Loncraine Broxton is a new title from Four Corners Books that tells the story of the people behind the brand and how they spent three decades devising unlikely ideas for products to amuse and delight.

In the late 1960s, former art school friends Richard Loncraine and Peter Broxton formed a partnership to make sculptures and desktop toys for the burgeoning UK gift market. With a background in kinetic sculpture, concrete poetry, and the experimental art scene of 1960s London, Loncraine Broxton imbued their products with flair and inventiveness.

Their first design, Ballrace, a stylish chrome version of Newton’s cradle, became the defining executive toy of the 1970s and 1980s. It was followed by a series of memorable, playful products such as elegant kinetic sculptures, games for the home and garden, as well as items which revealed the pair’s knack for the outlandish: a giant match concealing a cigarette lighter, a double-sized deck chair, a pen disguised as a red mullet fish, address books with perfectly tailored jackets. Their liquid puzzles like the Mercury Maze with a real blob of mercury, or their Perrier and Champagne games, wittily characterise the mood of the 1980s.

Four Corners Books, 160pp, 16cm x 22cm, illustrated hardcover with lenticular cover