Material Matters with Grant Gibson
131 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsIn Material Matters, host Grant Gibson talks to a designer, maker, artist, architect, engineer, or scientist about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discovers how it changed their lives and careers.
Follow us on Instagram @materialmatters.design and our website www.materialmatters.design
The Material Matters fair will run from 18-21 September 2024 at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, as part of the London Design Festival.
Material Matters is produced and published by Delizia Media Ltd.
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Episodes
Fairphone's Bas van Abel on repair, longevity, and conflict minerals.
February 19, 2024 04:00 - 1 hour - 42.2 MBBas van Abel founded Fairphone in 2013. The company attempts to transform the way our smartphones are manufactured, by reducing e-waste, sourcing conflict-free minerals, and improving working conditions in its supply chain. It creates a product consumers are encouraged to keep longer and which, importantly, they can also repair themselves. Fairphone was an immediate hit, attracting 25,000 orders when it launched its first smartphone via a crowd-funding campaign. It has now sold over half a...
John Tuomey on his childhood and becoming an architect.
February 12, 2024 07:00 - 55 minutes - 38.5 MBThere have been over 100 episodes of Material Matters but, for listeners who might be new to all this, the idea is that I speak to a designer, maker, artist, or architect about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discover how it changed their lives and careers. However, once in a while I break my own self-imposed format and interview someone I’ve always wanted to meet. This is one of those episodes. Architect John Tuomey is the co-founder of multi-award wi...
Sara Grady and Alice Robinson on British Pasture Leather.
February 05, 2024 07:00 - 55 minutes - 38.5 MBSara Grady and Alice Robinson co-founded British Pasture Leather in 2020. The duo aim in their own words ‘to link leather with exemplary farming and, in doing so, to redefine leather as an agricultural product’. All of which means creating a new network of systems within the industry. Essentially, the pair are attempting to make the material we buy traceable in the same way food is. In 2022, they created an exhibition, entitled Leather from British Pastures, during the London Design Festiv...
Florian Gadsby on clay and becoming a potter.
January 29, 2024 07:00 - 58 minutes - 40.2 MBFlorian Gadsby is a bit of a phenomenon. The ceramicist currently has a new show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and has also published a memoir, By My Hands, that charts his formative years with clay, including apprenticeships in the UK and, most intriguingly, Japan. Essentially, it unpicks his route to becoming a fully, fledged professional potter, while at the same time, providing tips about his thinking and process. Since he started on Instagram a decade ago, Florian has built up a ...
Christien Meinderstma on wool (and linoleum).
January 22, 2024 06:00 - 51 minutes - 35.4 MBChristien Meinderstma is a Dutch designer who has a fascination with materials. She currently has an installation at the V&A, entitled Re-forming Waste, which shows new work based around her interest in linoleum, as well as technological advances with the material she has described as her first love, wool. Christien came to wider attention initially when she graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003, with a book that catalogued a week’s worth of objects confiscated at security ch...
Christien Meindertsma on wool (and linoleum).
January 22, 2024 06:00 - 51 minutes - 35.4 MBChristien Meindertsma is a Dutch designer who has a fascination with materials. She currently has an installation at the V&A, entitled Re-forming Waste, which shows new work based around her interest in linoleum, as well as technological advances with the material she has described as her first love, wool. Christien came to wider attention initially when she graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003, with a book that catalogued a week’s worth of objects confiscated at security ch...
Simone Brewster on 2023, her breakthrough year.
December 27, 2023 07:00 - 59 minutes - 40.6 MBThis special festive episode is slightly different because, as we come to the end of 2023, we thought it would be interesting to talk to someone who has had a breakthrough year. And we couldn’t think of anyone that description fits better than UK-based designer, Simone Brewster. In June, Simone held her first solo exhibition at the NOW Gallery on London’s Greenwich Peninsular, entitled The Shape of Things. While, in September, her installation Spirit of Place with cork company, Amorim, ope...
Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert on hot glass
December 20, 2023 07:00 - 53 minutes - 37.1 MBJeremy 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 t...
Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert on hot glass.
December 20, 2023 07:00 - 53 minutes - 37.1 MBJeremy 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 t...
Neil Thomas on building with bamboo.
November 28, 2023 07:00 - 56 minutes - 38.8 MBNeil 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 archite...
Caroline Till on material futures, regenerative design, and lots more.
October 24, 2023 06:00 - 59 minutes - 40.7 MBCaroline 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...
Tom Lloyd and Luke Pearson on their material change.
September 18, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour - 44.7 MBTom 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, incl...
Goldfinger’s Marie Carlisle on wood and social good.
September 13, 2023 06:00 - 48 minutes - 33.5 MBMarie 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 ...
Michael Marriott on resourceful design and his fascination with materials.
September 05, 2023 06:00 - 58 minutes - 40.6 MBMy 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 wor...
Alice Kettle on embroidery.
August 29, 2023 06:00 - 53 minutes - 37.1 MBAlice 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 als...
