Material Matters With Grant Gibson

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

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 p

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.

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 firs

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 th

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.Support the show

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 uncomfo

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 incr

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

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 ho

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 pi

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 proc

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 fo

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 ni

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 mo

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 drop

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, w

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 devote

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;

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 t