AGA_Stories
 

Owner: Charlie Smallbone
Model: Black 4-oven
Vintage: 1988
Location: Berkshire
Snapshot: Founder of the bespoke interior design company, Smallbone of Devizes, Charlie Smallbone has held a life-long love of AGAs. “I must have been about seven,” he says, “when my parents and I moved house and I remember a coal-fired light blue AGA being very central to their excitement about our new home.” In the 1970s, Charlie and his wife, Sue, moved into their first home after starting their business together and inherited a cream coal-fired AGA. “It was definitely the hub of the house – no central heating in those days! We cleaned it all out and got it going – must have been my experience growing up with an AGA!” Now, the family have traded in their original oil-fired AGA for a “beautiful” black four-oven model, installed in 1988. Charlie – now working with Fired Earth on the evolution of its kitchen collections – says: “Without doubt, the AGA has a cherished status in the Smallbone family – just the other day my daughter Lucy called it a ‘family friend’.”
Finest Hour: In the 1979s, the cream AGA played an important role in the fledgling Smallbone of Devizes. “We used to fill the kitchen with furniture we had dipped in caustic soda to strip it. The heat from the AGA accelerated the drying process, so we could then renovate the pieces, sand, wax and finish them.”