In the 1967 film, The Graduate, the naive hero, Benjamin, received a single word of advice about his future. “Plastics,” he was told. It was a word the young Brian Davis had embraced nearly a decade earlier, while working for his uncle’s firm, Toltoys. Representing the firm in the USA, Davis helped to launch the plastic hula hoop, which became a worldwide craze. Realising the potential of plastic homewares, he went on to found the company that became Décor.
In 1958, working from a desk in his bedroom, Davis created his eponymous company and registered the trademark, Décor. He had an eye for simple design and determined that his products should be functional, attractive and readily available.
Among Brian Davis & Co.’s first products was the Habana beaker set. The six stackable plastic mugs fitted neatly into their container for easy transport. It was just the beginning. Before long, Décor moved to a large factory in Scoresby, Melbourne, hired leading designers, including Richard Carlson and Tony Wolfenden, and released a host of homeware products.
By the 1970s, the product range included containers, mugs, flasks, lunch boxes, plates, ice buckets, picnic hampers, baskets, record racks, scrapers, colanders, egg separators, bowls, egg whisks, shakers, scoops, spoons, jugs, wine racks, plant pots, lamp shades, and microwave cookware. Over the course of the company’s history, it has won more than 300 design, marketing and export awards.
Among the most famous of Décor products was the insulated two-bottle BYO wine-chiller, developed in the late 1970s in response to the growing number of BYO restaurants and designed by the company’s production engineer, Richard Gordon. Released in 1978, it won the Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design in 1980 and, in 1983, was selected for permanent display in the Design Collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. It seems the chiller was also included on Prince Charles & Lady Diana’s wedding gift register in 1981.
Brian Davis continued to run Décor for 55 years. The company was one of my clients when I worked at Clemenger Melbourne, an advertising agency, in the 1970s. My experiences with him were not entirely pleasant, so it came as a surprise to read that he was a generous giver to the arts and a wide range of charities. I sensed that he was a hard taskmaster and accustomed to asserting his authority, which was perhaps reflected in the high standards he set for his products.
Davis sold the company in 2013, when he was 83. He died in 2021. Décor has continued under the ownership of Marlin Brands which is, in turn, owned by the private equity firms Oaktree Capital Management and Alceon Group. The products are still ubiquitous in Australian homes, with the company’s plastic wares now augmented by glass, bamboo and stainless steel items. The signature wine cooler, though, is no longer in the range.