When your father is a renowned architect and artist and your mother is famous for her interiors, you could feel overwhelmed trying to follow in their footsteps. But far from Israel, where his parents completed many high-profile projects together after separate glittering careers, Amos Goldreich carved out his own path, by creating a business paying tribute to their timeless designs.
Goldreich, a Tel Aviv-born architect, is the son of Arthur Goldreich, an architect, painter and political activist born in South Africa, and Tamar de Shalit, an interior architect who designed a penthouse with bespoke furniture for Sir Charles Clore. The couple collaborated on many other design projects, and when Amos discovered some 10,000 plans and other documents in his father’s Herzliya studio after their deaths, he felt that reimagining their most talked-about designs would be the perfect way to help their legacy endure.
“I discovered their archive during a long grieving process after they passed away within 18 months of each other between 2009 and 2011,” says London-based Amos from his Shoreditch base, now the headquarters of Tamart. The company is named after both his parents, whose work he has showcased in a book in Hebrew and whose mid-century chairs, tables, stools and lamps he is bringing back to life. Tamart also sells jewellery designed by his parents.
Tamar, born in Jerusalem, came to London in the 1950s to study at the forerunner of Central Saint Martins. Here she first crossed paths with Arthur, who was studying for a masters in industrial design. But it was back in Israel that Tamar made a name for herself at the Weizmann Institute, where her brother Amos, after whom her son is named, worked as a nuclear physicist.
Arthur Goldreich, Tamar de Shalit and Amos Goldreich[Missing Credit]
“Charles Clore was a major donor, and was offered accommodation, and it’s probably through an introduction from her brother that my mother, as an interior architect, got to design the penthouse where he stayed whenever he was at the Institute in Rehovot,” says the younger Amos.
Clore penthouse living room[Missing Credit]
In Israel, Tamar was reunited with Arthur, a member of the ANC who had first come to Israel in 1948 to work on kibbutz and fight with the Palmach. An artist who exhibited for his country at the Venice Biennale and won South Africa’s Best Young Painter Award in 1955, he was nevertheless anathema to the Verwoerd government for his anti-apartheid activities. Arrested in 1963, he escaped prison in South Africa, where he had returned after studying in London, arriving in Israel a year later; his 1966 wedding to Tamar was attended by Moshe Dayan and Teddy Kollek, among other VIPs.
The couple started working together on projects including the forerunner of Carmel Forest Spa hotel, originally designed for Holocaust survivors, and the Red Rock Hotel in Eilat, which Amos describes as “the place to be in the 1970s for honeymoons and parties, with its nightclub, the King Solomon Cave.” They also worked on the design of the Tel Aviv Hilton and Eshel Hotel in Herzliya as well as dining halls and memorials for several kibbutzim (Arthur was a co-founder of Kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch in the north).
Amos was born in 1971 and grew up in Herzliya, where his parents’ house and studio still stands, though he has moved the archive to London. He has been here since 1993, when he came to complete his own professional education at the Architectural Association and has stayed ever since, making his name in that field after striking out into his own practice.
The Tamart Clore bead pendantMade with Google AI
He has won multiple awards for a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Herzliya set up by a friend of his mother’s, and is proud that the full range of Tamart designs have found their way into a new Maggie’s Centre for cancer patients near Rhyl in North Wales. Goldreich junior closed his architecture studio a few years ago when he realised he needed to devote himself full-time to getting his new versions of the Tamart designs into production.
“They were originally designed to be made locally by craftsmen, and mass production considerations included changing the woods used – we use oak and ash, and I’m not sure oak was used in Israel at the time the pieces were originally designed. Also, my parents used foam for their upholstery, which we no longer use for sustainability reasons, and as things have evolved since the 1960s, so have the proportions of some of the chairs.”
His reimagining of his parents’ designs are soon to be augmented by two new takes on his mother’s original floor lamp for the Clore penthouse. In all, a real family effort, spanning the generations. t
tamartdesign.com
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.