Beatie Wolfe on making music material again and the power of art.
June 28, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour - 49.2 MBBeatie 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;...
Ndidi Ekubia on silver and her extraordinary, liquid-like vessels.
June 06, 2023 06:00 - 50 minutes - 34.9 MBNdidi 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 vessel...
Ercol chairman, Henry Tadros, on elm, beech, ash and keeping his company relevant.
May 30, 2023 06:00 - 47 minutes - 32.4 MBHenry 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 i...
Donna Wilson on knitting, becoming a brand, and creating her extraordinary creatures.
May 22, 2023 06:00 - 51 minutes - 35.1 MBDonna 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 201...
Julian Stair on pots, death, and using cremated ashes in his work.
May 15, 2023 06:00 - 54 minutes - 37.4 MBJulian 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 th...
Paul Cocksedge on coal, metal, light, concrete and much more besides.
March 17, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutes - 36.7 MBPaul 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 Carpen...
Ineke Hans on designing for the circular economy.
March 06, 2023 07:00 - 49 minutes - 34.2 MBIneke 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 i...
Darren Appiagyei on turning Banksia nuts and waste wood.
February 21, 2023 07:00 - 37 minutes - 25.5 MBDarren 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 enablin...
Summer Islam on building with biomaterials.
February 14, 2023 07:00 - 55 minutes - 38 MBSummer 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 timb...
Keith Brymer Jones on his life in clay and TV stardom.
February 07, 2023 12:00 - 48 minutes - 33.1 MBKeith 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 Sh...
Peter Apps on Aluminium Composite Material and the Grenfell Tower fire.
December 16, 2022 07:00 - 55 minutes - 38.1 MBPeter 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, sys...
Smile Plastics’ Rosalie McMillan and Adam Fairweather on recycling plastic and reviving a company.
December 12, 2022 07:00 - 57 minutes - 39.4 MBRosalie 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, t...
Aric Chen on design and energy, giving microbes agency, and lots more.
November 24, 2022 07:00 - 43 minutes - 30.1 MBAric 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 Cura...
Professor Rebecca Earley on polyester, people and pragmatism.
November 17, 2022 07:00 - 57 minutes - 39.8 MBProfessor 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 recen...
LAYER's Benjamin Hubert on creating and sustaining a career in design.
September 20, 2022 05:00 - 45 minutes - 31 MBAs 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, tra...
Hannah and Justin Floyd on wool (and the new material they created from it).
September 13, 2022 06:00 - 48 minutes - 33.5 MBHannah 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 inst...
Hannah and Justin Floyd on wool (and the new material they've created from it).
September 13, 2022 06:00 - 48 minutes - 33.5 MBHannah 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 inst...
Simon Hasan on Cuir Bouilli (or boiled leather).
September 06, 2022 06:00 - 50 minutes - 35.1 MBSimon 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 ...
Michael Young on a life in design.
August 30, 2022 06:00 - 50 minutes - 34.6 MBMichael 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 M...
Majeda Clarke on weaving.
July 20, 2022 06:00 - 58 minutes - 40.1 MBMajeda 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 c...
Carl Clerkin on mending and narrative.
June 16, 2022 05:00 - 51 minutes - 35.4 MBIn 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 narrati...
Juliette Bigley on metal.
May 31, 2022 05:00 - 45 minutes - 31.6 MBJuliette 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 incred...
Nigel Coates on a life in architecture.
May 18, 2022 05:00 - 1 hour - 51.7 MBNigel 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 Sheffi...
Nigel Coates on a life in architecture.
May 18, 2022 05:00 - 1 hour - 51.7 MBNigel 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 Sheffi...
Richard McVetis on embroidery.
May 10, 2022 05:00 - 46 minutes - 32.1 MBRichard 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 tan...
Richard McVetis on embroidery.
May 10, 2022 05:00 - 46 minutes - 32.1 MBRichard 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 tan...
Elaine Yan Ling Ng on egg shells.
March 17, 2022 07:00 - 46 minutes - 32.2 MBElaine 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 Gu...
Elaine Yan Ling Ng on eggshells.
March 17, 2022 07:00 - 46 minutes - 32.2 MBElaine 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 Gu...
Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien on card and colour.
March 04, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 43.1 MBNipa 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, e...
Aardman's Peter Lord on Plasticine.
February 24, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 48 MBPeter 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, T...
Alison Britton on clay.
February 17, 2022 06:00 - 42 minutes - 29.3 MBAlison 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 excus...
Tom Raffield on steam bending.
February 10, 2022 08:00 - 39 minutes - 27 MBTom 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...
Lucy Sparrow on felt.
December 08, 2021 09:00 - 52 minutes - 36 MBLucy 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 laun...
Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg on nature and technology.
December 01, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 47 MBDr 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 st...
Robert Penn on bread – and the politics behind baking.
November 24, 2021 08:00 - 48 minutes - 33.2 MBRobert 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 an...