In 1971 Ringo Starr visited The BBC to show off a range of homeware he'd designed
In 1968, a year after Brian Epstein set up Apple Corps – the umbrella company that would allow The Beatles to pay less tax than they would as individuals – drummer Ringo Starr set up his own venture.
Called ROR (short for 'Ringo or Robin', the latter being business partner and designer Robin Cruickshank) and run from the Apple offices on Saville Road, it was a company that made rather exclusive homeware. And in 1971, Ringo appeared on The BBC's flagship children's show Blue Peter to talk about their goods.
On the show, Starr took host John Noakes through some of ROR's catalogue: a stainless steel shelf set built around an eight-foot steel column with a removal occasional table/storage unit perched on top; a small chrome-plated storage box; a reversible perspex desk ornament filled with dangerous liquid mercury ("Perspex, I like as much as steel," explains Ringo), and a kinetic sculpture called 'Another One' (described in the original literature as a "mercury filled object containing zigzagging discs powered by a small motor which sits in the opaque light box underneath and all housed in a transparent perspex case”). IKEA, this was not.
Source: Fraser Lewry/loudersound.com
