) 1000-1800hrs Monday to Saturday
Vitsœ
72 Wigmore Street
London W1U 2SG
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