Material Matters With Grant Gibson

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

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