The Indus Valley area has a longstanding tradition of stitch-craft and textile weaving, but in recent years the quality of workmanship has deteriorated due to a lack of emotional connection between the makers and their craft. As part of her PhD at the Royal College of Art, Seher Mirza set up a project not only to […]
Craft workers and product designers are rapidly becoming the new elite of the art world. Master craftspeople, working with basic materials like wood, natural resin, wax, stone, metal, glass, leather, wool, paper or clay, create practical objects, as opposed to functionless art. Practicality and ease of manufacture is seen to outweigh the need for refined […]
The Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi sees imperfection as a form of beauty – a product can actually be enhanced by its irregularity. Here we take a look at some designs which celebrate the imperfection of handcrafted work. In the spirit of our previous post, Kaixi Lin reuses discarded materals to create functional woven textiles. Inspired […]
The Designs of the Year 2014 exhibition, sponsored by international law firm Bird & Bird, starts today and runs through till 25th August. The Design Award nominators are practitioners, critics and academics, scouting for the very best designs – seventy-six of which have been chosen in this the seventh year of the awards. The disparate array […]
Oscar Medley-Whitfield creates pottery from Thames mud. Based beside the river in SE1, he calls his creations Wharfeware. There are many problems associated with using mud rather than clay. The drying out and tempering process makes the mud crack and it can’t be modelled and manipulated like clay. Oscar has created his own casting process, […]
As climate chaos becomes a more regular feature of our lives, designers will increasingly employ icy effects and frosty finishes in their work. The candle holder above, made from natural rock crystal, will come in handy during power outages caused by freak storm conditions. The glittery, paillette-covered bag by Mawi will cast sparkles of light onto snow […]
Pearls have fascinated for centuries and the popularity of the exhibition at the V&A reflects the universality of their appeal. Pearls are the inspiration for one of our product trends for Autumn/Winter 2014-15. In Elizabethan times, pearls were both a symbol of virginity and of fertility. The latest pearl embellished products capture this curious dichotomy […]