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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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.
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