Material Matters With Grant Gibson

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

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 genesi

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;

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, d

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

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 Dage

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

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 ceremon

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

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 fl

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; creatin

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

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; th

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 recycle

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; disc

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 ‘revolut

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)

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 poli

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

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