Stay ConnectedIn Material Matters, host Grant Gibson talks to a designer, maker, artist, architect, engineer, or scientist about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discovers how it changed their lives and careers.
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The Material Matters fair will return in 2025, as part of the London Design Festival.
Material Matters is produced and published by Delizia Media Ltd.
Copyright: © 2021 Material Matters with Grant Gibson
Mark Hearld is an artist and designer who has a fascination with flora and fauna and has worked in a range of different media – including lithographic and linocut prints, painting, ceramics, textiles and tapestry. However, he is best known for his collage pieces.
A graduate of Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art, he has curated installations and exhibitions at York Art Gallery and Compton Verney and is an avid collector of objects. Over the years, he has been a huge advocate for the importance of mid-Twentieth century British artists such as Edward Bawden and Eric Ravillious and the role of craft in the fine art world.
Another edition of Mark’s book, Raucous Invention – The Joy of Making, will be published by Thames and Hudson in 2025.
In this episode we talk about: his fascination with paper; his need to be around other people when he works; collaborating with Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios on a new series of tapestries; the process behind his collage work; the ‘mystery, poetry, joy and darkness’ of Hans Christian Andersen; why collage is like stepping onto a dance floor; writing a collage manifesto; how edges contain exuberance; having imposter syndrome at the Royal College of Art; and swimming against the art world’s tide for many years.
Todd Bracher is a US-based product designer who has worked with brands such as Humanscale, 3M, Herman Miller, Georg Jensen and Issey Miyake through his eponymous studio, winning a slew of awards along the way.
More recently, he created another company, Betterlab, in which he collaborates with scientists and innovators to, in his words, ‘shape emerging research and foundational technologies into game-changing products’. The company has taken a particular interest in the potential of light, for medical and other, perhaps unexpected, uses.
Todd’s latest project is a book. Design in Context, which is out now, illustrates how design – and design-led thinking – has the potential to change and shape every facet of business.
In this episode we talk about: generating value for different clients; the importance of collaboration; why he launched Betterlab; how he’s using light to combat myopia; finding truth in design; how light becomes a material; learning to shape rather than style it; working with UVC and creating extraordinary products for health environments; leaving the US to study in Copenhagen; working in Milan; learning the ‘business of design’ under Tom Dixon; and designing net positive furniture for Humanscale.
Zena Holloway is a bio-designer and founder of Rootfull, which creates exquisite clothes, lights and sculptures from grass roots.
She started her career as an underwater photographer, doing extraordinary high-end fashion shoots, as well as working with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Tom Daley, Katie Price and numerous other celebrities. At the same time, she was capturing the effects of pollution on the UK’s river beds.
So how and why did her career shift so dramatically?
In this episode Grant and Zena talk about: how she came to work with wheatgrass; early lessons with other materials; why her process is like a school experiment; how beeswax provided a Eureka! moment; ‘collaborating’ with her material; roots’ potential in industry; working with Kylie; giving up underwater photography and becoming a full-time bio-designer; creating new products with fashion designer Phoebe English; being fuelled by optimism; oh and stealing her son’s Lego.
Alkesh Parmar is a designer and researcher. Over the years, he has hollowed out champagne corks and turned them into chandeliers, as well as transforming traditional Indian terracotta cups into light fittings. But he is best known for his work with citrus peel in general – and orange peel in particular.
Using a material generally thought of as waste, he has created a variety of extraordinary products including a juicer (for obvious reasons) and a lampshade. His practice combines craft with critical design and, it’s fair to say, he was a relatively early adopter in the design industry of working with local materials and questioning the effects of globalisation.
When he’s not working with waste, he is also a teacher at the Royal College of Art.
Alkesh was one of the stars of the Material Matters fair when it launched in 2022 and he’s returning to Bargehouse when the doors open for the 2024 edition, which runs from 18-21 September.
In this episode we talk about: why he’s researching the history of oranges for the Material Matters fair; the properties of orange peel and how it can behave like leather; how he sources his material of choice; the importance of failure to his practice; not wanting to run a large company; coming from a family of shoemakers; and his relationship with light.
The Material Matters fair is free for trade but you must register in advance here: https://registration.iceni-es.com/material-matters/reg-start.aspx
Sanne Visser is a Dutch-born, London-based designer. She describes herself as a ‘material explorer, maker and researcher’, who is best known for a string of installations and products using human hair. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins a little under a decade ago, she has exhibited all over the world and been nominated for a number of awards.
Happily too, she will be one of the stars of this year’s Material Matters fair – taking place at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from 18-21 September – with an installation called, Locally Grown, that invites visitors to explore their hair as a new material. Essentially, people will able to have a free hair cut and then (if they stick around long enough) watch it being spun and turned into rope. Sounds kind of interesting right?
In this episode she talks about: her installation at the Material Matters fair (obviously); how she became fascinated by hair in the first instance; the processes she puts the material through; its (quite) extraordinary properties; the ethics around ownership of designing with hair; creating new material systems; collaborating with makers, hairdressers and scientists; the products it’s possible to make with hair; coming from a creative family; finding school testing; and the importance of teaching to her practice.
And remember the Material Matters fair is free for trade but you must register in advance here: https://registration.iceni-es.com/material-matters/reg-start.aspx
Artist Bharti Kher was brought up in England before moving to India almost on a whim in the early ’90s. Since then, she has established herself as a major player on the international art scene.
Her sculptures talk about women’s place in society and the female body. She has a fascination with mythology and mixing the real with the magical, as well as a profound interest in materials and found objects. She has melted down bangles, used saris, and ceramic figures, as well as casting people with plaster. But she’s best known for her work using bindis, made from felt.
And she will be using bindis to create a huge piece on London’s Southbank, which opens in September. Right now, she has a wonderful exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, entitled Bharti Kher: Alchemies, which shows a range of pieces from 2000-2024.
In this episode she talks about: using things she finds – from radiators to bangles; how objects have inherent narratives and why she ‘exhausts’ them; the importance of bindis; breaking things; her fascination with negative space; casting people in plaster; growing up in Epsom and loving art from a young age; travelling to New Delhi on the toss of a coin; and being married to a fellow artist.
And remember the Material Matters fair takes place at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from 18-21 September. It's free for trade but you must register in advance here: https://registration.iceni-es.com/material-matters/reg-start.aspx
Oliver Heath is a designer, architect, author and one of the world’s leading advocates for biophilic design. Along with his team and the sustainable platform Planted, he currently has an exhibition at the Roca Gallery in South London, which focuses firmly on bio design – illustrating what it is, why it’s important, and how it can be used in the spaces we inhabit.
Oliver has been a fixture on our TV screens since 1998, working for the likes of the BBC, ITV, Channel Four, the Discovery Channel and Norway’s TV2. He is a regular on DIY SOS and was, of course, one of the designers on the iconic ’90s show, Changing Rooms.
In this episode we talk about: his fascination with biophilia and how it affects his practice; its core principles and history; why sustainability is about more than counting carbon; problems with architecture education; his issues with clay; the importance of evidence in his design approach; how wood effects the heart rate; being average at school; getting famous on Changing Rooms; reinventing himself professionally… and the importance of soup.
And remember the Material Matters fair takes place at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from 18-21 September. It's free for trade but you must register in advance here: https://registration.iceni-es.com/material-matters/reg-start.aspx
Ernest Scheyder is an author and senior correspondent for Reuters. His new book, The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives, looks at the impact of the green transition in the US – and, more particularly, the tensions over the increasing need to mine for metals to decarbonise the grid (and power a plethora of devices) against the nation’s desire to conserve the environment.
The book illustrates how materials effect geo-politics and the urge for energy security, inform the national debate, and impact at a very local level. It also suggests that becoming more sustainable is anything but straightforward.
In this episode we talk about: why lithium and copper are vital to our futures; where the materials are mined and processed; 'material colonialism'; how the pandemic changed perceptions of our supply chains; why some mineral-rich nations are excluding the US; the role of China in the 21st century global economy and the withering of US hegemony; the new ‘green arms race’; why mining is in a ‘perpetual state of decline’; the tension between local desires and global needs; the role of religion and conservation; child labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the ‘dualistic’ policies of President Biden; and Scheyder’s issue with leaf blowers…
Adi Toch is one of the world’s most fascinating metal artists, who over the years has buried her pieces for months on end before digging them up, and even made them react to sound. She has also taken part in collaborations with furniture makers and glass artists.
Adi has work in the permanent collections of the V&A, The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland, and the Jewish Museum in New York. She won a Wallpaper Magazine Design Award in 2017, and in that same year was a finalist of the Loewe Craft Prize.
She has also exhibited around the world from the FOG Design + Art fair in San Francisco with Sarah Myerscough Gallery to Make Hauser & Wirth in Somerset.
In this episode we talk about: her extraordinary studio and sharing with two other leading metal artists; the relationships she has with different metals; her creative process and her use of ‘ghosts’; why the pandemic was hugely creative; her fascination with mirrors; how metal communicates through sound and ‘screams’; burying her pieces for months; growing up in Jerusalem; getting rejected initially from design school; and how the Gaza crisis has impacted on her identity.
We’re delighted that this episode has been sponsored by the wonderful Sarah Myerscough Gallery. Established in 1998, the gallery represents a distinguished group of contemporary craft and design artists, specialising in material-led processes with a focus on wood and natural materials. It also curates a fascinating programme of exhibitions. To find out more go to: www.sarahmyerscough.com
Jonathan Smales is a housing developer like few others. He is the co-founder and executive chairman of Human Nature, whose new project, The Phoenix, on the outskirts of Lewes, East Sussex in the UK, has just won planning permission.
What makes the development different? The Phoenix will contain 685 homes, designed by a roster of fascinating architects, who will be working in materials such as cross laminated timber and Hempcrete.
The development will be pretty much vehicle-free, with residents encouraged to make use of a car share scheme, an electric bike service, or a shuttle bus. It will have amenities including a community canteen, event hall, taproom, fitness centre and makers studios. There will be shared courtyards, parks and green corridors to promote communal living and provide habitats for local wildlife.
As the architecture critic, Rowan Moore, wrote in The Observer recently: ‘It looks, in a land where new homes are largely lumpen products of volume housebuilders, miraculous.’
Jonathan also has one of those CVs that makes you wonder what you’ve been doing with your time. Over the years, he has been managing director of Greenpeace, an advisor on sustainability issues to the government, and he also led the Earth Centre project, regenerating a former coal mine outside Doncaster.
In this episode we talk about: how he got involved in The Phoenix; his fascination with cities; building in CLT and Hempcrete; mining the Anthropocene; choosing the project’s architects; why the UK has forgotten how to make places; growing up in a mining village; a school trip to Paris that changed his life; coming up with the idea for the Earth Centre and why it closed so quickly. We also chat about his love of punk…
Adam Yeats is co-founder and managing director of Bert Frank, one of the UK’s leading lighting companies. Yeats started the brand with designer, Robbie Llewellyn, in 2013. Since then it has gone from strength to strength, opening a showroom in London’s Clerkenwell in 2019, exhibiting at home and abroad, and winning the Elle Decoration British Design Award for Lighting in 2016. The company was also the headline sponsor for last year’s Material Matters fair.
Craft has always been an intrinsic element of the brand and Yeats comes from a family steeped in making and British manufacturing. So what’s it like to be an ambitious manufacturing company in post-Brexit Britain?
In this episode we talk about: growing up in his father’s factory; why he lives next door to his workshop; founding the Bert Frank brand; the importance of craft and skill to the company’s products; working with brass; learning his trade, from sweeping the factory floor to running the business; how Bert Frank has evolved over the past decade; wanting to create a legacy for his family; the economic consequences of Brexit; starting a new assembly facility in Belgium; the importance of immigration to his workforce; the state of manufacturing in the UK; and why he always wanted to be a marine biologist.
To find out more about Material Matters go to materialmatters.design or check out our Instagram page: materialmatters.design.
Ptolemy Mann is a British artist who came to widespread attention with her woven textile pieces, often stretched across a frame and notable for her extraordinary use of colour.
More recently, her practice shifted and she has turned to painting on paper with fascinating – and inevitably colourful – results. Her latest pieces combine the two, as she paints on her hand-woven artworks.
Ptolemy is hard to avoid at the moment. Currently, she has a show of paintings at the Union Club in London’s Soho. During May, there will also be a solo exhibition with Taste Contemporary at Cromwell Place and her first monograph is published by Hurtwood that same month.
In this episode we talk about: why the time is right for her first book; her fascination with colour; being told she was a ‘terrible’ painter as a student; taking up weaving and her love of the craft’s restrictions; learning to stand up for her ideas; unexpectedly creating products for John Lewis; picking up a paint brush again; how the realisation she wasn’t going to have children changed her practice; why her new works are ‘an act of anarchy’; and growing up with her ‘bohemian’ father.
To find out more about Material Matters go to materialmatters.design or check out our Instagram page materialmatters.design.
Bas van Abel founded Fairphone in 2013. The company attempts to transform the way our smartphones are manufactured, by reducing e-waste, sourcing conflict-free minerals, and improving working conditions in its supply chain. It creates a product consumers are encouraged to keep longer and which, importantly, they can also repair themselves.
Fairphone was an immediate hit, attracting 25,000 orders when it launched its first smartphone via a crowd-funding campaign. It has now sold over half a million phones and employs 150 staff.
In 2018, Bas stepped back as CEO of the company – although he remains a non-executive board member – and, subsequently, co-founded De Clique, a circular start up that looks at ways of dealing with food waste. He is also author of Open Design Now.
In this episode we talk about: not owning a mobile before he founded Fairphone; how smartphones are made and the global supply chain they require; issues around mining minerals; the importance of repair and longevity; why recycling is 'stupid'; wanting to create a ‘values based’ economic system; how his son’s broken Nintendo DS played a role in starting the company; his initial doubts; the immense stress starting the brand put him under; the company’s ‘shitty’ first phone; and trying to change the system from within.
If you’re interested in purchasing a Fairphone please use this link:
https://www.fairphone.com/en/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=material_matters
There have been over 100 episodes of Material Matters but, for listeners who might be new to all this, the idea is that I speak to a designer, maker, artist, or architect about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discover how it changed their lives and careers.
However, once in a while I break my own self-imposed format and interview someone I’ve always wanted to meet. This is one of those episodes.
Architect John Tuomey is the co-founder of multi-award winning practice O’Donnell + Tuomey, with his wife Sheila O’Donnell. The firm has designed the Glucksman Gallery Cork, the Lyric Theatre in Belfast and the upcoming V&A East Museum, while in 2015, John and Sheila were awarded the prestigious RIBA Royal Gold Medal.
Towards the end of 2023, he published First Quarter, a gorgeous, lyrical memoir that tells the story of his formative years – from childhood in rural Ireland through to becoming a fully-fledged architect in London and Dublin.
In this episode we talk about: writing First Quarter during lockdown; how an email from his sister started the process; his peripatetic childhood; growing up in rural Ireland; the storytelling aspect of architecture; the brutality of his school years; the pivotal relationship with his father; the up-ending of Ireland’s clergy; being an extrovert introvert; moving to Dublin and London; meeting Sheila at university; working for James Stirling; and the possibilities of a derelict site…
Sara Grady and Alice Robinson co-founded British Pasture Leather in 2020. The duo aim in their own words ‘to link leather with exemplary farming and, in doing so, to redefine leather as an agricultural product’. All of which means creating a new network of systems within the industry. Essentially, the pair are attempting to make the material we buy traceable in the same way food is.
In 2022, they created an exhibition, entitled Leather from British Pastures, during the London Design Festival, which included collaborations with the likes of Mulberry and New Balance, as well as Material Matters favourites, Bill Amberg and Simon Hasan.
More recently, Alice has written a new book, Field Fork Fashion, which charts a bullock’s journey from a field to a series of finished products and dishes – creating her own supply chain in the process.
