Aga TCDCNGMAQU, ATC3BRG, ADC3GAQU, TCDCLPMAQU, AHCAQU User Manual
...
HOW THE
AGA
COOKER
HOW THE AGA COOKER BECAME AN ICON
BECAME AN
ICON
The story of the talented individuals
who helped shape the future
of life in the British home
PLUS
perfect for 21st century living
why the modern AGA is
TEN dEcadEs of hEriTagE
and still at the cutting edge today
When the AGA cooker was introduced to the UK in 1929, seven
years after its invention, it was an instant success. It is now in its tenth
decade and it continues to innovate. The very latest technology has been
employed to continue the kitchen revolution. There is the ultra-modern
AGA Total Control. From the outside, the AGA Total Control looks
exactly like a classic AGA cooker. But beneath its cast-iron exterior lies a
state-of-the-art touchscreen control panel that enables owners to operate
the cooker in a way that suits them. The AGA iTotal Control takes this
a stage further, with oven programmability made possible by remote
control, even via the web or a smartphone. The AGA, then, is not resting
on its laurels. It remains steeped in heritage, but keen to continue to
innovate to ensure it is as relevant for the 21st century as it was in the
1930s when a team of brilliance made it a British icon.
How e AGA Became An Icon 3
forEWord
he AGA cooker is a way of life. It commands
levels of adulation more oen associated
T
similar loyalties. One woman taking part in an AGA
demonstration went so far as to insist it was warmer,
more reliable and infinitely better looking than most
men and that, given the choice between her husband
and her AGA, she’d waste no time packing his bags!
e inventor of the AGA cooker in 1922 was
Dr Gustaf Dalén, could have imagined the heady
heights of fame that his creation would go on to
reach. Dalén, an entrepreneur and a Nobel Prizewinning engineer and devoted husband. Intellectually
and commercially, he wanted to create an efficient
stove that would free his wife from domestic drudgery
and address the engineering question of how best to
get heat from its source into the food. Radiant heat
from the cast-iron walls of the AGA cooker’s ovens
provided the answer.
Now, the AGA cooker once most associated with
rambling country piles and farmhouse kitchens
complete with orphan lambs and sodden spaniels is
with the latest boy band and generates
just at home in an über-hip metropolitan
environment. e modern version is setting out to be
a world class cooker, able to take on all cookery styles
whatever their origins.
For the world’s most famous cooker is now also the
globe’s coolest cooker. Its enduring good looks are
seducing yet another new audience. Today, it finds
itself dancing chic-to-chic with a more independently
minded, more metropolitan consumer and wherever
you are in the world you can have an AGA cooker
that works for you.
e AGA boasts a peerless pedigree and is today cast
in iron at the historic Coalbrookdale foundry in the
Shropshire hills that is a World Heritage Site and
was at the very birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
when, in 1709, Abraham Darby first smelted iron ore
with coke to make cooking pots.
Its design has been allowed to evolve with care to the
point where the cooker’s look has now achieved icon
status. e special place it occupies in the hearts and
minds of owners is unique and undeniable.
q
How e AGA Became An Icon
4
Inventor of the AGA cooker, Dr Gustaf Dalén,
a Nobel Prize-winning physicist
How e AGA Became An Icon 5
SALUTING the individuals whose
vision created one of the world’s
most respected brands…
Mention the word AGA to anyone and you’ll get
an immediate and emotional response. It is quite
simply the most famous cooker and one that is
loved by millions the world over.
While the AGA is well-known for its brilliant cooking
performance and iconic good looks, there is also a
remarkable story behind the emergence of the
AGA cooker as an icon.
Between 1933 and 1946 an extraordinary team of
people came together and had a lasting impact on
the way we cook and the way we live.
When we launched the AGA Total Control in 2011,
themes from the 1930s still resonated today. We
investigated further.
A role such as mine within AGA is many faceted,
with one distinct element being that of brand
custodian. It was with this in mind that we took on
a project to research and collate our archives with
a view to understanding the origins of the power
and unique appeal of the AGA cooker.
Over the course of our investigations it became
clear that one man, W.T. Wren, was responsible
for bringing together a team of such talent and
prescience that they quite simply changed the way
Britain lived.
These changes, which centered on the launch of
the New Standard AGA, were not short lived and
even now the impact that they had on the shape
of our homes and our lives remain.
That’s why we have created this publication to
provide an insight into a fascinating social history,
to celebrate the company’s rich and varied
heritage and, of course, to bring the archives to life.
