The Ideal Home Show (formerly called the Ideal Home Exhibition) is an annual event in London, now held at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre. The show was devised by the Daily Mail newspaper in 1908 and continued to be run by the Daily Mail up until 2009. It was then sold to events and publishing company Media 10, who will continue to run a scaled-down and shorter version of the show at Earls Court until the exhibition centre itself is demolished after the 2012 Olympics. The show's future and a new venue after that time have yet to be decided .
Its goal is to bring together everything associated with having an "ideal home", such as the latest inventions for the modern house, and to showcase the latest housing designs. A regular feature of the show for many years was the Ideal House Competition, where designs were invited and the winning schemes erected at the exhibition the following year.
The first exhibition was held in 1908 at the Olympia exhibition centre, with sections dedicated to "phases of home life" such as construction, food and cookery, furniture and decoration. Demonstrations and contests included an Arts and Crafts competition and a competition to design the "Ideal Home". Wareham Smith, advertising manager of the Daily Mail, founded the exhibition as a marketing event for the newspaper. It was often visited by celebrities and royalty.
Read more about Ideal Home Show: 1908 – The First Ever Show, The 1920s & 1930s, 1940s-1970s, 1980-present
Famous quotes containing the words ideal, home and/or show:
“The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“do not sleep
he wants to climb out of the toilet when you sit on it
and make a home in the embarrassed hair do not sleep
he wants you to walk into him as into a dark fire.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Back now to autumn, leaving the ended husk
Of summer that brought them here for Show Saturday
The men with hunters, dog-breeding wool-defined women,
Children all saddle-swank, mugfaced middleaged wives
Glaring at jellies, husbands on leave from the garden
Watchful as weasels, car-tuning curt-haired sons
Back now, all of them, to their local lives....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)