This was just a fun piece – a Stark chair we customized for London Design Week 2009. I wanted to make the “Ghose Chair” more ghostly and invisible by sending all sorts of animals through it. It was fun playing around with which animals to go for – quick digi sketches below. Spot the token Hirst reference in there. ok so that’s not too hard..
We then ended up with these beauties flying through:
I’m afraid some plastic prop birds were harmed in the process.
The original render of the float table – it was originally going to have fully see through legs but we put in the wooden leg structure at the top for its strengh.
Fully realized, it looked like:
The fantastic DC – a typographer famous for printing an interview on Brian Ferry in Dingbat font just because he thought it was boring. Lovely observations and stories.
I’ve just come back from Stoke on Trent to visit the makers I rely on to make my designs into real objects. These visits are becoming more and more frequent as I work on increasing the range. But this time I asked photographer Toby to come up with me to show what goes on up there and illustrate what “Made in England” looks like (at least in the pottery industry). Tony and his team were kind enough to let us disturb their working day.
You’ll spot some of our new products coming out next month going through the system.
Pouring Slip into the plaster moulds
Sponging down the clay pieces
Clay pieces drying inside and out of the moulds
The glazing process
Probably trying to come to a solution to a problem (nothing is ever simple!)
Obviously, the potteries are not what they used to be but there is still an industry of makers including mould makers, modellers, casters and decorators. Emma Bridgewater, Wedgewood and Big Tomato Company are some of the larger companies still working with British Manufacturing. It may not be the most efficient way of producing and certainly not the cheapest but as Toby said on the way back, efficiency isn’t the only thing.
For the most part, I enjoy working with them and just grateful they’re still here to show me thing or two about making quality china.
It hurts to see my phone in this state but actually quite beautiful..?
Still, I’ll be glad to get it fixed and hopefully I won’t find shards of glass in my ear.
Thank you Marc for sending this pic all the way from Australia.
Recent passing of Tobias Wong and also Alexander McQueen’s earlier this year makes me wonder why so many creative geniuses suffer. Some of Tobias Wong’s work can be found on: DesignBoom. And a lovely tribute here by Julie Lasky via Liz Kinmark.
Elizabeth Gilbert offers some ideas about creative suffering in her wonderful TED talk:
George Orwell created Newspeak in 1984 to inhibit thought but in this reality, where there is a void within language, we fill it. For example, when Romans saw themselves reflected in each others eyes, they devised the term pupil which literally meant little doll. The Greeks named orchids after their word for testicles and the French thought a certain flower had a very thoughtful face so named it after penser (to think). Nowadays we surf the net, trawl through spam, avoid computer bugs and write blogs.
But within this ever expanding play with words, there are fun paradoxes:
“We find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night.” Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct.
And just like that, the wonderful English language becomes a playground.
some of these are very literal representations of language but it is an ongoing fascination of mine.
walking on egg shells.
Rose tinted glasses.
And I thought we’d finish with a George Orwell reference again – Walls have ears (Wallpaper with subtle embossing of ears)
Clouds are not spheres and mountains are not cones. Lightening does not travel in a straight line. It is a geometry of pitted, pocked and broken up, the twisted, tangled and intertwined. Mandelbrot
Try as we might to create polished cubes and spheres, nature will always sneak in and shake things up a little in the end. I can’t think of a single exception, though suggestions are welcome!