William McGrath
CEO AGA Rangemaster Group
12 visionaries
The individuals who made it all happen
W. T. Wren
l Head of AGA Heat
and Allied Ironfounders
l Innovator
l Visionary
l Second World
War spy
David Ogilvy
l First AGA salesman
and marketing
consultant
l Advertising genius
l The inspiration for
TV’s Mad Men
l Second World War spy
Sometimes, when a group
of people gell, there is an
alchemy that ensures
something extraordinary will
happen. This was the case
when the team below came
together to ensure the AGA
Ambrose Heath
l Gastronome
l Food writer
l First celebrity cook
l Author of the early
AGA cookbooks
cooker was to become an icon. They showed the world the importance of
great design, perfectly cooked food, economy and ergonomics – all within
the kind of modern kitchen setting that had never been seen before. In
fact, from 1935 – in developing and launching the New Standard AGA
cooker – they shaped the future and changed the way people lived. It
was their influence that made the kitchen the most important room in the
house and made good food and cooking a new national interest…
Raymond Loewy
l US industrial design guru
l Head of Raymond Loewy
Associates
l Oversaw re-design of
the AGA cooker through
London offices
l Styled the Rayburn
Douglas Scott
l Industrial designer
l Re-designed the AGA
cooker
l Introduced the
Standard Model C AGA
cooker
l Designed the Rayburn
How e AGA Became An Icon
8
Francis Ogilvy
l Head of ad agency
Mather & Crowther
l Second World
War writer for
Prime Minister
Winston Churchill
Charles Ludovic Scott
l AGA Heat Ltd’s
Technical
Research Officer
l Responsible for the
technology behind
the new Standard
Model C AGA cooker
Dorothy Braddell
l Redefined how Britain
saw the kitchen
l Designed AGA kitchen
roomsets in 1930s
and 40s
Lawrence Wright
l Pioneering perspective artist
l Illustrated AGA Heat’s roomset designs
Mabel Collins
l 1935, head of AGA Heat Ltd’s
new Cookery Advisory Department
Carl Otto
l Industrial designer
l Designer of the Otto
stove
l Head of the London
office of Raymond
Loewy Associates
Edward Bawden
l Artist and illustrator
l Illustrated many
iconic AGA
brochures and
recipe sheets
How e AGA Became An Icon 9
W T WREN
AGA Heat Ltd
managing director
Leader and innovator
Second World War
agent
Managing Director of
AGA Heat Ltd from early
1930s to 1950s, also
becoming Managing
Director and Chairman
of parent company Allied
Ironfounders. Through
the 1930s W.T. Wren
pushed the AGA cooker,
recognising its potential
impact. He said: “Owners
come to talk about and
regard their AGA as
though it were almost
a member of the
household – a fond
personality which has
won their affection.
Servants love it…so do I”
He felt so passionately
about the AGA that he
formed one of the
greatest cross-disciplinary
teams in UK industrial
history and expanded
across the country by
building a strong group
of registered distributers,
largely family concerns
and some with long and
important histories of
their own.
Every now and then someone captures the zeitgeist so perfectly they
become the centre of something truly extraordinary. W. T. Wren – or
‘Freckles’ as he was known – was one such man…
shaPiNg ThE fUTUrE
. T. WREN’s ability to see how the future
was shaping up and his skill in spotting
W
simply changed the way people lived and –perhaps
even more surprisingly – the eect can still be felt
today.
Wren was born at the turn of the century into a poor,
working class family, a fact he never forgot. He joined
the Chubb & Sons Lock and Safe Company as an
oce boy, but graduated to act as a representative in
India. From Chubb he went to Bell's Engineering
Supplies where, in 1929, he was put in charge of
selling the rst AGA cookers in Britain.
Such was his success that in 1932, when Bell’s became
AGA Heat Ltd, Wren was its MD, a role he still held
in the 1950s. By then, via a time as sales director, he
had become Managing Director and later Chairman
of the parent company, Allied Ironfounders Ltd.
He was a member of the Council of Industrial
Design (later to become the Design Council) and
his obituarist noted his unusual ability to see the
importance of design: “He was a man who
saw the value of high standards of industrial design
linked to expert salesmanship and social purpose at a
time when such attitudes were rarely held, let alone
applied to a large commercial undertaking.”
As well as realising the importance of great design,
Wren also understood the value of approaching marketing from an entirely new angle and this, combined
with his ability to bring together interesting people,
really were at the forefront of the success of the AGA
cooker, turning it from a simple domestic appliance
talent was so nely honed that he quite
1
into the icon it remains today.
In a strategy paper from 1933, Wren demonstrates
his innovative approach to marketing. He wrote…
“Words are sickeningly inept instruments of enthusiasm.