In this episode we talk about: how most leather is made; issues around the chrome tanning process; how British Pasture Leather is trying to make a difference; increased meat consumption across the globe and why it changes the value of a hide; building a new supply chain; the state of the British tanning industry; producing their material entirely in the UK; redefining quality and embracing imperfection; how leather brought them together; buying a bullock and writing a book.
Florian Gadsby is a bit of a phenomenon. The ceramicist currently has a new show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and has also published a memoir, By My Hands, that charts his formative years with clay, including apprenticeships in the UK and, most intriguingly, Japan.
Essentially, it unpicks his route to becoming a fully, fledged professional potter, while at the same time, providing tips about his thinking and process.
Since he started on Instagram a decade ago, Florian has built up a social media following that can only be described as formidable. He’s part of a generation that has changed the way pots, in particular, but craft, in general, can be communicated, using Instagram and YouTube as educational tools but also as a hugely effective channels for selling work.
In this episode we talk about: what his studio says about him; his YSP show; selling ‘merch’; being young to publish a memoir; comparing writing to pottery; his fascination with the colour green; going to a Steiner school; deciding against university; his love of mugs and the joy of repetition; his apprenticeship in Japan; resisting the tag of the ‘Instagram potter’; the pressure of social media; and wanting his own apprentice (eventually).
Christien Meindertsma is a Dutch designer who has a fascination with materials. She currently has an installation at the V&A, entitled Re-forming Waste, which shows new work based around her interest in linoleum, as well as technological advances with the material she has described as her first love, wool.
Christien came to wider attention initially when she graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003, with a book that catalogued a week’s worth of objects confiscated at security checkpoints in Schipol Airport.
She followed that up a few years later, with PIG 05049, an extraordinary tome which looked at all the products made using a single pig.
Her work is the collections of MoMA, the V&A, and the Vitra Design Museum. Over the years, she has won numerous Dutch Design Awards, as well as creating the award for the prestigious Earthshot Prize.
In this episode we talk about: working alone; experimenting with linoleum; her family’s history with wool; the importance of provenance; defining failure and success; not being interested in selling things or mass production; working with the city of Rotterdam to find ways to deal with its wool; collaborating with a ‘wobot’; designing like a journalist, the energy of Design Academy Eindhoven; and the unexpected uses of a pig…
We are delighted this episode has been sponsored by the Surface Design Show. The event of choice for architects and designers, it runs from 6-8 February at London’s Business Design Centre and you can register for free at surfacedesignshow.com. We hope to see you there.
This special festive episode is slightly different because, as we come to the end of 2023, we thought it would be interesting to talk to someone who has had a breakthrough year.
And we couldn’t think of anyone that description fits better than UK-based designer, Simone Brewster. In June, Simone held her first solo exhibition at the NOW Gallery on London’s Greenwich Peninsular, entitled The Shape of Things. While, in September, her installation Spirit of Place with cork company, Amorim, opened on the Strand in the centre of the capital.
These came with what amounts to a blizzard of publicity, including a profile in the New York Times. In short, she has been hard to avoid.
In this episode Simone and Grant talk about: her brilliant year; how The Shape of Things informed her practice; creating ‘intimate architecture’ with furniture and jewellery; her (occasionally extraordinary) use of colour; the importance of taking herself seriously; the thinking behind her best-known pieces, The Negress and The Mammy; painting during the pandemic; why people didn’t know what to do with her work; working with cork; her issues with studying architecture; making as salvation; not fitting in… until now; and her plans for 2024.
We’re delighted that this episode has been sponsored by the American Hardwood Export Council Europe. You can find its excellent podcast Words on Wood here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/words-on-wood/id1559894669.
It’s well worth checking out.
Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert is a Paris-based designer, maker, and artist, obsessed with blown glass. In an eclectic career, that has seen him travelling through the USA and Europe, before settling in France in 2007, he has shown work at the V&A, Vessel Gallery in London, and Palais de Tokyo among others. His pieces are also held in a number public collections including: Bibliotheque de France de L’Ecole National des Chartes, and Germany’s European Museum of Modern Glass.
In 2016, Jeremy was the subject of a feature-length documentary about his work and extraordinary life, entitled Heart of Glass, while in 2019, he was awarded the Prix Bettencourt pour l’Intelligence de la Main.
In this episode we talk about: having conversations with hot glass and looking for the secrets of the universe; the importance of teamwork to the production of his pieces; dreaming about his material of choice; the physicality involved in making; glass’ relationship with the worlds of art and design; how hot glass ‘grabbed’ his soul; a car accident that changed his life; growing up in Africa and losing his parents early; his subsequent substance abuse; and his desire to break the barriers between disciplines.
Neil Thomas is the founder and director of Atelier One, one of the most creative engineering practices in the UK. The firm has worked on building projects such as Singapore Arts Centre, Federation Square in Australia, and Baltic in Gateshead, as well as with a hugely impressive roster of artists, including Anish Kapoor, Marc Quinn and Rachel Whiteread. It has also created stages for stadium rock shows from Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, U2, and Take That, often in collaboration with architect, the late Mark Fisher.
The practice was the engineer behind the opening ceremony of London’s 2012 Olympic Games and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. While Neil also teaches at Yale and MIT.
Over recent years, he has developed a fascination with bamboo and was part of the team that created the award-winning Arc building, a community wellness space and gymnasium for the Green School campus in Bali.
In this episode we chat about: the role of a structural engineer; his ability to talk a number of design languages; the genesis of his obsession with bamboo and its extraordinary properties; overcoming bamboo’s image problem; giving up a teaching post at Yale to build with the material; wanting to be an engineer from childhood; the importance of David Bowie to his life; and, er, having a pony tail in his youth.
Caroline Till is a consultant, author, curator, and academic. She founded Franklin Till, along with Kate Franklin, in 2010 and, since then, the future research agency has worked with the likes of international textile exhibition Heimtextil, paper giant GF Smith, Caesarstone, Tarkett, and IKEA’s former blue sky thinking agency, Space 10.
The pair has published magazines such as Viewpoint and Viewpoint Colour and co-written the influential book Radical Matter, as well as curating Our Time on Earth, a touring exhibition about the future of the planet which started at London’s Barbican last year.
Not only that, but for many years, Caroline headed up the Material Futures course at Central Saint Martins, which has produced a number of designers that have appeared on this podcast. She’s also a speaker who is much in demand internationally and opened the talks programme at this year’s Material Matters fair.
In this episode we talk about: being a climate optimist; why Franklin Till specialises in material and colour; her issues with trends; turning down projects; not being keen on the word ‘sustainability’; defining regenerative design; the importance of seduction; issues with capitalism; thinking of materials as systems; technology’s relationship with nature; and the benefits of studying textile design.
However, we kick off with her objection to the UK’s current Home Secretary, Suella Braverman…
Our thanks go to the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters 2023 fair – the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank. For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
Tom Lloyd and Luke Pearson co-founded the hugely influential design studio, Pearson Lloyd, in 1997. Since then, it has gone on to work in areas such as the workplace, transport and health care, with organisations like Virgin, Lufthansa, the Department for Health, and furniture giant Senator.
The practice is the Designer of the Year at the Material Matters 2023 fair and will be using the space at Bargehouse to investigate how its use of materials has been transformed over recent years, including projects with clients such as Modus, Batch.Works, Howe, Flokk, Profim and Camira.
In this episode we talk about: controversially criticising Arne Jacobsen’s classic Egg chair; their installation at Material Matters 2023; marrying craft and industry; how their material perspective has changed; balancing environmental, social and economic needs; why they’re still using plastic; building out obsolescence; the aesthetics of circularity; bringing contemporary workplace theory to schools; the importance of visible fixings, durability and repair; working with the aviation industry; the problem with paint; meeting at the Royal College of Art; being drawn into the furniture industry; celebrating their differences; and fearing boredom.
Our thanks go to the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters 2023 fair – the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank. For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
And to register for the Material Matters fair, which runs from 20-23 September at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf go to:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2023-tickets-591491014547
PS apologies for my slightly ham-fisted Monty Python analogy…
Marie Carlisle is CEO and co-founder of social enterprise (and Material Matters exhibitor), Goldfinger. The organisation opened its doors at the foot of West London’s Trellick Tower in 2013 and makes high end furniture from wood – that has often been reclaimed or ‘treecycled’ – in its workshop. Not only that but it has a showroom and cafe, as well as an academy that teaches marginalised young people the craft of wood working through its apprenticeship programme.
It is a fascinating and, I think, important place.
In this episode we talk about: how Trellick Tower shaped the business; making waste aspirational; bridging North Kensington’s social divide; why Goldfinger works with wood; the relationship between wood and wellbeing; the importance of ‘treecycling’; collaborating with the likes of Arup and Tom Dixon; her fascination with food and setting up the cafe; the once a month community meal; how the pandemic changed the People’s Kitchen model; working with young people in the academy; how the social enterprise has changed over the past decade; Goldfinger’s future.
Our thanks go to the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters 2023 fair – the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank. For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
And to register for the Material Matters fair, which runs from 20-23 September at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf go to:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2023-tickets-591491014547
My guest for the 100th episode of Material Matters is a British designer who sits somewhere between industry and craft. Michael Marriott has a fascination with materials – so much so that his web shop is called Wood Metal Plastic – and a love of resourceful design. Over the years he’s created furniture for the likes of Established & Sons, SCP, and Very Good and Proper, as well as designing and curating exhibitions, working on interiors, and teaching. However, he seems happiest in his own workshop, working on batch production pieces. It’s safe to say he’s a pivotal figure in the recent history of British design.
In this episode we discuss: standing on the edge of regular design practice; but not being a craftsman; how tools change design and the importance of a jig; creating cost-effective products; why ‘resourceful’ could be his middle name; the problem with design as an extension of marketing; his love of wood; not working with big Italian furniture brands; readymades and waste; how a trip to Ford’s Dagenham factory changed his life; struggling at school; and his discovery of modernism.
It’s a delightful way to mark our centenary.
Our thanks go to the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters 2023 fair – the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank. For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
And to register for the Material Matters fair, which runs from 20-23 September at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf go to:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2023-tickets-591491014547
Alice Kettle is one of the country’s leading textile artists. She uses embroidery to tell stories and throw the spotlight on contemporary issues – most noticeably the refugee crisis in her series Thread Bearing Witness.
Currently, she has a solo installation at two sites in The City of London as part of her prize for winning The Brookfield Properties Craft Award. While an exhibition she co-curated, Threads: Breathing Stories into Materials, opened at Bristol’s Arnolfini in July. She is also professor of textile arts at Manchester School of Art.
In this episode we discuss: creativity as a humanising force; how the refugee crisis affected her practice; why making is empowering; the importance of scale; the special meaning of the number three; being influenced by Greek mythology; growing up in a boys’ boarding school; her interest in stitching after the tragic death of her mother; her move from abstract painting to thread; and taking risks with her pieces.
Our thanks go to the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters 2023 fair – the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank. For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
And to register for the Material Matters fair, which runs from 20-23 September at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf go to:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2023-tickets-591491014547
Beatie Wolfe is a musician and artist, who has in her time been described as a ‘musical weirdo and visionary’ and one of the ‘22 people changing the world’.
In a relatively short career she has: created a 3D interactive album app and a musical jacket; worked in the world’s quietest room to develop an ‘anti-stream’; fired her music into space; made a documentary with the Barbican; designed an environmental protest piece, entitled From Green to Red, which was shown at the Nobel Prize Summit; worked with people suffering from dementia; and recorded a track for a 12 inch record made of bioplastic, alongside Michael Stipe.
Her latest project, Imprinting: The Artist’s Brain, was on show as part of the recent London Design Biennale at Somerset House, and is a 'sonic self-portrait' that involves old-school telephones as well as a thinking cap designed by an iconic tailor.
The theme running through all this is her desire to 're-materialise' music and give it back a sense of ‘tangibility and ceremony’.
In this episode we discuss: keeping space rock in her pocket; her latest project at the London Design Biennale; being self-critical as a child; writing her first songs aged nine; working with renowned tailor Mr Fish; the importance of collaboration; sending her music into space; finding the balance between innovation and tradition; her childhood desire to be a ninja; being in a grunge band; the power of art; and the importance of neurologist Oliver Sacks to her career.
Our thanks go to the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters 2023 fair – the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank. For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
Ndidi Ekubia creates extraordinary, almost liquid-looking, vessels from silver. She graduated from the University of Wolverhampton in 1995, before going on to the Royal College of Art. Since then, her work has been shown internationally at exhibitions such as TEFAF in Maastricht, Masterpiece in London, and Pavilion of Art & Design in New York.
Her pieces are held in Winchester Cathedral, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum and The Asmolean Museum in Oxford.
Currently, she has a series of vessels in Mirror Mirror, a new exhibition at Chatsworth House that also contains furniture, lighting, ceramics, and sculpture from designers such as Fernando Laposse, Samuel Ross, Faye Toogood, and Ettore Sottsass.
Ndidi was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to silversmithing.
In this episode we talk about: why she loves silver; the rhythm that lies behind her process; listening to the metal and trying not to ‘torture’ her material; silver’s memory; the importance of function; the African influence in her pieces; wanting to leave Manchester as a child but returning as an adult; her early love of Lowry; discovering metal as a student; having her work reassessed in the wake of Black Lives Matter; and her relationship with her gallery, Adrian Sassoon.
We are delighted that the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters fair – is the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank.
For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
Henry Tadros is chairman of one of the country’s most renowned furniture companies, Ercol. The firm was founded by Italian immigrant, Lucian Ercolani, in 1920 but it really found its feet after the Second World War with the Windsor Range – an industrial version of a traditional craft chair – that is best known for its steam bending process and using a combination of elm and beech wood.
Over the years, Ercol’s furniture, with its pared back – but somehow very British –aesthetic, has found its way into millions of homes across the globe.
And the company has remained firmly in family hands. Henry is the fourth generation to run Ercol, taking over from his father, Edward, last year.
In this episode we talk about: the manufacturer’s history with elm and beech; Dutch Elm Disease and its effect on the brand; turning to ash instead; launching his new brand L.Ercolani; working with designers such as Matthew Hilton, Tomoko Azumi and Norm Architects; joining the family business and working his way up from the factory floor; his family’s fascinating history; the influence of the Shakers; the importance of apprenticeships for Ercol; the company’s sometimes fraught relationship with Modernism; where Henry’s brands will be in 15 years time.
We are delighted that the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters fair – is the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank.
For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
Donna Wilson is a globally-feted designer. She initially made a name for herself in 2003 with a series of knitted toy creatures made of lambswools, which managed to be odd and endearing all at the same time. Since then, she has worked with the likes of SCP, John Lewis, V&A Dundee, as well as having a solo show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Meanwhile, her range of products has expanded, encompassing furniture and accessories, sculpture, fashion, and magazines. There’s also a book. In 2010, she was named Designer of the Year at Elle Decoration’s British Design Awards.
Most recently, she has launched The Knit Shop, a micro-knit factory in Dundee. She describes the new production facility as ‘my small bit to keep the tradition of knitwear and textile production in Scotland alive, so that these precious skills are not lost forever’.
In this episode, we talk about: taking control of her production and the difficulty of manufacturing in the UK; how the pandemic re-shaped her business; becoming a brand; creating her creatures; preserving her craft essence; the importance of repair; having a poem written about her (yes, really); knitting; growing up on a Scottish farm and being inspired by her grandmother; and how getting spotted by New York design retailer Murray Moss changed her career.
We are delighted that the headline sponsor for this series of the podcast – and the Material Matters fair – is the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank.
