Alan Fletcher / London 1999 /Picture Ronald Shakespear
We first met in 1964 in London, at Fletcher, Forbes and Gill. Our paths had never crossed before. Life sometimes surprises you that way.
Every visit to London were intense days of a marvelous friendship that had just started under the influence of our common trade: design.
Happy memories of Paola and Alan visit to Buenos Aires in 1987.
And the kitchen at his home in Notting Hill and dry Martinis, of course.
Some time after that, Alan decided to go.
Evidently, the Great Designer had called His favorite artist to His side.
He is somewhere out there now, drawing, designing, writing. As always.
I sometimes talk to him. There was so much that was left unsaid.
Over dinner in London one night, he told me this beautiful story that he has heard from someone before.
In the year fifty three before Christ, Marcus Crassus invaded Parthia (currently Iraq) with a forty thousand man army and the goal of expanding his empire.
The result was a disaster.
And it was mainly due to the design of the Parthian’s BOW, who were masters at the use of this weapon.
The Parthian bow was a weapon built with a laminated spring, with a range and power that made Roman legions defenseless.
Twenty thousand Romans died; ten thousand were made prisoner.
But the important thing for us is that the Parthian did not prevail because they had a better General.
They prevailed because they had a better designer.
http://blog.segd.org/2009/07/the-art-of-looking-sideways/
http://pentagram.com/en/new/2007/05/remembering-alan-fletcher.php
http://pentagram.com/en/new/2006/09/alan-fletcher-19312006.php
http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=4787
La mirada del Maestro por Lorenzo Shakespear en Icograda News.