InsearchofVitrolite Michael Taylor tells the tale of a quest for a replacement for a pink 1930s cladding product. Fig. 1. Thefrontof the Kingstonestorefrom BelgroveGate aftercompletionof work. Sir Charles Keene was one of the leading civic and business figures of 20th centu1y Leicester, and served as Lord Mayor in 1953-54. Like some other wealthy people of radical persuasion, his political interests were linked to a progressive taste in architecture and design. This led him to commission Raymond McGrath, then in his early 30s, to design the Kingstone store in Belgrave Gate, Leicester. for his retail furniture business (Fig 1). Kingstone was built in 1937 and two years later McGrath built Carrygate, Keene's house at Gaulby, in the count1yside to the east of Leicester. Raymond McGrath had come to England from Australia in 1926 at the age of 23. One of his interests was in the use of glass and he published Glass inArchitectureandDecorationalso in 1937.1 In this book he described Vitrolite and its Context65 March2000 uses for external and, more particularly internal, cladding of wall surfaces. Vitrolite was a product of Pilkington Brothers at St Helens and was one of a range of glass products widely used in the 1930s and through into the 1960s for largescale cladding and for shop fascias and interiors. It also provided a hygienic wall surface for interiors such as operating theatres, and vitreous cladding products are still in use in environments such as hairdressing salons. Vitrolite itself was produced by the addition offluoridesin the firingprocess to fuse the colour into the glass body. Careful temperature control was necessa1y at all stages in the production process to achieve the required degree of opacity. The product was produced in a range of colours and could be cut accurately to make a range of standard ashlar sizes. CONSERVING TWENTIETH CENTURY BUILDINGS McGrath specified the product for the Kingstone building for cladding both on the front elevation to Belgrave Gate and to the rear facing Bedford Street. The colour he chose was dull pink which was echoed in a pink glazed brick boundary wall to the loading area on Bedford Street (Fig 2). There were vertical strips of black Vitrolite at either end of the front elevation. Kingstone was listed in 1995, after the Vitrolite had been lost from the rear by alterations carried out around 1990 before listing. The listing description of 1995 notes that the building is only the second known example of curtain walling in the UK and the first without the use of intervening mullions. The Leicestershire Records Office holds a full set of McGrath's drawings for Kingstone showing the use of Vitrolite 9
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