Colour Photographs Limited

Colour Photographs Limited wasn’t one artist but a small London studio cranking out ads in the 1930s, gas cookers, soap flakes, the lot. They shot everything on a wooden floor that always looked freshly swept, as though the future was tidy. One surviving print shows a gleaming stove with a kettle already whistling; the light’s so sharp it feels like a promise.

You’ll spot the same shadow-pattern behind every product shot of the era, all hushed corners and polished chrome. Look up their 1935 gas-cooker shot; it’s the whole shop window in one frame.