For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
Julian Stair is one of the UK’s leading ceramic artists. He has exhibited internationally since the 1980s and made his name making beautiful, pared-back everyday forms. Julian’s work is in 30 public collections, including the British Museum and the V&A and he was awarded an OBE in 2022
In March, he launched a fascinating, and deeply moving, new exhibition at the magnificent Sainsbury Centre near Norwich, entitled Art, Death and the Afterlife. The show is his response to the pandemic and the cinerary jars and abstracted figurative forms invite visitors to meditate on the relationship between the clay vessel and the human body. To emphasise the point, in a number of the pots, the clay itself contains the cremated ashes of people donated by their loved ones.
In this episode we discuss: how his new show was shaped by the pandemic; the relationship between the pot and the human body; why pots matter; using people’s ashes to create his work and reflecting their personalities in a vessel; art’s ability to cross boundaries; working against the tides of fashion; the importance of writing and history to his practice; and dealing with the death of his own son.
This series of the podcast – and the Material Matters 2023 fair – is brought to you by the brilliant lighting specialist, Bert Frank. For more details go to: bertfrank.co.uk
Meanwhile, this episode has been sponsored by Maak, the specialist auction house and art consultancy dedicated to contemporary ceramics and craft. To find out more go to: maaklondon.com
Paul Cocksedge is a London-based designer who has built a reputation over the past twenty years for creating projects that push the limits of technology and materials. During that time, for example, he has melted polystyrene cups in an oven to make a lamp shade, treated steel as if it was a folded piece of paper, worked with concrete from the floor of his own studio, and fused metal under the snow.
His CV contains major exhibitions at galleries such as Friedman Benda in New York and Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London, installations in Milan, public art projects such as Please Be Seated and Drop for the London Design Festival and products that range from picnic blankets inspired by the pandemic to a bluetooth device that gives old speakers a second life.
His most recent exhibition, called Coalescence, which was held earlier in March at Liverpool Cathedral, investigated coal.
In this episode we talk about: why he decided to work with coal; going down a mine in South Wales; emotionally ‘feeling’ his ideas; the role anger plays in his creative process; his early fascination with light; the influence on his career of Marc Benda, Ingo Maurer, Ron Arad and Joana Pinho; making a steel table ‘dance’ and turning the concrete floor of his studio into furniture; wanting to be a pilot as a child; ‘bribing’ his way into the Royal College of Art with fake fivers; bonding metal under snow; and why he doesn’t want to be an architect.
Ineke Hans is a world-renowned product and furniture designer. She originally studied art at Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Arnhem before switching to design. In 1993, she moved to London’s Royal College of Art and, subsequently, worked for Habitat as a furniture designer.
By the end of the decade she was focusing on her own work and, since then, clients have included Ahrend, Arco, Iittala, SCP and Magis to name just a few. Currently, she spilts her time between Arnhem and Berlin, where she is professor in the product and fashion design department of UDK university in Berlin.
Most recently she has created, Rex, a sustainable and recyclable chair for start-up company Circuform, which has won a slew of prizes – including product of the year at the Dutch Design Awards.
As we’ll hear, the product has a bit of history and is a piece that perhaps points the way forward for the furniture industry.
In this episode we about about: splitting her time between two countries; being a ‘critical’ designer; working with recycled plastic; the history of her award-winning chair Rex and how it’s breaking new ground; why her parents didn’t want her to go to art school; giving up sculpture for design; moving to London in the ’90s; not being part of Droog; and her fascination with furniture.
Darren Appiagyei is a wood turner and founder of inthegrain. The Camberwell College of Arts graduate made his name with vessels fashioned from the Banksia nut. Subsequently, he has gone on to create pieces from waste wood he finds on a local farm not far from his studio in London’s Deptford.
He believes his work is ‘about embracing the intrinsic beauty of the wood; be it a crack, texture, knots or lack of symmetry’, adding that ‘it’s about allowing the wood to speak for itself and enabling the inner beauty of the wood to shine’.
His pieces have been included in shows such as 300 Objects during London Craft Week in 2020, Salon Art + Design at Park Avenue Armory in New York, and he had his first solo show at the Garden Museum in 2021. He will also be exhibiting with The New Craftsmen at this year’s Collect fair which runs at Somerset House from 3-5 March 2023.
Darren is definitely one to watch.
In this episode we talk about: how table tennis played a vital role in his career; learning to turn as a student; discovering the Banksia nut by chance; how he ‘collaborates’ with wood; his Ghanaian heritage; dealing with his mother’s mental health issues as a child; why wood became a form of therapy; and writing his memoir.
Summer Islam is a founding director of Material Cultures, a not-for-profit organisation that in its own words ‘challenges the systems, technologies, processes, supply chains, regulations and materials that make up the construction industry with the aim of transforming the way we build’.
Currently, Summer has an installation in London’s Building Centre, along with her partners, Paloma Gormley and George Massoud. Homegrown: Building a Post-Carbon Future is notable for the large straw and timber structure at its heart. The trio has also published a new pocket-sized book, Material Reform, that attempts to set out the way we should build in the future, examining the ‘technification’ of architecture, our reliance on extractive processes, and investigating how we should build with biomaterials.
It’s a fascinating, far reaching, read.
In this episode we talk about: the philosophy behind Material Cultures; the problems with the construction industry and why it needs to change; being a ‘reformist’ rather than a ‘revolutionary’; disagreeing with Norman Foster on concrete; how biomaterials can simplify the way we build; factories as places of experimentation; the importance of repair; architects’ ‘arrogant’ use of timber; why straw is vital to our future; and putting Material Cultures’ ideas into practice.
Keith Brymer Jones is a potter, whose hand-made ceramics – which include the best selling Word Range – have been stocked in major stores, including Habitat, Laura Ashley and Heals.
Over the years, he has been a ballet dancer, a front man in a nearly famous post-punk band, and a YouTube sensation. However, he is best known as a judge on the hugely popular The Great Pottery Throwdown, which is currently showing on Channel 4.
His warm, and often confessional, autobiography Boy in a China Shop, is just out in paperback. It tells the story of a life that has seen him bullied at school, be attacked by a lion, and raise the roof at the Marquee Club.
However, the thread that holds his story together is clay.
In this episode we talk about: how it feels to throw a pot; discovering clay at school; how dyslexia shaped his career; auditioning for the Royal Ballet School; his relationship with his parents; drawing inspiration from Lucie Rie and Isaac Button; getting beaten up as a New Romantic; singing in a (nearly famous) band and getting played on Radio One; making pots in China; and becoming a TV star.
Peter Apps is a journalist and author, as well as the deputy editor of Inside Housing. His extraordinary, devastating new book, Show Me The Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, looks at the evidence of the public enquiry into the circumstances leading up to, and surrounding, the fire at London’s Grenfell Tower on the night of 14 June 2017.
Unpicking evidence heard over the course of 300 public hearings and 1600 witness statements, he paints a deeply disturbing picture of the historical, systemic, and practical failures that took the lives of 72 people, telling personal, tragic stories with a deep sense of empathy combined with journalistic rigour.
Show Me The Bodies also shows in stark detail why materials – and the stuff that literally surrounds us and is usually specified for us – really do matter.
In this episode Apps illustrates: how combustible materials came to be wrapped around a 24 storey building; the relationship between big business and government; the role the Cameron administration’s austerity policy played in denuding vital services; and the mistakes that were made on the evening itself. He also asks how important the issues of class and race were to the disaster and describes Grenfell's shocking aftermath.
This isn’t an easy listen but it is vital.
Rosalie McMillan and Adam Fairweather are co-founders of the materials, design and manufacturing house, Smile Plastics. They have a factory in South Wales which takes plastics and other materials traditionally classed as waste and transforms them into extraordinarily eye-catching, large scale, solid surface panels. Over the years, the company has worked with the likes of Stella McCartney, Christian Dior, Paul Smith, Selfridges and the Wellcome Trust to name just a handful.
Interestingly, this is the second coming for the material. I first came across it in the mid-1990s, when it was created by the designer and educator, Jane Atfield, for her renowned RCP2 chair, a piece that is in the permanent collections of the V&A and the Crafts Council and which is currently included the Yinka Ilori show, Parables for Happiness, at the London Design Museum.
In this episode we talk about: the history of Smile Plastics; reviving the company in 2014 after it had closed four years earlier; how Adam and Rosalie started in a bomb shelter next to piles of compost; why the company was ahead of its time; the craft behind the material’s process; Adam’s early fascination with coffee waste; Rosalie’s other career in jewellery; their live/work balance; calling the factory’s machines Colin; and their ambitious plans for global growth.
Aric Chen is general and artistic director of the Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch national museum for architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam.
During one of those careers that makes you wonder what on earth you’ve been doing with your time, he has also been creative director of Beijing Design Week, lead curator for design and architecture at M+ in Hong Kong, curatorial director of the Design Miami fairs in Miami Beach and Basel, and professor and founding director of the Curatorial Lab at the College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University in Shanghai.
As a result, he has a genuinely global perspective of the design industry.
In this episode we talk about: the Instituut’s new show that looks at design and energy; issues around decarbonising the grid; his problem with design manifestos; how the Instituut is becoming a ‘Zoop’ and giving non-humans a voice (you read that right); providing agency to microbes; making new ideas visible; why he didn’t become an architect; his first job in PR; the relationship between journalism and curating; the similarities between the US and China; and how the Instituut will curate next year’s London Design Biennale.
(For various reasons – mainly to do with microphones being held up in EU customs – the sound on this episode isn't up to our usually quality. Apologies but, frankly, I'm blaming Brexit.)
Professor Rebecca Earley is a design researcher and award-winning team leader at University of the Arts London and is based at Chelsea College of Arts where she is Professor of Circular Design Futures.
Initially, she trained as a printed textile designer before creating her own fashion label, B.Earley, in 1995. Her prints and garments have been commissioned by the likes of Bjork and Damien Hirst. They are also in the collections of the V&A and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
More recently though, she has carved a global reputation as one of the leading thinkers around the need for fashion to become circular. Projects include HEREWEAR, which investigated how bio-based agricultural waste could be turned into material for locally-made clothing and TRASH2CASH that brought designers together with scientists to find ways to regenerate waste cotton and polyester. Not only that but she also co-founded World Circular Textiles Day in 2020.
In this episode we chat about: how she started using polyester and why it’s a problematic material; idealism versus pragmatism and transition rather than revolt; the value system we build around materials; discovering textile design by chance; empowering women through the education system; circularity’s relationship with the market; designing systems; the importance of people; and her love of wild swimming.
As a special preview to Material Matters 2022, launching from 22-25 September at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, we meet one of the stars of the fair.
Benjamin Hubert is an industrial designer and founder of LAYER, the experience design agency that has worked with the likes of Airbus, Bang & Olufsen, Braun and Moroso, to name just a handful. The practice is celebrating the launch of its new monograph with an exhibition at the show. The book, written by Max Fraser and published by Phaidon, traces Benjamin’s journey from graduate designer to establishing and, subsequently, expanding his own studio. In the process, it sheds light on the business of design and what it takes to create a successful practice.
Don’t worry though there is plenty on the importance of materials here too.
In this episode we talk about: how his practice fared during the pandemic; why he’s publishing a monograph now; how his process includes the use of watercolours; creating LAYER and a controversial speech in South Africa; expanding his portfolio from designing furniture to creating apps; the importance of making and painting as a child; being driven to succeed; having a thick skin and learning to accept rejection; working in 3D knitting; taking online abuse.
It’s a fascinating listen.
To visit Material Matters 2022, it’s really important register at this link before you arrive: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2022-tickets-373171364597
Hannah and Justin Floyd are the creators of an intriguing material, called SolidWool. The composite is made up of wool, which is used as the reinforcement, and bio-resin that acts as a binder.
The wool itself comes from the Herdwick sheep found in the Lake District that was once a staple of the carpet industry but which has recently fallen out of vogue. According to the Floyds, some farmers have taken to burning fleeces because they were fetching next to nothing on the open market. So instead, they set about finding a new use for something increasingly considered as waste and imbuing it with value.
The finished result is beautifully smooth and probably best compared to fibreglass. When Grant first came across the duo at a show in Milan almost a decade ago, they were displaying a range of items made from the material, including: knives, sunglasses, a table and, perhaps most importantly, the extremely elegant Hembury Chair.
After a serious health scare, the pair sold their company to Roger Oates Design in 2020. It put a new version of the Hembury back into production, with Justin staying on as a consultant.
In this episode we talk about: how SolidWool is made; the importance of beauty; issues with Herdwick wool; taking inspiration from where they lived; the desire to produce ‘products with purpose’; the importance of play; why designers love chairs; working together; overcoming cancer; selling the company; and Justin’s unfinished business with SolidWool.
And a reminder that to visit Material Matters 2022, which runs at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from 22-25 September you need to register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2022-tickets-373171364597
Simon Hasan made a name for himself when he graduated from the Design Products course of the Royal College of Art in 2008 with a collection of pieces made from Cuir Bouilli or boiled leather, an ancient material that was used to make medieval armour.
The collection made quite a splash and, subsequently, he worked on a number of projects such as Craft Punk, during the Milan Design Week in 2009, the Designer in Residence Programme at the Design Museum and the Vauxhall Collective.
His work embraces different scales from furniture to accessories and more recently, he has collaborated with the likes of Kvadrat, Another Country, Linley and Chloe. Simon has received two Wallpaper Design Awards and he has pieces in the permanent collections of the Crafts Council and the Fondazione Fendi.
He taught for many years at the RCA and is currently Furniture and Product Design Course leader at London Metropolitan University.
In this episode we talk about: the history of Cuir Bouilli; why he alighted on the material in the first place; his fascination with Dutch design; being the 'odd one out' at the Royal College of Art; never wanting to make life easy for himself; the relationship between craft, industry and fashion; working in the advertising industry before discovering design; failing to apply himself at school; collaborating with global brands; and why teaching is so important to him.
And a reminder that to visit Material Matters 2022, which runs at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from 22-25 September you need to register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2022-tickets-373171364597
Michael Young is a world renowned product designer who initially made his name in London during the mid-90s, and quickly found himself working for significant brands, including Magis and Rosenthal.
After a sojourn in Iceland, he traversed the globe and set up his practice in South East Asia. Over the years, his portfolio has become wildly eclectic. Young has designed furniture for Coalesse, speakers for KEF, suitcases for Mon Carbone, and bikes for Giant. He has also re-imagined the Mini Moke, created his own beer brand, and produced gallery pieces to boot.
In this episode we discuss: living and working around the world during the pandemic; managing a global practice in Hong Kong; launching a beer brand aimed at creatives; his fascination with making and how it informs his process; learning from Tom Dixon; redesigning the Mini Moke; being an ‘explorer’; copying in China; being diagnosed with dyslexia and the impact it has on creativity; the role Sir Terence Conran played in his nascent career; developing a thick skin; oh and why he hasn’t yet designed a comfortable sofa.
And a reminder that to visit Material Matters 2022, which runs at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from 22-25 September you need to register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-matters-2022-tickets-373171364597
It’s going to be great!!
Majeda Clarke is a weaver, whose work is concerned with identity and a sense of place. She combines traditional techniques from some very different parts of the world – such as Bangladesh and North Wales – with an aesthetic that has been influenced by Josef and Anni Albers.
She came to textiles relatively late in life (having previously been in education) but has gone on to win a number of awards, as well as exhibiting at the Aram Gallery, Mint and Fortnum & Mason in London. She has also collaborated with the likes of The Rothschild Foundation and The Citizens of the World Choir.
In this episode we talk about: her passion for collecting; why she makes scarves in Bangladesh and blankets in Wales; growing up on a tea plantation; being locked in a cell when she arrived in the UK at the age of five; producing art in lockdown; how the Black Lives Matter movement has shifted her thinking; the pressure of representing; her fascination with regional skills; and encouraging mistakes.
In my opinion, Carl Clerkin is one of the most original – and certainly one of the wittiest – designers currently practicing. He graduated from the now-defunct furniture course of the Royal College of Art in the late ’90s, a time when many of his contemporaries were dreaming of fame and fortune with a glamorous Italian manufacturer. However, he steered a very different – more local – course.
