Monday 27 April 2009

Molto Bella!























After a whistlestop tour of the Milan Furniture Show, I feel energised and insipired even more than before. Highlights being work from Danish, Dutch and German exhibits, a selection of favourites shown above. Craft and process were key themes I noticed, which are areas I am looking into in my own work.

Links:
http://www.zpstudio.it/
http://www.rawcolor.nl/welcome/
http://www.pepeheykoop.nl/
http://www.llotllov.de/

Tuesday 14 April 2009

That's Design!

Just a quick one to direct your attention to the Falmouth page of the Milan furniture show website, we are exhibiting in That's Design! which is a showcase for students and young professionals from around the world. The scarf is finished and is flying over (cargo - no first class seats left) this week, and I'll be joining it next Tuesday. Exciting times. Penguin book jacket is being sent off tomorrow too - its all go!

http://www.thatsdesign.it/?page_id=1099

Thursday 2 April 2009

Ghost of a Teacup














Fellow knit enthusiast and member of the MA Design cohort Sarah Hunt and I have been collaborating on a piece for the Milan Furniture Show. We've been having study sessions fuelled by tea for a while now as we bounce ideas around nicely and are interested in the same things, namely the relationship of craft and technology. This project started with Sarah coming to me wanting some decorative forms for a box for a set of teacups she had designed, but over the course of the weekend we decided to use acrylic inlay to make silhouettes of saucers and spoons for the teacups. Because it is all being designed on the computer using 3D Studio Max, we can import vectors from Illustrator without too many problems, and will be making the main body of the box out of ash wood using a CNC miller, and the inlays with the laser cutter. This is a test Sarah made on tuesday with some foam, pictures of the final piece to follow shortly, as soon as we can get the machines to behave! It has been a great experience, I've enjoyed working with someone from another discipline, expecially as we can understand each other and are on a similar wavelength, and the potential for more work together and the alternative mediums is very attractive.

FTSE Scarf


















As part of my investigation into the role and perception of craft in today's society, I have been knitting a scarf based on the daily results of the FTSE100 stock market. I wanted to make something that depicts a form of data that is normally viewed in a digital context, constantly being updated and viewed by people all around the world, in a format that is associated with very traditionalist methods of making. Simply, it is a knitted bar graph of the FTSE results of the last three months that can be worn round the neck, or displayed flat to make it more readable. This aspect, the way in which it is read and how much information can be gathered, is an area I would like to explore more into. It has been chosen to go to Milan Furniture Show as part of the UCF MA Design stand, which is great. I get to go to Italy! I'm not sure on the stand design, so don't know how it is going to be displayed, all I know is that it will be next to a collaborative piece I am doing with Sarah Hunt, a student on MA Contemporary Craft. See next post for more on this piece, it is hopefully the beginning of an exciting collaborative partnership!