London Design Festival 2021
All Our Working Lives
For LDF this year, SCP are introducing our new terracotta bulb vases to their 2021 Collection. The design of the vase suggests gestures and is particularly pleasing to touch. It has a bulbous bottom section with a round flat top section, which allows it to be lifted up and moved around much like a plate. Notably stable, the design has an internal glaze that gently highlights the fine ridge lines of the clay.
As part of SCPs new collection for 2021, they are presenting a special collaboration with Japanese brand Ishinomaki Laboratory to mark 10 years since the Great Eastern Japan earthquake and tsunami.
Sheridan Coakley (SCP) and Keiji Ashizawa (Ishinomaki Laboratory) have together invited a distinctive list of UK-based designers to create new Ishinomaki Laboratory furniture designs for this very special exhibition, with a simple brief that each design should be made from stock board widths. All the designers are working to Ishinomaki Laboratory product guidelines, taking into consideration the machinery and tools available, while using materials efficiently to minimise waste. This will ensure that all the pieces can be manufactured by any of the Ishinomaki Laboratory Made in Local partners around the world.
My contribution towards the collection is a hand thrown terracotta bird bath placed on top of a wooden red cedar base. The idea was to keep it simple. I don't want to call it an anti-design piece, because I don't design against stuff necessarily, not normally. I would say it is a piece that seeks to make people think about the whole DIY idea, and whether they could make things for themselves. Which is the true spirit of Ishinomaki Laboratory.
A design created for birds rather than people, but which may end up on the dining table. This piece has been created to be as simple as possible and seeks to encourage people to embrace the DIY aesthetic and attitude of Ishinomaki Laboratory. Two pieces of wood have been put together in an interlocking pattern, to form the base for a bowl, to create a bird bath. The design is being made available with a terracotta bowl, but works with any relatively shallow bowl. Low to the ground, this is ideally placed near some bushes in a garden. Made from western red cedar.
Read more on SCP’s blog post HERE.