But perhaps, helped out by the photographs, I have given
you a fairly complete picture of this cray cooker.
“If you visit an AGA Showroom anywhere you will find
out a lot more and, more important still, you will get
what I cannot give you, the spirit of the AGA.”
Fieen years aer the introduction of the AGA to
Britain, Wren – who would be driven everywhere
in his Rolls-Royce with the licence plate AGA 1 –
was clearly aware he and his team had achieved
something special and signicant. He recognised that
the cooker had achieved a “unique place in the sun”
and had become a household name, an eponym
for all range cookers.
Wren returned from the war in 1945. In a report
written for the Executive Board, A Wider Base for
AGA, he described the progress the AGA cooker had
made during his time at the helm:
“It is now 15 years since the AGA was rst introduced
to this country...it has gained a unique place in the
sun and, in a certain eld, is a household word. No
other domestic appliance in the generation has
achieved so well a foothold. ose engaged in
launching it were...of the ‘traditional’ trade approach
for a product of this type; and probably just as well,
for had they followed the traditional line, it is
doubtful if AGA would have survived the course.
But it did survive and made so serious an
s
How e AGA Became An Icon 11
W T WREN
impression on the trade that [others] have
followed AGA almost slavishly in marketing
methods.
“All this, to my mind, shows that there is
something new in the AGA way of marketing
a domestic appliance which is regarded as
both successful and necessary by our
competitors.”
In Wren’s obituary in Design, the journal of
the Council of Industrial Design, Richard
Carr wrote: “He [Wren] already believed in
the value of selling an appliance which used
1
only 3
/2 tons of coke a year instead of the 24
tons of coal consumed by the average kitchen
boiler.
“A meeting with Francis Ogilvy of Mather
and Crowther encouraged him to improve
the AGA still further by calling in Raymond
Loewy as the company’s design consultant
[see page 18]. is led to the development of
a complete range of well designed appliances,
including the Otto stove, named aer Carl
Otto who worked in Loewy’s oce, the
Rayburn and the AGAmatic domestic water
heater.
“e association with Mather and Crowther
also led to the adoption of outstandingly high
standards of writing, illustration and printing
for the company's literature, while Wren
followed his own clear policy on salesmanship, cutting down retail outlets and
appointing as agents only those builders'
merchants, ironmongers and even individuals
whom he could rely on to give expert service.
“He also introduced such ideas as a circular
on AGAs in Latin, and then in Greek, for
distribution to schools, and an exhibition in
two air conditioned railway coaches which
toured Britain in the 1950s to display the
company products.”
Wren also became an animated commentator
on social issues and, in combination with
organising travelling exhibitions, he
commissioned lms during the 1950s to
make local authorities aware of the need to
modernise Victorian slums and war-damaged
properties.
But perhaps Wren’s lasting legacy stemmed
from a remarkable ability to see design,
marketing and engineering ability and to then
assemble the right team for the times. He
knew by the late 1930s that the original AGA
cooker – introduced to Britain in the late
1920s – needed to be re-designed and
updated.
For this, he called in renowned American
industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who was
to go on to design the interiors of Concorde
for Air France and Air Force One for the US
government.
Wren was aware that the AGA cooker’s
unique selling points needed a unique sales
force. For this job, he turned to David Ogilvy,
who was to go on to revolutionise advertising
as the so-called King of Madison Avenue and
later to be the inspiration for TV’s Mad Men.
He was aware the times were changing and,
as domestic service in Britain declined, he
asked designer and domestic planning
advocate Dorothy Braddell to come up with
a functional new look for British kitchens.
He commissioned a series of cookbooks from
the celebrity chef of the day, Ambrose Heath,
which were illustrated by Edward Bawden,
who was to go on to become an artist of
major repute.
Over the coming pages we look at the visionaries
who made up Wren’s team, talented individuals
who succeeded in embedding the AGA cooker in
the British psyche.
q
W. T. Wren frequently hosted lavish
dinners at the Dorchester for AGA
distributors (above). The famous
London hotel was also used for
company meetings, as illustrated
by the extract (left) of the minutes
from a board meeting in 1945,
when it was agreed the discussion
should be “adjourned for lunch and
the meeting continued at the
Dorchester Hotel”
At the same meeting, the board
reviewed how the AGA cooker
had been launched in the UK
and concluded (left) that it would
not have been the immediate
success it had been if those
behind the project had been
prejudiced by accepted selling
practices of the time
A silver inkwell fashioned in
the form of an AGA cooker and
presented to W. T. Wren
by his colleagues in 1937
12 How e AGA Became An Icon
How e AGA Became An Icon 13
Loading...