His work, which ranges from industrial to fine art pieces, is always imbued with a sense of narrative and not a little charm. Clerkin is also a teacher at Kingston University and has curated exhibitions such as The Learned Society of Extra Ordinary Objects at London’s Somerset House. He returns to the London venue this month with The Beasley Brothers’ Repair Shop, as part of the gallery’s new show Eternally Yours – an exhibition about repair, care and healing.
In this episode we talk about: his new installation at Somerset House and the importance of mending; the role narrative and humour plays in his work; feeling uncomfortable in the art world and becoming a designer by default; growing up in London’s Eastend; the influence of Michael Marriott; his love of teaching… and his fascination with buckets.
Juliette Bigley is an artist and sculptor who creates extraordinary, abstract, but somehow familiar, pieces out of metal. I first saw her work at New Designers, the graduate design show held annually in London, after she left The Cass in 2013 and, since then, her career has gone from strength to strength. She has a piece in the permanent collection of the V&A; won a slew of awards; written a book entitled, Material Perspectives; and exhibited around the world.
Happily she’s also an incredibly eloquent advocate for her material of choice and the importance of thinking through making.
In this episode we talk about: discovering metal by chance and the effect that moment had on her life; why making helps her understand the world; how different metals have contrasting personalities; her fascination with the vessel; a love of lines and boundaries; her background in music and healthcare; the relationship between music and making; her problem with perfection; oh and swimming the Channel (yes, really).
It’s an incredibly rich.
Nigel Coates is a hugely influential architect, designer, artist and educator. He first came to widespread attention as a teacher at the Architectural Association in the early 80s when he co-founded NATO, a radical architecture collective that published a series of magazines with a unique perspective on the city.
Later, he co-founded the practice, Branson Coates, and created buildings and interiors across the globe from Caffe Bongo in Japan to the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield. He has also designed a slew of products for the likes of Fornasetti and GTV as well as exhibitions, such as Ecstacity and Mixtacity at Tate Modern.
Importantly, he did much of this while being head of architecture at the Royal College of Art.
He has just published an intriguing – and occasionally quite racy – memoir. It’s a book that charts the changes in architecture in general, and London in particular. There are tales of extraordinary projects, of club culture and parties, of friendships and loves, and of lives sadly lost.
In this episode we talk about: his early life in Malvern and his difficult relationship with his parents; his love of Italy; teaching at the Architectural Association and the creation of NATO; working in Japan and, finally, building in the UK; his role in controversial projects such as the National Centre for Popular Music and the Millennium Dome; the problem with developer-led London; regrets about about not building more; being queer and ‘the unspoken conformity of architecture’; and missing his great friend Zaha Hadid.
Richard McVetis is an embroiderer, who is fascinated with time. Each of his, often monochromatic cuboid, pieces is meticulously made to explore the subtle differences that emerge through the ritualistic and repetitive nature of sewing.
More recently, he has taken inspiration from his family’s mining heritage to investigate a story of race and class through stitch. The artist says that he uses making ‘to understand the world, to give material form to abstract ideas, making the intangible tangible’.
Richard has shown his work around the globe and has been shortlisted for a number of prizes including: the Jerwood Drawing Prize, and the Loewe Craft Prize in 2018. He currently has a solo show, Shaped by Time, running at Farnham’s Craft Study Centre.
In this episode we talk about: his new show in Farnham; the joy of slowing down and developing patience; drawing with thread; the majesty of the hand; his love of simplicity; the subjectivity of time; gender politics and embroidery; growing up in a mining community and how that has fed into his work; his other career in retail design; and why he never sews in public.
Elaine Yan Ling Ng is a Hong Kong-based designer and innovator. She founded her own studio, The Fabrick Lab, in 2013, after stints working with the likes of Nissan and Nokia.
Initially trained as a textile designer and weaver at London’s Central Saint Martins, her work encompasses traditional craft and cutting edge technology, with clients and collaborations ranging from Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat to crystal company Swarovski, via UBS, and a group of traditional artisans in the Guizhou area of southern China.
Most recently, she has been working with design brand, Nature Squared, on CArrele (pictured), a range of tiles made from waste, or to be more precise, eggshells.
Elaine is a TED Fellow and has a fistful of design awards, including The Emerging Talent Award from Design Anthology, GGEF’s Eco Innovator Award, Swarovski’s Designer of the Future Award and Tatler’s Gen T Award.
In this episode we chat about: making tiles from eggshells (not surprisingly); learning to sew at the age of three; her ten pin bowling champion father; learning to love weaving; how maths and data feed into her work; designing student pieces with shape memory alloy; taking jobs at Nissan and Nokia; the changing design culture in China; setting up her own studio; how winning an award from Swarovski transformed her career; and bridging the gap between craft and industry.
Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien founded their eponymous design studio, Doshi Levien, in 2000. The duo, who are also real life partners and met while studying at London’s Royal College of Art in the late ’90s, came to prominence in 2003 with an extraordinary range of cookware, designed for French company, Tefal.
At the time, the pieces seemed different and more than a little exciting, a combination of contemporary European design and thinking from somewhere else entirely. In terms of form, each item was incredibly precise. However, flip the pots and pans over and, on the base, was an unexpectedly beautiful pattern.
Since then, the pair have gone on to work for the likes of Moroso, Hay, Kvadrat, BD Barcelona, galerie kreo, Cappellini and many others, creating textiles, furniture, glassware, shoes, lighting, and even ice cream, that deftly combines their contrasting skills, ideas and backgrounds.
In this episode we talk about Nipa’s relationship with colour and textiles; why card is a vital part of Jonathan’s process; growing up in India and Scotland respectively and how that affected their design thinking; living and designing together; facing prejudice; that initial project with Tefal; and working with Italian furniture giant Moroso.
Yet, mostly it’s about how two people with different hinterland have come together to create a single vision.
Peter Lord founded Aardman Animations, with his school friend David Sproxton, in 1972. The Bristol-based company rapidly became known for its witty, character-driven, stop-motion work in Plasticine, giving the world characters such as Morph, Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, as well as working on a dizzying array of feature films, shorts, TV shows, adverts, music videos, computer games, TV idents… Frankly the list goes on.
The studio has won Oscars for the likes of Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. While Peter himself has been nominated himself on several occasions, including for The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!. Aardman recently picked up yet another nomination for its short, Robin Robin.
Peter was awarded a CBE in 2006 and received a Blue Peter Gold badge, no less, in 2015.
In this bumper episode we talk about: meeting his partner David Sproxton at the age of 12; why Bristol became so important to Aardman; picking up Plasticine for the first time and why it’s a transformative material; creating Morph; working with the legend that is Tony Hart; the genius of Nick Park; cracking Hollywood and wearing a jacket bought from Oxfam to the Oscars; the role technology plays in the studio’s output; and turning the company into an employee-owned business.
Alison Britton is a ceramicist, writer and educator, who emerged as part of a revolutionary group of artists from the Royal College of Art in the 1970s, which was determined to provided an alternative to the then-dominate school of pottery, led by Bernard Leach.
Instead, their work was angular, abstract, urban, a little bit feisty and, hey, Post-Modern, provoking one critic to write in Crafts magazine that these were pieces which rejoiced ‘in a hideousness that does not even have the excuse of eloquence’.
Her pots, which famously test the outer limits of function, have evolved over the years and are generally slab built with abstract surface finishes and an architectural quality. Meanwhile, her prose has long been a vital part of her practice and a collection of her writing, entitled Seeing Things, was published in 2013.
In 2016, she had a major retrospective of her work at the V&A in London, while she received an OBE for her services to art in 1990.
During this episode we talk about: picking up clay at nine years old; growing up with her teacher parents and becoming part of her father’s research; why she became fascinated by the material; the importance of language; studying under Hans Coper at the Royal College of Art; her happy revolution in the 1970s; the importance of ‘containment’ in her practice; and her changing attitude to the work of Bernard Leach.
Huge thanks must go to the brilliant specialist auction house and art consultancy dedicated to studio ceramics, Maak Contemporary Ceramics, for sponsoring this episode. www.maaklondon.com.
Tom Raffield is a designer and maker who has built a hugely successful business by creating an array of products from wood that have been steam bent into extraordinary shapes, and, subsequently, are sold by the likes of John Lewis and Heals. In doing so, he has effectively brought craft on to the British high street.
Not only that, but he has designed installations at the Chelsea Flower Show, created steam bent coffee kiosks in London’s Royal Parks, and built his own breathtaking house in south Cornwall, that included (inevitably) a steam bent timber facade and featured on Channel Four’s Grand Designs.
It’s safe to say that wood is a material that completely dominates Tom’s life.
In this episode we talk about: designing through making; the importance of trial and error in his practice; growing up in a garden centre and his fascination with sustainability; how his dyslexia enabled him to see the world differently; falling in love with Cornwall; and his determination to make craft (relatively) affordable. But most of all we chat about his obsession with wood in general – and steam bending in particular – and how the process has shaped his life and career.
Lucy Sparrow came to widespread attention in 2014 with an extraordinary installation held in a derelict site in London’s Eastend. At The Cornershop, she assiduously recreated everything you might find in a traditional newsagent – some 4000 items – in felt.
This was followed by The Warmongery, a gun shop in Bethnal Green and, in 2015, by Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium, a felt installation of a sex shop in London’s Soho. There have also been shows in the US and China, while this year she launched The Bourdon Street Chemist at the Lyndsey Ingram Gallery in Mayfair and The Billion Dollar Robbery at the Start Art Fair in the Saatchi Gallery.
Her pieces are warm, witty and genuinely joyful – containing references to the likes of Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. While the artist has described her work as being like ‘Blue Peter on acid’.
In this episode we talk about: her fascination with felt (obviously); turning an old ambulance station into her studio; her obsession with fluffy bananas; being ‘weird’ at school and dropping out of university; repairing her binmen’s trousers; owning an HGV licence; working as a lap dancer; the huge success of The Corner Shop; the importance of nostalgia in her work; why felt is so disarming; and her pieces as performance art.
Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg started her career as an architect, before going on to study on the revolutionary Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art in London. While there, she became fascinated by synthetic biology and set about finding a place for design within this emerging field – bringing together scientists and designers to collaborate on a variety of projects.
More recently, she’s turned her attention to the relationship between technology and nature, producing a string of installations that aim to illustrate what we have, and what we’re in danger of losing, through our own intransigence and our obsession with the ‘new’.
So she has used artificial intelligence to re-create the birds' song of the dawn chorus, investigated how Mars could be colonised by plants, and designed a digital version of the (now-extinct) Northern White Rhino.
Her most recent work has just opened at the Eden Project in Cornwall. Pollinator Pathmaker is a 55m long piece (funded by Garfield Weston Foundation, with additional founding supporters Gaia Art Foundation and collaborators Google Arts & Culture) that has been made quite deliberately for insects using an algorithm designed by a string theory physicist.
In this episode we talk about: her new piece at the Eden Project; working alongside a beekeeper and a string theory physicist; the relationship between pollen and data; coding empathy; dropping out of architecture; stepping into synthetic biology; why she was once dubbed ‘poo girl’; our obsession with ‘better’; colonising Mars and making a digital rhino; the importance of challenging technology.
Robert Penn describes himself as a journalist, woodsman and lifelong cyclist, who has written some of the best craft-based books of recent years, including It’s All About the Bike, where he travelled the globe finding the best components with which to build his dream bicycle, and The Man Who Made things out of Trees, which told the tale of what he did with an ash tree that he felled in some nearby woods.
The titles tell a personal story, which Penn deftly combines with a broader history and, sometimes, a bit of science. But, really, they are all about the importance of making.
His latest is no different. A little like Ronseal, Slow Rise: A Bread Making Adventure, does exactly what it says on the tin. It has been described by writer, Jenny Linford, as ‘a wide-ranging, gloriously obsessive odyssey’.
Robert lives in the Black Mountains with his wife, three children, two spaniels, 12 bicycles and a collection of axes. He bakes his own bread in a wood-fired oven.
In this episode we talk about: writing a book devoted to bread; his fascination with the ordinary things that surround us; how a three-year, around-the-world cycling trip piqued his interest in baking; the relationship between bread and power; ploughing his own field with a horse; searching the globe for the right wheat seeds; seeking divine intervention; our obsession with white bread; and how industrial farming took such a wrong turn.
Carmen Hijosa is the creator of Pinatex, a new, non-woven textile made from pineapple leaves.
After finishing a PhD in textiles at the Royal College of Art, she founded her company, Ananas Anam. And subsequently, the new material has been specified by brands such as Hugo Boss, Chanel, and Mango for bags, shoes and clothes. It has even been used for a vegan hotel suite at the Hilton Hotel Bankside.
Meanwhile, Pinatex production offers additional income to more than 700 families from farming communities and cooperatives in the Philippines, where the pineapple leaves are collected.
None too surprisingly, she has won a slew of awards, including the Arts Foundation Material Innovation Prize and the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award.
In this episode we talk about: what Pinatex is and how it’s made; why she came up with the idea to create a non-woven textile from pineapple leaves; her background in the leather industry; the trip to the Philippines that changed her life; growing up in Spain and being a rebel at school; issues around the material’s end of life; starting her new foundation for children; and why the material brings out the best in people.
Amin Taha has been described as ‘London’s most controversial architect’. This is largely due to 15 Clerkenwell Close, a development that is defined by a single material, stone.
The building (which houses his collective practice, Groupwork, and where he also happens to live) was shortlisted for this year’s Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, despite that fact it was finished in 2017.
And it’s fair to say the nomination came as a surprise. This wasn’t simply to do with the timing, nor the building itself – which is a smart, witty, and, it transpires, sustainable piece of work that subtly references the area’s history. But rather because, three years ago, it was issued with a demolition order by Islington Council for non-conformity with the submitted plans .
Happily, Taha won his appeal and has taken the thinking behind the building – which uses limestone as a structural frame, rather than as a facade for steel and concrete – to investigate how we might build carbon negative towers in the future.
As architecture writer, Tim Abrahams, has pointed out what sets Taha’s practice apart is his ‘fundamental rejection of style as an orientating device in favour of structure’. In other words, this is an architect for whom materials really matter.
In this episode we talk about: the controversy around 15 Clerkenwell Close; being shortlisted for the Stirling Prize; learning to build in stone; why it’s a sustainable material; the nation’s planning system; beauty; being born behind the Iron Curtain; growing up in Southend-on-Sea; studying under Isi Metzstein and working for Zaha Hadid; designing 30-storey stone towers; and how the construction industry could become carbon negative.
Did you know that, for years, paper was made from rags rather than wood pulp? No, me neither.
Mark Cropper is chair of the extraordinary paper manufacturer, James Cropper PLC. And it’s fair to say that the material has dominated the life of his family for over 175 years. The company has been based in the picturesque village of Burneside, near Kendal in the Lake District since 1845 and Mark is, rather remarkably, the sixth generation to run a firm that currently employs around 600 people.
He also has unique insight into the company having written its official history, entitled The Leaves We Write On, in 2004. James Cropper has long specialised in making coloured paper but, in more recent years, it has also branched out with a division devoted to technical fibres – think carbon fibre paper – as well as Colourform, a new packaging solution which the company hopes will replace single-use plastic. It has also developed a process to recycle used coffee cups into paper.
Not only that but Mark has also launched the Paper Foundation, on a site a stone’s throw away from the main factory, where he is creating paper the traditional way, by hand, using over 700 moulds that he has tirelessly collected.
In this episode we chat about: the history of making at Burneside; why the railway revolutionised the company; weathering economic storms; coping with COVID; how the company started making paper from rags (rather than wood pulp); creating carbon fibre paper; the importance of looking after the material’s heritage and making paper by hand again; and attempting to unite the local community through paper.
