Latest Woodturning Podcast Episodes
Ernest Scheyder on lithium, mining, and the politics behind going green.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - June 10, 2024 05:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsErnest Scheyder is an author and senior correspondent for Reuters. His new book, The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives, looks at the impact of the green transition in the US – and, more particularly, the tensions over the increasing need to mine for metals to d...
Adi Toch on why she buries copper.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - May 23, 2024 05:00 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsAdi Toch is one of the world’s most fascinating metal artists, who over the years has buried her pieces for months on end before digging them up, and even made them react to sound. She has also taken part in collaborations with furniture makers and glass artists. Adi has work in the permanent ...
Human Nature's Jonathan Smales on mining the Anthropocene, and building in timber and Hempcrete at The Phoenix.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - May 14, 2024 03:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsJonathan Smales is a housing developer like few others. He is the co-founder and executive chairman of Human Nature, whose new project, The Phoenix, on the outskirts of Lewes, East Sussex in the UK, has just won planning permission. What makes the development different? The Phoenix will contai...
Bert Frank's Adam Yeats on manufacturing in post-Brexit Britain.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - May 07, 2024 06:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsAdam Yeats is co-founder and managing director of Bert Frank, one of the UK’s leading lighting companies. Yeats started the brand with designer, Robbie Llewellyn, in 2013. Since then it has gone from strength to strength, opening a showroom in London’s Clerkenwell in 2019, exhibiting at home and...
Ptolemy Mann on colour, weaving, and painting.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - April 30, 2024 03:00 - 57 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsPtolemy Mann is a British artist who came to widespread attention with her woven textile pieces, often stretched across a frame and notable for her extraordinary use of colour. More recently, her practice shifted and she has turned to painting on paper with fascinating – and inevitably colourf...
Fairphone's Bas van Abel on repair, longevity, and conflict minerals.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - February 19, 2024 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsBas 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, ...
John Tuomey on his childhood, becoming an architect, and his beautiful new memoir.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - February 12, 2024 07:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsThere 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. ...
John Tuomey on his childhood and becoming an architect.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - February 12, 2024 07:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsThere 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. ...
Sara Grady and Alice Robinson on making ethical leather.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - February 05, 2024 07:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsSara 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. Essentiall...
Sara Grady and Alice Robinson on British Pasture Leather.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - February 05, 2024 07:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsSara 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. Essentiall...
Florian Gadsby on clay and becoming a potter.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - January 29, 2024 07:00 - 58 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsFlorian 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 ...
Christien Meindertsma on wool (and linoleum).
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - January 22, 2024 06:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsChristien 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 ...
Christien Meinderstma on wool (and linoleum).
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - January 22, 2024 06:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsChristien 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 ...
Simone Brewster on 2023, her breakthrough year.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - December 27, 2023 07:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsThis 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, Simon...
Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert on hot glass
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - December 20, 2023 07:00 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsJeremy 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 ...
Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert on hot glass.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - December 20, 2023 07:00 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsJeremy 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 ...
Neil Thomas on building with bamboo.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - November 28, 2023 07:00 - 56 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsNeil 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...
Caroline Till on material futures, regenerative design, and lots more.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - October 24, 2023 06:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsCaroline 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 ...
Tom Lloyd and Luke Pearson on their material change.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - September 18, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsTom 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. T...
Goldfinger’s Marie Carlisle on wood and social good.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - September 13, 2023 06:00 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsMarie 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. ...
Michael Marriott on resourceful design and his fascination with materials.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - September 05, 2023 06:00 - 58 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsMy 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 fu...
Alice Kettle on embroidery.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - August 29, 2023 06:00 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsAlice 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 ...
Beatie Wolfe on making music material again and the power of art.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - June 28, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsBeatie 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 dev...
Ndidi Ekubia on silver and her extraordinary, liquid-like vessels.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - June 06, 2023 06:00 - 50 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsNdidi 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 ...
Ercol chairman, Henry Tadros, on elm, beech, ash and keeping his company relevant.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - May 30, 2023 06:00 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsHenry 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 – tha...
Donna Wilson on knitting, becoming a brand, and creating her extraordinary creatures.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - May 22, 2023 06:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsDonna 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 hav...
Julian Stair on pots, death, and using cremated ashes in his work.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - May 15, 2023 06:00 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsJulian 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 Marc...
Paul Cocksedge on coal, metal, light, concrete and much more besides.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - March 17, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsPaul 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 fold...
Ineke Hans on designing for the circular economy.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - March 06, 2023 07:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsIneke 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...
Darren Appiagyei on turning Banksia nuts and waste wood.
Material Matters with Grant Gibson - February 21, 2023 07:00 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsDarren 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. ...