GRADUATE DESIGN
For her final dispatch on place & making, Helen Voce has travelled online to view this year’s degree shows across Scotland to report on contemporary responses to the local. Summer 2020.
Episode 5 In her latest dispatch looking at place & making, Helen Voce heads to the Outer Hebrides to explore the history & the success of Harris Tweed
Helena Britt celebrates the printed textiles of 1980s Glasgow School of Art graduate, Fraser Taylor and the formation of The Cloth, a brilliantly vibrant design studio. Summer 2020
Episode Three – The Grimsay Boat, its making & its history. Helen Voce heads to the Western Isles in her latest dispatch on boat-building
Alice Jacobs set up Flux, a laser & CNC workshop in Glasgow in 2012. Here she talks expanding her business, her new premises Land Rovers & music. Spring 2020
Episode Two – The Orkney Chair, its history & its making. Helen Voce, in her second dispatch exploring place and making from around Scotland, talks to Kevin Gauld, the celebrated chair-maker.
“I’ve always been a closet Ivor Novello fan, ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ has both a seasonal and epochal relevance right now!’ DES speaks to Christopher Breward, newly-appointed director of the National Museums Scotland.
Spring 2020
Rachel Simmonds explores the common currency of Scottish and Scandinavian architecture, looking at the work of Reima & Railia Pietila and Basil Spence.
Spring 2020
‘When I say I am an upholsterer, I often get a blank expression. You can see people turning the word over in their head, slightly puzzled. It’s funny, every day most of us sit on upholstered furniture’. Proud upholsterer, Peter Holmes discusses firm favourites, collaboration & Pilates. Spring 2020
Inspired by modular furniture units, particularly mid 20th century German and Scandinavian designs, Becky Šik uses welded mesh to create light, geometric and adjustable shelving units. The powder-coated units can be combined with shelves made in varying sizes from a number of different materials such as wood, birch plywood (which can be hand finished with coloured edging) and steel, expanding the unit’s functions and varying its aesthetic. The hanging mechanisms offer a playful solution to height adjustability and adds colour. Becky Šik lives and […]
Nick Ross explores the relationship between ‘fictional history’ and how it shapes our understanding of culture, identity and nationhood. Since living in Sweden, Ross has increasingly become interested in looking at how cultural icons and particular materials, shape our reading of a particular place or landscape. Ross is interested in investigating facts and happenings that have […]
Inspired by Scandinavian and Japanese design and craft, Daniel Brophy emulates a design approach that is pared down and lean. He always considers the rhythm of a piece: the space between each leg, the differing distances between each wooden spoke in his Side Chair. In doing this Brophy emphasises negative space, subtle angles and tapering lines. Brophy specialises in ebonising, a process of darkening wood. He applies a homemade solution […]
Included Design creates inclusively designed furniture for people with dementia and other cognitive and physical impairments. The Gingko Table has been designed with just a single central table leg, thus allowing users to sit easily at the table. The steel constructed central leg and the solid steel base prevent the table from tilting, while the solid walnut edging creates a strong contrast with the table’s surface so clearly marking the table’s edge. Tested and approved by people […]
Lynne MacLachlan’s practice takes an experimental approach to digital design and fabrication tools, pushing their capabilities to produce intriguing jewellery and interior objects. State of the art 3D printing technologies are combined with meticulous hand-finishing techniques, such as dyeing, metalwork and construction, to explore optical illusions, geometry and colour effects. This hybridisation harnesses the precision and complexity of digital tools with craftsmanship […]
The Ellipse Armchair by Peter Holmes is inspired by the curves and drama of Art Deco architecture and design. Wanting to create a chair that would envelop the sitter, Holmes constructed a low-slung wooden frame that combines beech and birch plywood with turned beech legs. A consideration from the start was the upholstery fabric. The fabric needed to have […]
The DES 2019 Handout is designed by Lucy Grainge and forms part of an ongoing body of work informed by swimming pools and the woggle, a lozenge-shaped float that acts as a swimming aid. As a part-time swimming teacher, Grainge frequently uses woggles to provide support and safety for novice swimmers. Long fascinated by water, the human body in water and how the flexibility of the woggle allows it to echo and support the human form, Grainge’s pattern-based design […]
Frequently referencing Art Deco, Adams employs materials more readily associated with industrial processes than the decorative arts. The reverse is true of White Roses, an upholstered bench originally commissioned by The Collection Museum in Lincoln. Adams created the piece in response to a painting of the same name by the late 19th century French painter, Henri Fantin-Latour. Using green and white tie dye, matching the colour scheme of the original painting, Adams creates an unusual upholstery pattern that echoes marbling, a kind of trompe l’oeil on fabric. By elevating the industrial, the non-valuable, DIY and everyday materials, Adams teases at cultural […]
On moving to Dundee from France in 2013, Aymeric Renoud became fascinated by Scotland’s brewing and distilling industry and in particular, draff, the so-called unwanted leftover ‘wet grains’. Often used to supplement animal feed, Renoud began to explore the possibilities of using draff as material in furniture design. He embarked on a four-year programme of research and development before launching draff studio in Dundee in 2017. At DES 2018, Renoud debuted his first piece of furniture, a draff stool. Renoud has now further refined the process of turning the spent […]
Steff Norwood works between the disciplines of design and sculpture. His work is hybrid by nature. He imposes a singular aesthetical approach through his choice of materials, form and colour. This process is applied to both conceptual and commercial projects. Paint and the painted surface is omnipresent in Norwood’s work. Norwood draws inspiration from diverse sources such as folk […]
Pewter, once known as ‘poor man’s silver’, is thought to have first been made in the Near East during the Bronze Age around 3000BC. A malleable alloy principally consisting of tin and a small amount of copper, metallurgists have speculated that pewter could have been discovered by chance. Looking back to a time when drinking cups were frequently made of pewter and were treasured personal items, Morgan’s Ode to Pewter presents a collection of functional vessels both cast in pewter and bronze. Simply cast using a camping stove and a frying […]