Claire Wilcox is best known for her work as senior curator of fashion at the V&A, where she has staged shows such as Radical Fashion, Vivienne Westwood, The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-57, and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, as well as launching the groundbreaking, Fashion in Motion in 1999.
She is also professor in fashion curation at the London College of Fashion and is on the editorial board of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture.
More recently though, she has written a genuinely original – and I’m delighted to write, now, award-winning – memoir about her life, work, family, and her relationship with clothes. Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes is funny, unself-conscious, thought-provoking and elegiac in roughly equal measures. It is an extraordinary piece of work.
In this episode we talk about: the importance of clothes; how garments store memory; why she decided to write Patch Work; what the book reveals about her relationships with her parents, friends, and family; her fascination with buttons; dealing with the death of a child; why she feels at home in the V&A; creating Fashion in Motion; refusing to name (fashion) names; ricocheting between uncertainty and doubt; oh, and getting fired from a sex shop.
Piet Hein Eek is a world renowned Dutch designer, who made his name when he graduated from the Academy for Industrial Design Eindhoven in 1990 with a cupboard made from scraps of wood he found in a lumber yard.
He set up his own practice three years later creating furniture that, in his words, was designed from ‘available possibilities’, with pieces using waste from other processes and, sometimes, waste from that waste. Products are created around the materials the practice has in stock – whether that be a vast number of huge wooden beams or metal pipes – and the machines it possesses.
Craft is vitally important to everything he’s produced. And production is at the heart of his enormous studio in Eindhoven that also includes a shop, restaurant, an art gallery, and, in the very near future, a hotel.
During his career, the designer has also branched out into architecture, starting by creating extraordinary garden outhouses and expanding into pieces of urban planning, as well as collaborating with brands such as LEFF and IKEA.
I caught him just as he was preparing to exhibit at the Salone in Milan, arguably the world’s most important design festival.
In this episode we talk about: being a bit of a rebel; the studio’s new boutique hotel; his fascination with ruins and how that feeds into his practice; the story behind his iconic Scrap Wood series; his love of Eindhoven; why making is vital to his studio; splitting up with his long term business partner, Nob Ruijrok; embracing failure; and collaborating with the behemoth that is IKEA. It's fascinating stuff.
My thanks go to the American Hardwood Export Council (or AHEC) for sponsoring this episode. To find out more about its new project at London’s Design Museum, Discovered, go to: https://discovered.global
Emma Witter is an emerging artist who has forged a reputation with her delicate sculptures that often resemble flowers but are created, rather intriguingly, from animal bone, such as oxtail and chicken feet. Her pieces straddle our sense of beauty and the macabre. As she told one writer: ‘I am fascinated with the diversity of death and burial rituals across the world… In the floral motifs, I do like the balance of representation of life and death, fragility and strength.’
Emma graduated in performance design and practice from Central Saint Martins in 2012 and has subsequently won a fistful of awards and column inches. In 2019, she had a solo show at London’s Sarabande, the Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation, entitled Remember You Must Die, while her work has been exhibited with galleries such as the Mayfair-based FUMI and Ting-Ying, as well as at the recent group show, Triggered Economics or How to Commit to the Inevitable on an empty floor of an office building on Bruton Street.
In this episode we discuss: working with animal bone; the response her work receives from its audience; finding use for London’s empty spaces; why she doesn’t draw; being expelled from her primary school; discovering she has ADHD and dyspraxia; making in a ‘blissful’ state; her fascination with beauty; oh, and working with a certain Kylie Minogue.
Chris Day is an emerging artist with a fascinating hinterland. The glassblower was a plumber and heating engineer in the Midlands for two decades before deciding to change his life.
Since graduating from Wolverhampton University in 2019, his rise has been startling. That same year, he received a special commendation at the British Glass Biennale, which was followed by a solo show at Vessel Gallery in London’s Notting Hill.
And at the moment he has an extraordinary, and genuinely moving, installation at All Saint’s Church at Harewood House, just outside Leeds. This is glasswork like you’ve never seen before. Day employs materials he used in his previous career, such as copper piping and wire. His pieces tackle the black experience in both Britain and the US, based around his own mixed race heritage – often focussing on the history of the slave trade in the eighteenth century, as well as events leading up to the American civil rights movement.
The artist says that his main purpose is to ‘engage the audience on issues that are hard to confront on many levels, using art to help overcome some of the traumas that haunt our collective past.’
His work is already held in a number of private collections, as well as the V&A, the National Museum of Scotland and The Chrysler Museum in the US.
In this episode we talk about: his new installation at Harewood House; how he discovered glass; growing up mixed race in Derby during the ’70s; why his pieces are concerned with slavery and the black experience; dyslexia as a super-power; becoming a successful engineer; and his urge to be seen as a role model for emerging black glass blowers.
My thanks go to leading glass specialist, Vessel Gallery, for sponsoring this episode. To find out more about them go to: www.vesselgallery.com
My final guest of the latest series is Emily Johnson, co-founder of the Stoke-on-Trent-based, ceramics company 1882 Ltd. Clay is part of the former TV executive’s DNA. She is the fifth generation of Johnson to work in the industry, with her father and business partner, Chris, spending over 30 years as a production director of Wedgwood, after it bought the family firm in 1964.
Since launching a decade ago, 1882 Ltd has worked with an eclectic roster of designers including: Max Lamb, Faye Toogood, former Material Matters guest Barnaby Barford, architect John Pawson and fashion designer Paul Smith. According to the company’s own official blurb, at its core is a combination of ‘progressive design and industrial craftsmanship’.
So why did she decide to leave television and return to clay? And what’s it like to launch a new manufacturing company in Stoke-on-Trent in the 21st century?
In this episode we talk about: making through the pandemic; opening a brand new production unit (or factory) at Wedgwood; why she initially eschewed clay for TV advertising in the US; the pain of watching Johnson Brothers wither; launching 1882 Ltd; keeping craft skills alive in Stoke-on-Trent; the social and economic issues the city faces; working with her father and why a piece by Barnaby Barford changed their relationship; Brexit; and the joy of the common language of clay.
As regular listeners will know, every once in a while I break free of Material Matters’ self-imposed format and meet someone with an overview of the design world. And in this episode, I’m delighted to chat with Sir John Sorrell CBE.
It’s a question really of where to start with John’s career (but here goes). He was chair of the Design Council from 1994-2000; chair of CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) from 2004-2009; vice-president of the Chartered Society of Designers from 1989-1992; and chairman of the Design Business Association from 1990-1992. In 2014, he founded the Creative Industries Federation, stepping down as chair in 2017.
Not content with any of that, he co-founded the London Design Festival in 2003, as well as the London Design Biennale in 2016 – both with Ben Evans. Perhaps most importantly, in 1999 he co-founded The Sorrell Foundation with his wife Frances, that aims to inspire creativity in young people and improve lives with good design. Subsequently, they co-founded The Saturday Club Trust, which offers young people the opportunity to study subjects such as art and design at a university for free on a Saturday.
And I haven’t even mentioned Newell & Sorrell, the pioneering design business he set up with Frances in 1976.
This, I guess, is a long way of saying that he has been one of the most influential figures in British design for well over four decades.
In this episode we talk about: adapting to the pandemic; bringing 400 trees to Somerset House for this year’s London Design Biennale; creating the London Design Festival and why it took a while to find its feet; being born during an air raid in 1945 and growing up on a north London council estate; how going to a Saturday art club changed his life; starting his career in the sixties; his extraordinary marriage to Frances; Margaret Thatcher’s handkerchief and a wildly controversial project for British Airways; the importance of the Sorrell Foundation; and creating a new generation of leaders for the design world.
What does an artist do when the material he has devoted his working life to runs out?
Garry Fabian Miller is a renowned photographer, who doesn’t use a camera in his practice. Instead, he works in his darkroom and relies on a combination of light and cibachrome paper, using exposures that can last between one to twenty hours.
His extraordinary, abstract pieces are inspired by nature and the things he sees on walks around his home in Dartmoor.
His work is held in an array of public and private collections, including MoMA in New York, the Sir Elton John Collection and the V&A in London. Meanwhile his latest book – and there have been many – is entitled Blaze and features a forward from an old friend of the show, Edmund de Waal.
Trouble is that, thanks to the rise of digital photography, production of cibachrome halted in 2012 and supplies have dwindled to nothing. This is the story of how he has coped.
In this episode we talk about: the vital role light and cibachrome paper have played in his life; the importance of Dartmoor to his process; deciding to discard the camera; growing up as a child in a darkroom; photography as a medium of magic; feeling like an ‘edge player’; his love of the etcher Robin Tanner and punk rocker Poly Styrene; and, of course, dealing with the dying days of his craft.
You can learn more about Garry here
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This episode investigates the near-future and how material technology could transform the way we live.
Mark Miodownik is the UCL professor of materials & society. He received his PhD in turbine jet engine alloys from Oxford University, and has worked as a materials engineer in the USA, Ireland and the UK. For more than twenty years he has championed materials science research that links to the arts and humanities, medicine, and society. This culminated in the establishment of the UCL Institute of Making, where he is a director and runs the research programme.
He’s the author of two highly successful – and, I think importantly, incredibly accessible – books on materials, Stuff Matters and Liquid and regularly presents TV and radio programmes about material science on the BBC.
Most recently, however, he’s co-chaired a working group that has just delivered a fascinating, and far reaching, report for the Royal Society, entitled Animate Materials, which is the focus of much of our chat.
In the episode we talk about: how new ‘active, adaptive and autonomous’ materials will change our lives; concrete that heals itself using bacteria; why we’ll grow our cities in years to come; the potential for new materials in healthcare and the nanoparticles that could help cure cancer; the economic and social impacts of this new technology; the importance of scientists collaborating with designers, architects and artists; and how animate materials could drive a new evolutionary tree.
It’s frequently eye-popping stuff. I hope you enjoy.
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One of the joys of Material Matters is that it allows me to roam across disciplines. So one week I can discuss carbon fibre and Formula 1 racing with John Barnard, while in the next I could be talking taxidermy with fine artist Polly Morgan.
My guest in this episode is the excellent Sarah Wigglesworth. I think it’s fair to say that Sarah has been a pioneer of sustainable architecture through her eponymous practice. Over the years projects have included cultural centres such as Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, housing schemes like Umpire View in Harrow and Trent Basin in Nottingham, and a fistful of thoughtful, sensitively-designed schools, including Roseacres Primary School in Essex and Mellor Primary School in the Peak District.
She made her name though with her own home-cum-office, the revolutionary Stock Orchard Street, designed with partner Jeremy Till. The building, which is 20 years old this year, used a plethora of low tech materials such as rubble, sandbags and, most famously, straw bales to change the way people thought about environmentally-conscious architecture. The Straw Bale House as it was quickly nicknamed also appeared on the first-ever series of Grand Designs with Kevin McCloud.
We chat about: how four years of thinking went into Stock Orchard Street; its extraordinary palette of materials; attitudes towards sustainable architecture two decades ago; why she built with straw; the feminist agenda behind the building and making her way in a male-dominated profession; how a visit to Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp changed her life; being on the original series of Grand Designs; and designing for old age.
There’s plenty to get your teeth into (or ears around) I reckon.
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Jasleen Kaur is an artist, designer and maker, who graduated from the jewellery and metal course at the Royal College of Art in 2010. Since then her practice has encompassed pieces created for gallery spaces as well as work that is socially-engaged. She has described herself, rather intriguingly, as a ‘cobbler’.
Recently, she has created films and pieces of text which investigate untold histories and notions of identity that are both personal – detailing her Sikh background from Glasgow – and, in some instances, to do with this nation’s colonial past.
And, more often that not, embedded in all this somewhere is food. In a commission for the Serpentine Gallery, entitled Everyday Resistance, Kaur worked collaboratively with children and mothers from The Portman Early Childhood Centre, based in London’s Edgware, and used the micro-politics of cooking and eating together to consider and respond to issues facing the local community.
This is art with a very real purpose.
As well as exhibiting in places such as MIMA in Middlesborough, the BALTIC Centre in Gateshead, and Glasgow’s Tramway, Jasleen has also lectured at the RCA and Chelsea College of Arts.
In this episode we talk about: baking bread with mothers and children in a London Sure Start Centre; why the kitchen is a ‘site of resistance’; the part food played in her Sikh family and growing up in Glasgow; digging into history; feeling on the periphery; making bad jewellery; how her work has become more political over the years; ‘faking it’ as a product designer; oh, and we also find out who exactly does the cooking at home…
It’s a hugely personal, and frequently rather beautiful, chat.
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Alice Potts is a material researcher, who ‘explores the poetry of the human fluids’. She caused quite a storm when she graduated from the fashion department of the Royal College of Art in 2018 with a collection of crystals grown on various garments – including an extraordinary pair of ballet shoes dyed in red cabbage juice. These crystals were a little different though as they were created from the user’s own sweat. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the collection was entitled PERSPIRE and Alice was quickly picked up by some of the fashion world’s big beasts, including Nick Knight and Sarah Mower.
In 2019, she was part of the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 – London’s most influential people and her pieces have been shown everywhere from the Onassis Foundation in Athens to the Philadelphia Museum in the US via the V&A in London. A collection of 20 facemasks fashioned from biodegradable plastic – made from food waste sourced from local food markets, butchers and households – as well as a limited edition jewellery collection made in collaboration with MIMCO is currently on show at the NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
In this episode we talk about: why she should currently be in Australia; making PPE from food waste; the importance of colour; her forgiving housemates; creating jewellery from seaweed; washing less; dealing with extreme personal trauma; accepting being different; and, last but by no means least, her obsession with sweat.
Suffice to say Alice is thoughtful, intelligent and incredibly honest. In other words she’s the perfect podcast guest.
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Thomas Thwaites was one of the first people I wanted to interview when I started Material Matters in 2019. I’m not entirely certain why it has taken so long to arrange a chat. The designer graduated from the Design Interactions course of Royal College of Art in 2009, with a piece that has gone on to become genuinely iconic.
In The Toaster Project, Thwaites set out to make this industrially manufactured product by hand. He mined his own iron ore, extracted copper from water and attempted to persuade BP to allow him onto an oil rig to bring back a jug of crude. His adventure was published as a (highly readable) book in 2011.
And not satisfied with that, a few years later this most unpredictable of creatives came up with another book. Goatman: How I took a Holiday from Being Human charted his quest to live his life as a goat and cross the Alps on all fours, eating grass along the route.
It was described by designer Anthony Dunne as ‘a wonderfully eccentric, at times absurd, but always thoughtful reflection on one man’s journey into the wilder regions of design.’
In this episode we talk about: becoming a father during the pandemic; deciding to create a toaster by hand; persuading people to do the strangest things; why his approach to design is like journalism (only more difficult); how his mother’s microwave ended up in the permanent collection of the V&A; hosting a TV show in South Korea; and, last but by no means least, his desire to become a goat.
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Gregg Buchbinder is the owner of US-based furniture manufacturer, Emeco. The Electrical Machine and Equipment Company was founded in 1944 and quickly created the 1006 chair for the US Navy. The piece, made out of recycled aluminium, has gone on to become a design classic but its story is far from straightforward.
By the time Buchbinder bought the firm from his father in 1998, its factory in Hanover, Pensylvania was on the edge of closure. He pumped its chest with a roster of high profile designers and pieces, starting with the Hudson chair by Philippe Starck in 2000.
Since then the company has gone on to work with the likes of Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Michael Young, Jasper Morrison and Nendo to name just a few.
Not only that but Emeco has been innovative with its use of materials too. In 2010, the company launched a new version of the Navy Chair made from 111 recycled Coca Cola bottles, finding a new use for plastic that otherwise would have been destined for landfill. Further research into the material led it to produce the On & On chair, designed by Barber Osgerby, and so called because it can be recycled endlessly.
This is a company with a singular vision – and that belongs to Gregg.
In this episode we talk about: manufacturing during a pandemic; the 77 processes (count ’em) needed to create the Navy chair; why it was made from recycled aluminium; working with the likes of Frank Gehry and Terence Conran; his relationship with his father; the shift in client base from the US military to up-market architects and designers; the effect Starck had on the company; collaborating with everyone from Coca Cola to the local Amish community; and taking copycats to court.
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Yinka Ilori started his practice from his parents’ back garden in 2011, after receiving a £3000 loan from the Prince’s Trust. Initially, the designer made his name by creating a string of chairs, notable for their strong use of colour that came from his Nigerian heritage, and a profound sense of narrative – the pieces were often based on the stories of old school friends and parables his parents told him as a child.
However, after creating his eponymous studio in 2017, the scale of his work started to change. Happy Street is a permanent installation in a Battersea underpass, for instance, while The Colour Palace – a timber pavilion inspired by markets in Lagos – was installed in the grounds of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2019. More recently his public art installation, in support of the NHS, at London’s Blackfriars brought joy at a moment when it was desperately needed. Written in bright pink letters it said simply: ‘Better Days Are Coming, I promise.’
According to architect Sir David Adjaye: ‘His furniture transcends just function and product and acts as a device for cultural memory.’ Yinka was awarded an MBE in the 2021 New Year’s Honours List.
In this episode we talk about: launching his new homeware collection during lockdown; discovering he was part of a new design movement on Dezeen; feeling he had to change his design language to fit in, before discovering his own voice; using chairs to tell stories; the power of colour; and why his work has got bigger. And, trust me, there’s lots more besides.
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Stuart Haygarth is an artist and designer who works with the stuff that other people throw away. After beginning his career as a photographer and illustrator, he burst onto the design scene in 2005 at Designersblock in London’s Shoreditch with a pair of extraordinary chandeliers. Millennium was made from a series of party poppers he’d collected on the first morning of the year 2000, while Tide comprised of flotsam and jetsam picked up over several years from the Kent coastline. Subsequently other pieces have used the tail lights of cars and spectacle frames.
He has exhibited around the globe, including: the V&A and Gallery Libby Sellers in London, The Lighthouse in Glasgow and DesignMiami. There has also been a solo show at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris.
As the critic and former director of the Design Museum, Deyan Sudjic, has written, Stuart ‘has a gift for placement and a colour sense that give the mundane a sumptuous, tactile quality… He finds richness in the traces that wind and weather leave on humble materials and that can give dignity to even the most tawdry of things.’
In this episode we talk about: his interest in abandoned objects; why he’s neither a designer nor a fine artist; his obsession with collecting; not being an eco-designer; walking 500 miles along England’s south coast to pick up detritus; the problem with German beaches; and trying to make sense of the world through his work.
You can find out more about Stuart here
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Juli Bolaños-Durman is an artist and sculptor best known for her work with cut and engraved recycled glass. She was born and raised in Costa Rica, initially studying graphic design. However, in 2010 she moved to Edinburgh to take an MA in her chosen material and her career took off.
Her beautifully colourful, joyfully decorative, genuinely jaunty pieces have been exhibited at the V&A in London, Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, Somerset’s Make Hauser & Wirth, Design Days Dubai and the Corning Glass Museum in the US. Over the years, she has also received commissions from the National Glass Centre Collection in Sunderland as well as the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.
In 2015 she won an Elle Decoration British Design Award, while in 2017 she was selected for the prestigious Jerwood Makers Open.
In this episode we talk about: staying creative during lockdown; growing up in Costa Rica; taking the decision to move to Scotland; the importance of play; how reuse is a rebellious act; her relationship with colour; making art more accessible; and why a simple jug might really want to be an astronaut (no, really it might).
You can learn more about Juli here
And you can sign up to my newsletter here
Usually on Material Matters I speak to a combination of designers, architects, artists or makers. This episode is a little bit different.
Steve Barron is a multi-award winning movie and television director, who made his name in the eighties with a slew of iconic videos featuring artists such as: Michael Jackson, Dire Straits, A-ha, Madonna, Paul McCartney, David Bowie and The Jam to name just a few. Subsequently, he segued into films – directing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Coneheads, and Mike Bassett: England manager – as well as the small screen, with recent credits including The Durrells on the BBC.
However, in 2016 he established Margent Farm on a 53-acre site in the Cambridgeshire countryside where he grows hemp – a rather magical but misunderstood crop, which has an array of possible uses and the potential to change all our lives for the better. Not only that but he used the crop as the key material to build his own farm house, designed by Practice Architecture.
In this episode we talk about: deciding to farm hemp in the first instance; its potential as a building material, in cooking, and for the fashion world; persuading the government of hemp’s import; why it should not be confused with Marijuana; Steve’s early career working with the likes of A-ha; and making the groundbreaking Billie Jean video with a certain Michael Jackson.
It’s eclectic stuff.
You can find out more about Margent Farm here
And you can sign up to my newsletter here
As regular listeners will know the idea behind the show is that I speak to a designer, maker, artist or architect about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discover how it changed their lives and careers. However, every once in a while I mix the format up a bit and talk to someone who has an overview of the design world. This is one of those occasions.
Paola Antonelli is senior curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as the institution’s founding director of Research and Development.
Over more than 25 years at the museum, she’s curated shows such as: Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design, Workspheres, and Design and the Elastic Mind. Most recently, she has been responsible for Broken Nature in Milan’s Triennale in 2019 and Neri Oxman: Material Ecology.
She has lectured and given talks all over the world and picked up a fistful of awards, including 2020’s London Design Medal.
In collaboration with writer Alice Rawsthorn, her latest project, entitled Design Emergency, is a series of interviews on Instagram, which investigate design’s importance during the pandemic.
In this episode we discuss: coping with the crisis at MoMA; why she co-created Design Emergency as the virus took hold; falling into curating; the importance of rejection; creating the museum’s first-ever website; and how computer code is as fragile as ceramics.
Find out more about MoMA here
And you can sign up to my newsletter here
Sarah Corbett is an award-winning campaigner and author. She began her career in activism at the ripe old age of three and went on to have a successful career working for NGOs including Christian Aid, Oxfam and the UK Government Department for International Development.
However, her life took a different turn in 2009, when she created the Craftivist Collective, which champions ‘gentle protesting’ and ‘slow activism’, often using stitching and embroidery as a fundamental part of its process.
Since then the organisation has grown in size and has thousands of members, while Sarah has delivered talks and lectures around the globe, launched a slew of successful campaigns and worked with the likes of the V&A, Secret Cinema and Unicef. She has also done a TEDx talk that has been seen by more than a million people.
In this episode we talk about: the art and strategy behind gentle protesting; why she became disillusioned with traditional forms of activism; picking up her first cross-stitch kit; the importance of beauty; successfully lobbying the board of M&S; and her problem with Pussyhats.
Phoebe Cummings is an artist who works in clay. Intriguingly, she uses the material in its raw form – so unfired and unglazed – for sculptures that are usually site specific. Inspired by nature (either real or imagined), her pieces are ornate, fragile and, often, decay over time – giving them a wistful dynamism. The writer, Imogen Greenhalgh, has described them rather lyrically as ‘holding bays for her thoughts and ideas’. This is clay as performance art but, perhaps most importantly, in her hands, the material becomes extremely beautiful.
Phoebe was the winner of the British Ceramics Biennial Award in 2011, picked up the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize in 2017 for a fountain entitled Triumph of the Immaterial, and was a finalist for the Arts Foundation 25th anniversary awards in 2018.
She’s had exhibitions at the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, a solo show at the University of Hawaii and residencies at Camden Arts Centre and the V&A, among other places.
In this episode we talk about: the relationship between clay and writing; finding solace in poetry during lockdown; her love of sci-fi and the importance of nature; how permanence is overrated; and why declaring herself bankrupt in her early twenties changed her work for the better.
It’s quietly mesmerising stuff.
Learn more about Phoebe's work here
And sign up to my newsletter here
Tomáš Libertíny is an artist and designer, who was born in Slovakia but currently lives and works in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He burst into the wider consciousness with his Honeycomb Vase during Milan’s Design Week in 2007. For the extraordinary piece, Libertíny constructed vase-shaped beehive scaffolds and, essentially, let nature take its course, in a process he dubbed ‘slow prototyping’. The beeswax work took one week, and approximately 40,000 bees, to create. It is now in MoMA’s permanent collection in New York.
Since then, the designer has worked with a range of other materials, including paper, which he turned on a lathe, ink from Bic biros, and hand-welded layers of stainless steel, as well as refining the Made by Bees series.
He has had major solo exhibitions in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Brussels, while his pieces are in the permanent collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Corning Museum of Glass and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, to name just a handful.
In this episode we discuss: becoming a chat show host over lockdown; his love of literature; the importance of copying; and how exactly art is like a cat (while design is much more like a dog). But mostly we talk about his relationship with bees – why he came to work with them in the first place, and how they are about to collaborate on architectural-scale projects.
Find out more about Tomáš here
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Peter Marigold is a London-based product designer who originally studied sculpture at Central St Martins before changing tack and enrolling at the Royal College of Art in 2004. Since then he has created gallery pieces for the likes of Libby Sellers and, more recently, Sarah Myerscough, had furniture and shelving manufactured by SCP and others, as well as creating a porcelain collection for Meissen.
Best known for his use of wood, in 2015 he launched a new product FORMcard, essentially a small piece of bio-plastic which can be heated and then moulded, allowing users to mend their own products.
His work has been exhibited at New York’s MoMA, Design Miami, Design Museum Holon, the V&A, and the Design Museum in London. He has also created commissions for the likes of Paul Smith, Bloomberg and The Museum of Childhood.
And if that wasn’t enough, he teaches design at London Metropolitan University.
In this episode we talk about: his issues with passive consumption and sustainability; his collecting habit; why he has an odd relationship with wood; his problem with art; and the joy of keeping a pet giant snail.
Perhaps most importantly, we discuss FORMcard, and how it can be used to ‘make, fix and modify the world around us’.
Learn more about Peter here
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Polly Morgan is an artist who has been hugely responsible for the recent revival of interest in taxidermy, an art form more readily associated with the Victorians, hunting trophies, and dusty bell jars. The one-time English Literature graduate and bar manager has set about upsetting those traditions, creating dark, but alluring, pieces that often place her creatures in disorientating environments.
In her hands, a prone, and obviously lifeless, bird dangles from a string attached to a single red balloon; a white rat can be found filling a champagne glass; and a stag’s belly is filled with tiny bats. As one critic wrote: ‘These animals are not restored to life, but so to speak, resuscitated into their deaths.’
Her latest show, entitled How to Behave at Home, opened at London’s Bomb Factory Art Foundation on 14 October 2020 and features snakes which spill out of cast concrete and polystyrene containers. Perhaps signalling a few direction.
In this episode we talk about: how local nail bars played a vital role in her new pieces; dealing with artist’s block and why she fell out of love with her own work; growing up in the Cotswolds and not going to art school; learning the craft of taxidermy; and being her own worst critic.
Learn more about Polly at: pollymorgan.co.uk
And learn more about me at: grantondesign.com
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/materialmatters)
Sean Sutcliffe co-founded high-end furniture maker, Benchmark, with the late Sir Terence Conran in the early ’80s, when he was fresh out of Parnham College. Initially, he produced work for The Conran Shop, Heals and Habitat, before helping Terence change the face of the London restaurant scene by creating furniture and fittings for Bibendum and Quaglino’s.
Subsequently, Benchmark has gone on to do commissions for the likes of the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the Eden Project, Vodafone’s world headquarters, and The Gherkin (or 30 St Mary Axe) to name just a few. Sutcliffe has also collaborated with the likes of Foster + Partners and David Rockwell and has just launched a new chair collection with the up-and-coming designer, Mac Collins.
Most recently, the company made all the pieces for the Connected project – organised by the American Hardwood Export Council and on show at the Design Museum until 14 October 2020 – which featured furniture made from designers such as, Thomas Heatherwick, Jaime Hayon, Maria Bruun and Ini Archibong, among others.
Starting with a team of three, the firm now employs 70 people. In other words, Sean has built a hugely successful business around skill, craft and, of course, wood.
In this episode we talk about: his relationship with Sir Terence; how his love of timber began; studying at the legendary Parnham College under John Makepeace; finding the heart of a craftsman; the future of work; and the importance of apprenticeships.
It’s searingly honest and really quite emotional.
Learn more about Benchmark at: benchmarkfurniture.com
And learn more about me at: grantondesign.com
Natsai Audrey Chieza is a designer who has built an extraordinary career by working with bacteria. She grew up in Zimbabwe, before moving to the UK at the age of 17 and training as an architect at Edinburgh University. Subsequently though, she changed tack and completed her MA on the Material Futures course at London’s Central Saint Martins.
Now through her experimental studio, Faber Futures, she operates between biology, design and our wider society, working, for instance, with microorganisms to find new, ecologically-sound, processes for dying our clothes.
As one magazine put it: ‘For Chieza, designing with biology presents unique opportunities to address significant ecological challenges, squaring the circle of sustainable production and finite resources.’
Her work has been exhibited in places such as the V&A, the London Design Museum, and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. She also has a wildly successful TED talk under her belt. More recently she has set up a multi-media storytelling platform with Ginkgo Bioworks, entitled Ferment TV, looking at the future of synthetic biology, Covid 19, Black Lives Matter and an array of other issues.
In this episode we discuss: growing up in Zimbabwe; racism in the design world; changing the way we consume; learning to work with bacteria; and why our future is biological. It’s kind of eclectic but hugely important.
Discover more about Natsai here.
And you can find out more about me and sign up to my newsletter here.
Julia Lohmann is a German-born designer who first came to prominence after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2004 with a chandelier fashioned from 50 preserved sheep stomachs. She followed that up with a stool made by casting the inside of a dead calf and, perhaps most famously, with her Cow Bench – essentially a sculpture of a cow’s body covered, anatomically correctly, with an entire hide. Both beautiful and a bit disturbing, the pieces were created as provocations, to make us consider the provenance of the stuff we wear and sit on everyday.
However, more recently, she has become known for her research into kelp. In 2013, Julia set up the Department of Seaweed during a six-month residency at London’s V&A, which allowed her to start exploring the potential of this extraordinary material and she has been working with it ever since.
In this episode we discuss: how she came across kelp in the first instance; inventing her own form of craft; the future role of museums; the importance of dissonance in her work; doing a guerrilla exhibition at Tate Modern with maggots; and falling out (briefly) with one of the greats of contemporary design.
Julia is currently professor of contemporary design at Aalto University in Finland, and directs her eponymous design practice from Helsinki, so this interview was conducted over the internet.
You can find out more about Julia’s work at: julialohmann.co.uk
And for more about me go to: grantondesign.com
Esna Su is an artist and jewellery designer, who was brought up in Turkey, near the Syrian border, before arriving in London in 2003.
Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2015, she has developed a reputation for her extraordinary pieces that attempt to highlight the plight of refugees. Her wearable sculptures curve and bulge around the body, using traditional Turkish techniques of hasir, twining, needlework and crochet, as well as materials such as leather, cotton and paper rush.
In her collection entitled The Burden I, for example, knitted vegetable tanned leather cord is moulded around some of her most cherished objects, leaving hollow shapes that in the artist’s words ‘contain memories and the loss of the past’.
It is stunning, deeply moving work that combines craft with protest and a deep-seated sense of empathy. As one writer put it: ‘Su actively seeks out both the horror and the beauty in her own cultural history as a way of unpicking contemporary issues surrounding cultural identities.’
In this episode, we talk about growing up in Turkey and the culture shock of coming to London; how the Syrian war has changed her home city of Antioch; why her mother didn’t want her to weave; the importance of memory in her pieces; and how making helped her recover from the death of her brother.
It’s a delicate, and often, really quite touching interview.
To find out more about Esna and her work: www.esnasu.co.uk
Dominic Wilcox is a London-based designer, artist and inventor. I first came across his work in 2002 when he created The War Bowl, in which he melted down plastic toy soldiers from a particular battle and turned them into, well, a bowl. Since then he has gone onto to create a singular space in the design world, with witty creations and drawings that are a combination of David Shrigley and Heath Robinson, with a dash of Vic and Bob thrown in to boot.
In Wilcox’s hands your shoes can tell you where to go, a crane comes out of a hat on top of your head and serves you breakfast, while your car is made of stained glass. Oh, and there are art exhibitions designed specifically for dogs.
But this isn’t whimsy. There is logic behind everything he does and a desire to turn the normal things around us into something interesting and surprising. To make life just a little bit better.
More recently, he has been turning his attention to schools, through the Little Inventors Project, which encourages children to use their creativity and come up with new ideas of their own. And this year he has published two books, Little Inventors go Green and Little Inventors in Space.
In this episode he discusses the importance of creativity; how he comes up with his ideas; presenting at the United Nations; his fear of failure; and how he could have been an athletics champion.
To find out more about Dominic's work: dominicwilcox.com
The final episode of this special ‘lockdown’ series of Material Matters features Alexis Peskine. I came across the Paris-based artist’s work at last year’s 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair at London’s Somerset House and described it in a subsequent Instagram post as ‘breathtaking’.
Rather than using canvas, Peskine takes an earth and coffee-stained timber base. And instead of paint, he hammers nails at different heights, which are often tipped with gold leaf to form the features of a face. The resulting portraits of black subjects – or Power Figures – are large scale and immensely detailed while being both beautiful and haunting at the same time. They also possess a wonderful sense of topography.
The work talks about race, migration, deportation, with recent pieces paying tribute to migrants undertaking dangerous boat journeys from North Africa to Europe. It is utterly extraordinary.
We talk about what the nails represent and his intricate process; his eclectic family background; why his talent for basketball took him to the US; and how black American culture effected his life. Perhaps most importantly we discuss the black experience and the blight of racism. ‘You make art about what touches you,’ he explains. ‘There are so many injustices to correct. It’s going to be a life struggle.’
You can find out more about Alexis’ work here: www.octobergallery.co.uk
In the fifth ‘lockdown special’ of Material Matters, I speak to the brilliant Lin Cheung. Lin is one of the world’s most intriguing jewellery designers, her output vacillating between installation pieces, work that contains political and social commentary, as well as high profile commissions, including the medals for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.
She picked up an Arts Foundation Award in 2001 and a Jerwood Contemporary Makers Award in 2008. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize, while in 2018 she won the prestigious Francoise van den Bosch Award. She is also a teacher on the jewellery course at Central Saint Martins.
As one critic said: ‘Lin’s work is a commentary on the human condition, a conveyer of the maker’s thoughts and feelings, a constant exploration into the meanings of jewellery.’
Over the years she has worked in a range of materials but, at least to begin with, we chat about her most recent collections, which have been made from stone.
During our interview Lin also touches on why jewellery matters and how it has the ability to comment on our hopes, beliefs and dreams; the background to her series of stone badges, entitled Delayed Reactions; the joy she finds in carving; and the relationship between ideas and materials. It’s delicate and rather lyrical stuff.
You can find out more about Lin’s work here: www.lincheung.co.uk
The fourth ‘lockdown special’ episode of Material Matters features the excellent Fernando Laposse. The up-and-coming designer has made his name in recent years with his colourfully beautiful veneer, Totomoxtle, which is made from the husks of Mexican corn grown in the tiny village of Tonahuixtla.
The product was included in last year’s exhibition Food: Bigger than the Plate at the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as being shortlisted for the London Design Museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year in 2018.
In this episode the Paris-born but Mexican-bred designer talks about the background of this deeply personal project, which involves macro-economics (and Mexico’s controversial free trade agreement with the US and Canada); agricultural heritage; global food culture; old family friends and childhood summer holidays; as well as craft and, of course, corn.
Importantly it illustrates how design thinking can genuinely make a difference to an entire community, showing that traditional techniques and ways of living can still thrive in the globalised economy.
As Fernando says his work ‘is preoccupied with sustainability, the loss of biodiversity, community disenfranchisement and the politics of food’. It's fascinating stuff.
You can find out more about Fernando and his work here: www.fernandolaposse.com
The third 'lockdown special' of Material Matters features the radical knitter Freddie Robins.
The common perception of knitting is that it’s a gentle, mindful activity. A thing you can do quietly in front of the television to relax after a hard day. Well Robins’ work is the antithesis of all that. It’s frequently dark, and always provocative. Her subject matter encompasses death, loss, religion, depression and challenges the perceived hierarchy of the art and craft worlds. It is work meant for the gallery rather than to be worn at home and comes with titles such as ‘Bad Mother’ and ‘I’m so Bloody Sad’. Kaffe Fassett she ain’t.
In this episode we discuss: the pivotal role her Godmother played in her childhood fascination with textiles; her loathing of conformity and the ‘danger of being ridden over by mediocrity’; her spell working in the fashion world; exploring the dark side through her work; having her pieces vandalised; and why knitting shouldn’t always be good for you. Not only that but we also chat about her appearance on Grand Designs with Kevin McCloud. So something for everybody I think.
You can find out more about Freddie’s here: freddierobins.com
NB: Like all our lockdown episodes this has been recorded over the internet rather than in our guest’s studio. As a result the sound quality isn’t quite where we’d like it to be all the time.
The second ‘lockdown special’ episode of Material Matters features the excellent Sheridan Coakley. The entrepreneur cut his teeth as a modern furniture dealer before founding the iconic SCP – or Sheridan Coakley Products – in London’s Shoreditch during the mid-eighties.
The manufacturer and retailer burst onto the nascent British design scene with pieces by Jasper Morrison and Matthew Hilton. In 1991 it produced the latter’s Balzac armchair, which has gone on to become a bona fide classic. Over the years the roll call of designers Sheridan has worked with includes: Konstantin Grcic, James Irvine, Michael Marriott, Donna Wilson, Rachel Whiteread and Reiko Kaneko to name just a handful. He has legitimate claims to be considered one of the most influential figures in British design over the past 35 years.
In this episode we talk about his early days; swapping bubblegum cards with artist Eduardo Paolozzi; meeting Jasper Morrison for the first time (in quite surprising circumstances); setting up business in unfashionable east London; copying classics; the state of British design; and the future of retail.
You can find out more about SCP here: scp.co.uk
(Please note this is a special episode made in really quite tricky circumstances, so the sound quality isn’t quite as good as normal.)
This is the first special ‘lockdown’ edition of Material Matters. As regular listeners will be aware, we usually record our interviews in the studio or workshop of our guest but, because of the virus, this wasn’t able to happen.
So instead this show was done over the internet with the brilliant Gareth Neal. The London-based designer and maker has exhibited pieces across the world and has work in the collections of the V&A and the Crafts Council.
Over the course of our chat, Gareth talks about his latest work in 3D printed sand; explains why designers should constantly be questioning themselves and their methods; and unpicks his eclectic collaborations with the likes of Orkney chair maker Kevin Gauld and cutting-edge architect, the late, great Zaha Hadid.
However, the real focus of our discussion is his lifelong relationship with timber – he illustrates how the material is both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure – and technology, with the self-confessed ‘gambler’ putting forward a case for why digital manufacturing should be considered a form of craft.
You can find out more about Gareth’s work here: garethneal.co.uk
(Please note this is a special episode made in distinctly tricky circumstances, so the sound quality isn’t quite a good as normal.)
Junko Mori is one of the world’s leading metal artists, who has work in the collections of The Goldsmiths’ Company, The British Museum and numerous others. The Japanese born blacksmith is renowned for her extraordinary work in mild steel or silver that aggregates hundreds of individually forged elements to create pieces that are often inspired by nature in general and cell division in particular. As she has said: ‘The uncontrollable beauty is the core of my concept.’
We talk about growing up in her native Japan; how she ended up fixing boilers in Tokyo for a living; why she decided to move to the UK in the 1990s; the fundamental differences between the two cultures she has lived in; and how she learned English by going to the local pub.
Most importantly we talk about metal and the meditative qualities of forging – it’s a bit like jogging only better apparently.
You can find out more about Junko’s work here: www.junkomori.com
Meanwhile her pieces can be purchased here: adriansassoon.com
It’s safe to say that ceramist Malene Hartmann Rasmussen is a one-off. I vividly remember first seeing one of her pieces in 2011. ‘If I Had a Heart I Could Love You’ was tucked away in a corner of an exhibition.
At its centre was a wood burning stove but instead of logs there were clay hearts sizzling in the fire. Phallic wooden stumps grew out of the walls, while on the floor a pair of ceramic snakes appeared to be taking a distinctly Machiavellian interest in a nearby squirrel. It was obviously profoundly influenced by the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm but also contained more than a hint of Pop Art as well as a dash of David Lynch’s seminal Twin Peaks.
In this conversation we talk about how growing up in provincial Denmark, with a family that had more than its fair share of issues, effected her work; her love of traditional Nordic fairytales in general and trolls in particular; a life-long fascination with film; and why her dog Django features so prominently in her work. Primarily though was focus on her love of clay and how the material has changed her life.
You can find out more about Malene’s work here: malenehartmannrasmussen.com
Car designer John Barnard is a Formula 1 legend. If motor sport is an orchestra of materials then John is its Simon Rattle. Over a garlanded career he worked for Ferrari (twice), Arrows and Prost. But his reputation was forged at McLaren, where he created the first car with a carbon fibre chassis. Lighter and safer, it won a lot of races too.
More recently he has been working on a range of carbon fibre furniture with Terence Woodgate for British manufacturer Established & Sons.
In this episode we talk about quite how controversial it was to use carbon in the early ’80s, with other designers (and the media) believing that in a crash the new car would go up in a cloud of black dust. We also discuss his relationships with some of the biggest names in the sport, including Ron Dennis, Alain Prost and the great Enzo Ferrari; his childhood in North Wembley; the importance of beauty in what can be a brutal business; the profound effect the death of Ayrton Senna had on F1; his innate understanding of a vast range of materials; as well as how he got the nickname The Prince of Darkness.
You can find out more about John’s work for Established & Sons here: establishedandsons.com
Daniel Charny is a design educator, curator and a creative consultant whose practice, From Now On, has worked with the likes of the Design Museum, developer U+I, and Heatherwick Studio.
However, he is arguably best known for co-founding Fixperts, an organisation which in the words of one writer ‘started out as a simple way of celebrating and clarifying the ingenuity and problem-solving power of design’. Since then though it has become rather more than that.
In this episode we talk about the importance of making and the ‘axis of care’ that runs the gamut from conservation to hacking; craft’s relationship with industry; his upbringing in Israel (and elsewhere); the time Ron Arad told him he was unemployable; and his surprise at the huge success his V&A exhibition, Power of Making, enjoyed.
Mostly though we focus on the success of Fixperts and why he wants everyone to be repairing things.
You can find out more about From Now On here: fromnowon.co.uk and there’s more about Fixperts here: fixing.education/fixperts
Shelley James is a globally renowned glass artist with a fascinating tale to tell. She was ensconced in the corporate branding world – working for the likes of Imagination and Landor – before an injury to her head, sustained in a bicycle accident, completely changed her life and perspective. After a six-year (yes, six-year) period of convalescence, she decided to leave the business world behind and study printmaking. However, after a trip to the National Glass Centre in Sunderland, she became smitten with the material and has set out to push its possibilities ever since.
Always looking to collaborate with new people from different disciplines, she has worked with surgeons at Bristol Eye Hospital, physicists at Imperial College, contemporary musicians and even Sir Roger Penrose, a mathematician and philosopher of science famed for (among other things) his research with Stephen Hawking. And she has managed all this despite only scraping an O Level in Maths.
Shelley also happens to be wonderfully articulate, which is handy for a podcast like this…
You can learn more about Shelley’s work here: shelleyjames.co.uk
Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby of Barber Osgerby are renowned industrial designers who have worked for the likes of Vitra, Knoll, Magis and Flos, as well as working on installations for brands such as BMW and Sony.
In this episode the intention was to chat about the role plywood played in their nascent careers with Iskon Plus. However, we ended up chewing the fat about (among other things): meeting at the Royal College of Art and nearly being kicked out; not slagging off Richard Rogers; the 'toxicity’ of contemporary design; how the British design scene has changed since they emerged in the ’90s; the importance of collaboration; their obsession with making; and why their work definitely, definitely isn’t ‘Blair-ite’.
En route we also go into detail about the creation of the Olympic torch for the 2012 Games, the thinking behind their revolutionary Tip Ton chair for Vitra, and their recent On & On stacking chair made of recycled plastic for the US manufacturer Emeco.
You can learn more about Jay and Ed’s work here: barberosgerby.com
Corinne Julius is a London-based journalist, broadcaster and curator who was born into design.
In this episode we discuss the history of her family firm, Hille, which revolutionised British furniture design after the Second World War, pioneering work from the likes of Robin Day and Fred Scott; her difficult time at the Royal College of Art and why she eventually felt compelled to leave; how she fell into journalism; and her introduction of craft to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Importantly too, we examine her curating work, which includes the Silver Speaks: Idea to Object exhibition at the V&A and Future Heritage, her annual showcase of cutting-edge craft and design at the high end interiors show, Decorex. For good measure we also touch on the relationship between art, craft and design, and the importance of thinking through making.
I think it’s safe to say that Corinne had some reservations about doing the interview but (I reckon) that the finished result is evocative and really rather personal.
Sebastian Cox is a young London-based furniture designer, who founded and co-directs his eponymous company. He is renowned for his use of traditionally coppiced hazel.
In this episode he talks about his ambitious new manifesto, Modern Life from Wilder Land, that sets out a more sustainable future for food production in the UK.
We chat about how we need to radically shift the way we use land; reducing our reliance on meat; how our woodlands need to be more effectively managed; and why design is a political act. Oh and we also discuss his issues with sheep and going to the gym.
Not only that but we also unpick his relationship with timber; the importance of coppicing to his practice; the pressure of making a bespoke desk for a certain Sir Terence Conran; his more recent experiments with mycelium; and his love of Northern Soul.
You can find out more about Sebastian and his company here: sebastiancox.co.uk
Barnaby Barford is a London-based artist and satirist. He has work in the collections of the V&A, Crafts Council and The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina.
He initially came to prominence with work that often turned the mirror onto contemporary culture. In this episode he talks about his relationship with the material that brought him to prominence, ceramic.
However, that’s only the start. Because he also discusses his feeling that he never quite fits in; his fascination with the British class system; why he creates pieces to understand the world around him; his desire to make life difficult for himself; and how his hatred of shopping spawned the extraordinary Tower of Babel installation that wowed crowds at London’s V&A in 2015.
We also hear plenty about his current obsession with the apple and his 2019 show at the David Gill Gallery, MORE MORE MORE. It’s an interview that manages to be both personal and wide-ranging.
You can learn more about Barnaby and his work here: barnabybarford.co.uk. While the link to his gallery is here: davidgillgallery.com.
Laura Youngson Coll is an artist and sculptor based in London. In this episode we talk about her relationship with vellum. Historically the calf’s, or goat’s skin, has been used to write on. The Magna Carta, for example, was inscribed on it as, for centuries, were the laws of this land. However, Youngson Coll, who has featured in Jerwood Makers Open and was shortlisted for the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize in 2017, manipulates the material to create extraordinarily intricate art works.
Her pieces have been inspired by lichen and the 19th-century biologist Ernst Haeckel. However, her most poignant work came in response to the death of her partner Richard from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
She discusses her background; coming into contact with vellum for the first time; how it changed her art; and why the material allowed her to make sense of tragedy. A little like her sculptures, it’s delicate, poignant, emotional and moving.
You can learn more about Laura and her work here: laurayoungsoncoll.co.uk
Andrew Waugh is the co-founder of award-winning architecture practice Waugh Thistleton. In this episode we discuss why he decided to design tall buildings out of wood – or cross-laminated timber to be precise.
In a wide-ranging conversation he lays out in no uncertain terms the issues the construction industry faces over sustainability, what it needs to do to avoid environmental calamity, and how CLT can provide some of the answers. En route he touches on the perceptions of the material and worries around wooden buildings post-Grenfell.
Not only that but he also explains how growing up in Milton Keynes led to his fascination with cars (he’s the proud owner of an electric one now); ponders on why he was such a lousy student; unpicks the influence British Library architect Sandy Wilson had on his career; and remembers what it was like designing hyper-fashionable bars and clubs in Shoreditch during the ’90s, while finding time to hang out with a generation of artists that became known as the YBAs.
There’s some important stuff in here. You can learn more about Waugh Thistleton’s work here: waughthistleton.com
Bethan Laura Wood is a London-based designer, who creates pieces for industry and the collectible market. In this episode she talks about her love for the material that made her name nearly a decade ago – laminate.
A wide-ranging (and occasionally hugely intimate) discussion touches on the Royal College of Art graduate’s fascination with turning the ubiquitous into the precious, as well as focussing on her love of colour.
However, she also tells us about her childhood growing up a little bit different in Shrewsbury; how being teased at school encouraged a sense of style that she has described as ‘Buckaroo meets Russian dolls’; and why her dyslexia may have encouraged a fascination with pattern.
We also hear about her mother’s collection of fake fruit, which can’t be a bad thing. It’s a fascinatingly personal story from a genuinely unique design talent.
You can learn more about Bethan and her work here: bethanlaurawood.com
Han Ates is the founder of the London-based craft jeans company Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, whose mantra is to ‘think global but act local’.
During our interview we discover what it was like leaving Istanbul for London in the late ’80s; how he started his career in clothing on the floor of his uncle’s factory as a presser; the problem of running his own business; and why he became disillusioned with the world of cheap fashion and decided to open his own restaurant instead.
That all happened before he started his small but perfectly formed company in Walthamstow that not only wants to make the best jeans in the world but is also attempting to persuade consumers to rethink how and why they buy things. Blackhorse Lane Ateliers employs local machinists and offers shared ownership to each employee. Its factory building also houses craftspeople working in artwork restoration, fashion design, weaving, and even contains a pop-up restaurant.
It’s wonderful stuff that encompasses the importance of repair and how memory can be stored in the materials we wear.
You can learn more about Blackhorse Lane Ateliers here: blackhorselane.com
At the time of recording Deyan Sudjic was the co-director of the London Design Museum. Although he has since stepped down from that role he remains a prolific author, essayist and curator and has been one of the most important figures in British design since the early ’80s.
Over the course of our chat we touch on an array of subjects, including: becoming an Oz Kid in the ’70s and the obscenity trial that ensued; growing up with his Yugoslavian parents; why he was a useless architecture student; starting Blueprintmagazine from his Docklands flat; taking over the Design Museum in difficult circumstances; and the decision to move the museum.
After controversy over allowing an arms dealer to use the space for a corporate evening, we also talk about how our arts institutions should be funded in the future. It is by turns eclectic, insightful and fascinating, from one of design’s most important voices.
You can learn more about the Design Museum here: designmuseum.org
Kate MccGwire is an award-winning sculptor whose installations have been shown around the world, including Harewood House in Yorkshire, The Harley Gallery at Welbeck, Messums Wiltshire, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida and Galerie Haas AG in Zürich.
In 2018 she won The Royal Academy of Arts, Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture.
In this episode the Royal College of Art graduate talks about her fascination with feathers. Not only that but during the interview we also unpick her profound interest in mythology, water and the human body, discovering how they have become threads through her sometimes dark but always extraordinary pieces.
During a remarkably frank interview the artist discusses how she only realised she was dyslexic in her late-thirties; what it was like growing up in Norfolk; her decision to drop out of interior design and become a fine artist; her close relationship with the pigeon keepers that provide her raw material; and why her pieces have nothing to do with taxidermy…
You can discover more about Kate and her work here: katemccgwire.com
Peter Ting is a ceramic designer, art director and the co-founder of gallery Ting-Ying. In this episode he talks about his life-long relationship with Blanc de Chine, to coincide with a new installation on the material that opened at London’s V&A Museum in 2019.
And it transpires he has quite a bit more to say too.
We discuss growing up in Hong Kong and moving to an English public school at the age of 16; how he discovered clay in the first instance and why he decided to work in Stoke-on-Trent. Not only that but he explains the craft behind manufacturing and how you can ‘hear’ if a factory is working efficiently.
Arguably most importantly, he discusses identity and an epiphany he had at a crossroads in Shanghai that led him to re-discover his Chinese heritage. Also did you know that his father used to be Bruce Lee’s dentist?
You can discover more about Peter and his work here: peterting.com and Ting-Ying can be found here: ting-ying.com
For this episode Material Matters travelled to Paris to chat to up-and-coming designer Marlene Huissoud about her relationship with propolis (or bee glue) – a substance made up of wax and resin that bees collect from vegetation and use to seal the honey frames inside their hive.
Working the material a little like glass, the Central Saint Martin’s graduate has created a series of cooly dark, vaguely threatening, vessels as well as a number of other objects.
During our chat we discuss what it was like growing up with her beekeeper father in the Alps; coming to study in England; why she decided recently to leave London for the French capital (in a word, Brexit); the reasons behind her decision to train as a nurse; creating pieces from her kitchen; and what she’s up to at during the 2019 London Design Festival.
You can find more information on Marlene and her work here: marlene-huissoud.com
Tom Dixon is one of the biggest names in design with ‘hubs’ in New York, Hong Kong SAR, China, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo.
In this episode we sat down in his King’s Cross complex to discuss his days welding scrap metal into pieces of baroque furniture but we got into quite a lot more besides. There’s his appearance on Top of the Pops, for example. And the time when some furniture he’d produced for shoe designer Patrick Cox fell apart at a dinner party. We hear what London used to be like in the ’80s and why he might have been the bass player for Pink Floyd.
He also talks about his decision to join Habitat, setting up with his eponymous brand, and the importance of food to his practice… as well as answering the biggest question of all: what exactly is the scent of Tom Dixon? You’ll have to listen to find out…
To learn more about Tom go to: www.tomdixon.net
Adam Nathaniel Furman is an artist and designer based in London. His work has been exhibited in Paris, New York, Milan, Rome, Eindhoven, Minneapolis, Portland, Kortrijk, Tel Aviv, Veszprem, Mumbai, Vienna and Glasgow as well as his home city, and is held in the collections of the Design Museum, Sir John Soane’s Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Abet Museum, and the Architectural Association.
He has also played a fundamental role in the recent re-appraisal of post-modernist architecture and has become an advocate of the need for colour in our built environment. Importantly too, over the years he has built a huge following on social media through his witty, trenchant and occasionally downright controversial posts.
This episode took the ‘critics’ slot’ in series two and covered issues such as: the Notre Dame blaze and the importance of heritage; queer aesthetics in architecture; reviving post-modernism’s reputation; the problem with unpaid internships... and his profound love of Nando’s.
To describe it as wide-ranging would not be doing it justice. To find out much more about Adam and his brilliantly colourful work here: adamnathanielfurman.com
Mourne Textiles is a rather brilliant hand-woven textile company based in Northern Ireland. It was founded by Gerd Hay-Edie after the Second World War and quickly went on to create pieces for the likes of Robin Day, Terence Conran, Liberty of London and fashion designer Sybil Connolly, becoming a staple of British modernism.
After some difficult years, it has re-emerged from the doldrums and appears to be in fine fettle under the aegis of Gerd’s grandson Mario Sierra.
In this episode Mario discusses how he grew up surrounded by hand-weaving in Northern Ireland; living through The Troubles; the legacy of his extraordinary grandmother; the joy of lumpy yarn; and how his family firm has re-emerged with the help of companies like fashion designer Margaret Howell and furniture manufacturer Pinch. Oh, and we have a quick natter about Brexit as well but don’t let that put you off.
You can find out more about Mourne and Mario here: mournetextiles.com
Sculptor Laura Ellen Bacon weaves extraordinary structures out of willow. Her work has been shown in venues such as the Saatchi Gallery, Chatsworth, New Art Centre, Somerset House, Sudeley Castle (for Sotheby’s) and Blackwell – The Arts and Crafts House in Cumbria.
Meanwhile, in 2017 she was a finalist of the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize at the V&A and was selected for Jerwood Contemporary Makers in 2010.
In this episode she talks about growing up on a fruit farm in Derbyshire; her childhood obsession with building a two-storey tree house; her fear of failure; her interest in form rather than material; and why she has never woven a basket. We also discover how her work has inspired a new piece of orchestral music, written by Helen Grime and performed at the Barbican by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
You can find out more about Laura’s work here: lauraellenbacon.com
Simone ten Hompel started her career as an apprentice blacksmith but has gone on to become one of the most influential metal artists in the world. Over the years she has had a major retrospective at the Ruthin Craft Centre and shown her work at fairs such as Collect at the Saatchi Gallery and What is Luxury? at London’s V&A.
In an extraordinary interview she discusses: her ‘alternative’ East London studio; getting her first tool box at the age of six; her childhood in West Germany; her ability to ‘read’ the colour grey; the ‘taste’ of metal; her fascination with spoons; and why she isn’t all that keen on technology.
Perhaps most importantly though we talk about her dyslexia – how she learned to cope at a school that didn’t really understand and why it has allowed her to see the world in a slightly different way. It’s wonderful, important stuff I reckon.
To learn more about Simone’s work go to: tenhompel.com or you can check out her gallery here: galleryso.com
James Shaw is an up-and-coming designer who has made a name for himself through his use of that most controversial of materials – plastic.
Using a gun-like mini-extruder, he produces sausages of the material that he subsequently manipulates to create a huge variety of products – from candlesticks to tables. His work is an attempt to change its perception, to persuade people to treasure plastic, rather than using it once before burying it in the ground,
During this episode we investigate our age of over-consumption and discuss the role of the designer as provocateur and activist. Not content with that, we also talk about how David Attenborough affected his career; why we should get rid of those green tops on our milk bottles; and discover the reasons behind him growing ‘plywood’ in a petri dish.
It’s fascinating, provocative stuff. You can learn more about James and his work here: jamesmichaelshaw.co.uk
Kate Malone is one of Britain’s most important ceramicists, with pieces in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Manchester Art Gallery and the V&A, to name just a few.
She works in many different areas, from nature-inspired gallery pieces to batch production mugs via public art and architectural commissions – as she puts it rather wonderfully, her projects range in value from £25 to £1.5 million.
In a discussion that can only be described as wide-ranging, we talk about her fascination with the natural world; how a near-deadly bout of meningitis changed her life for the better; her time as a TV judge on The Great Pottery Throwdown(clue: she was the one that didn’t burst into tears continually); and why exactly people used to mistake her for Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall.
The thread through it all is her love of clay and the joy she evidently finds in communicating with it. You can find out more about Kate here: katemaloneceramics.com or go to her galleryist’s site here: adriansassoon.com.
Bill Amberg was the first ever guest on the Material Matters podcast. The renowned leather designer is arguably best known for his bags but over the years he has increasingly worked on architectural projects with the likes of David Chipperfield at the RA and MUMA at Westminster Abbey. He is a master of his craft and a really good bloke to boot.
In this episode we talked about his upbringing in Northampton (did you know his mum used to work with Alvar Aalto?), learning his trade in Australia, forging a business in London during the ’80s, his love of architecture, and, most importantly, his life-long relationship with leather.
Oh we also had a quick chat about how he ended up working on oil rigs in the North Sea. You can find out more about Bill and his extraordinary studio here: www.billamberg.com
Every now and again I break the format of the podcast and speak to a critic or someone who can provide an overview of the field. In series one I featured the New York-based curator and commentator Glenn Adamson. The fact that he also had a new book out – entitled Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects – was an added bonus.
I think it’s safe to say that we cover a fair amount of turf in our conversation: the relationship between academia and craft, the role of museums in our digital age, middle class consumption, and how his grandfather Arthur became a rocket scientist (I know what you’re thinking but he really did). The thread running through all this is the importance of what he describes as ‘material intelligence’. Incidentally did you know that Glenn can play the Irish pipes? No, me neither.
You can find out more about Glenn and his work here: glennadamson.com
Peter Layton is one of the pioneers of the British studio glass movement.
During our interview Peter recounts an extraordinary life that has included fleeing Eastern Europe from the Nazis and settling as an immigrant in Bradford, studying ceramics under the likes of Ruth Duckworth (and not Dickinson as your tongue-tied host accidentally said) at the Central School of Art and Design, meeting the wildly influential glass artist Harvey Littleton while he was teaching in the US, and burning himself badly the first time he ever tried to work with the material.
Naturally enough he discusses his love of glass but, perhaps as importantly, how he has managed to keep his workshop and gallery London Glassblowing – employing 10 other makers – going successfully in the heart of a city intent on gentrification. It’s really quite inspiring.
Incidentally did you know that Peter’s son, Bart, wrote and directed the absolutely brilliant heist movie American Animals, which was released in 2018? They are one of those annoyingly talented families evidently.
You can find out more about Peter and London Glassblowing here: londonglassblowing.co.uk
Celia Pym is an artist who has taken darning out of the domestic sphere and into galleries and museums. In this episode we chat about a career that has encompassed studying sculpture at Harvard via jobs in teaching and nursing – as well as a stint at the Royal College of Art – to being a finalist of the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize in 2018.
One of the intriguing elements of Pym’s work is that she uses the process of darning and the objects that are brought to her to get to know people. As she told me in our discussion: ‘Early on I heard tons of stories about grief and I wasn’t sure if that was to do with me or the way I was asking the question… I realised it’s the damage that interested me sometimes more than the repair. I wondered if subconsciously I’d been communicating that. Instead of showing me a hole, I was saying show me the damage.’ Her story of how she started to repair her late great uncle’s jumper is genuinely emotional.
You can find out more about Celia here: celiapym.com
Edmund de Waal is that rarest of creatures, a potter who has broken out of the crafts world into the fine art market. He also happens to be a best-selling author of books such as The Hare with Amber Eyes and The White Road as well as a lucid and thoughtful speaker and curator. His work has been shown around the world in places such as the RA, Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, the V&A and the Ateneo Veneto in Venice. His first set design featured in the 2017/18 Season at the Royal Opera House for Yugen, a new ballet by choreographer Wayne McGregor.
In this episode we talk about a childhood he has described as ‘odd’ (the Pope and Princess Diana both came around the house but not at the same time apparently), the relationship between making and writing, dealing with critics, and why some pots are ‘needy’. The thread running through it all is his love of the white stuff – in his case, porcelain.
You can find out more about Edmund’s work here: edmunddewaal.com
Eleanor Lakelin appeared on in the first series of Material Matters and is one of the UK’s leading woodturners, concentrating on making an array of vessels since 2011. As she explains: ‘I’m fascinated by wood as a living, breathing substance with its own history of growth and struggle centuries beyond our own. I’m particularly inspired by the organic mayhem and creative possibilities of burred wood. This proliferation of cells, formed over decades or even centuries as a reaction to stress or as a healing mechanism is a rare, mysterious and beautiful act of nature.’
During our chat Eleanor tells me about her childhood growing up in North Wales, why she initially decided to take up teaching, her early career as a furniture maker, and how a visit to the Collect fair changed her life.
Most importantly though we talked timber and her fascination with the material. Oddly we also managed to touch on dentistry too.
To find out more about Eleanor and her work here: eleanorlakelin.com
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