Material Matters with Grant Gibson

This is the first special ‘lockdown’ edition of Material Matters. As regular listeners will be aware, we usually record our interviews in the studio or workshop of our guest but, because of the virus, this wasn’t able to happen. So instead this show was done over the internet with the brilliant Gareth Neal. The London-based designer and maker has exhibited pieces across the world and has work in t...

Junko Mori is one of the world’s leading metal artists, who has work in the collections of The Goldsmiths’ Company, The British Museum and numerous others. The Japanese born blacksmith is renowned for her extraordinary work in mild steel or silver that aggregates hundreds of individually forged elements to create pieces that are often inspired by nature in general and cell division in particular....

It’s safe to say that ceramist Malene Hartmann Rasmussen is a one-off. I vividly remember first seeing one of her pieces in 2011. ‘If I Had a Heart I Could Love You’ was tucked away in a corner of an exhibition.  At its centre was a wood burning stove but instead of logs there were clay hearts sizzling in the fire. Phallic wooden stumps grew out of the walls, while on the floor a pair of ceramic s...

Car designer John Barnard is a Formula 1 legend. If motor sport is an orchestra of materials then John is its Simon Rattle. Over a garlanded career he worked for Ferrari (twice), Arrows and Prost. But his reputation was forged at McLaren, where he created the first car with a carbon fibre chassis. Lighter and safer, it won a lot of races too.  More recently he has been working on a range of carbon...

Daniel Charny is a design educator, curator and a creative consultant whose practice, From Now On, has worked with the likes of the Design Museum, developer U+I, and Heatherwick Studio.  However, he is arguably best known for co-founding Fixperts, an organisation which in the words of one writer ‘started out as a simple way of celebrating and clarifying the ingenuity and problem-solving power of d...

Shelley James is a globally renowned glass artist with a fascinating tale to tell. She was ensconced in the corporate branding world – working for the likes of Imagination and Landor – before an injury to her head, sustained in a bicycle accident, completely changed her life and perspective. After a six-year (yes, six-year) period of convalescence, she decided to leave the business world behind an...

Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby of Barber Osgerby are renowned industrial designers who have worked for the likes of Vitra, Knoll, Magis and Flos, as well as working on installations for brands such as BMW and Sony.   In this episode the intention was to chat about the role plywood played in their nascent careers with Iskon Plus. However, we ended up chewing the fat about (among other things): meeti...

Corinne Julius is a London-based journalist, broadcaster and curator who was born into design.  In this episode we discuss the history of her family firm, Hille, which revolutionised British furniture design after the Second World War, pioneering work from the likes of Robin Day and Fred Scott; her difficult time at the Royal College of Art and why she eventually felt compelled to leave; how she f...

Sebastian Cox is a young London-based furniture designer, who founded and co-directs his eponymous company. He is renowned for his use of traditionally coppiced hazel. In this episode he talks about his ambitious new manifesto, Modern Life from Wilder Land , that sets out a more sustainable future for food production in the UK.  We chat about how we need to radically shift the way we use land; red...

Barnaby Barford is a London-based artist and satirist. He has work in the collections of the V&A, Crafts Council and The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina.  He initially came to prominence with work that often turned the mirror onto contemporary culture. In this episode he talks about his relationship with the material that brought him to prominence, ceramic. However, that’s only the star...

Laura Youngson Coll is an artist and sculptor based in London. In this episode we talk about her relationship with vellum. Historically the calf’s, or goat’s skin, has been used to write on. The Magna Carta, for example, was inscribed on it as, for centuries, were the laws of this land. However, Youngson Coll, who has featured in Jerwood Makers Open and was shortlisted for the Woman’s Hour Craft P...

Andrew Waugh is the co-founder of award-winning architecture practice Waugh Thistleton. In this episode we  discuss why he decided to design tall buildings out of wood – or cross-laminated timber to be precise.  In a wide-ranging conversation he lays out in no uncertain terms the issues the construction industry faces over sustainability, what it needs to do to avoid environmental calamity, and ho...

Bethan Laura Wood is a London-based designer, who creates pieces for industry and the collectible market. In this episode she talks about her love for the material that made her name nearly a decade ago – laminate.  A wide-ranging (and occasionally hugely intimate) discussion touches on the Royal College of Art graduate’s fascination with turning the ubiquitous into the precious, as well as focuss...

Han Ates is the founder of the London-based craft jeans company Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, whose mantra is to ‘think global but act local’.  During our interview we discover what it was like leaving Istanbul for London in the late ’80s; how he started his career in clothing on the floor of his uncle’s factory as a presser; the problem of running his own business; and why he became disillusioned wit...

At the time of recording Deyan Sudjic was the co-director of the London Design Museum. Although he has since stepped down from that role he remains a prolific author, essayist and curator and has been one of the most important figures in British design since the early ’80s. Over the course of our chat we touch on an array of subjects, including: becoming an Oz Kid in the ’70s and the obscenity tri...

Kate MccGwire is an award-winning sculptor whose installations have been shown around the world, including Harewood House in Yorkshire, The Harley Gallery at Welbeck, Messums Wiltshire, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida and Galerie Haas AG in Zürich.  In 2018 she won The Royal Academy of Arts, Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture. In this episode the Royal College of Art graduate talks about her fasc...

Peter Ting is a ceramic designer, art director and the co-founder of gallery Ting-Ying. In this episode he talks about his life-long relationship with Blanc de Chine, to coincide with a new installation on the material that opened at London’s V&A Museum in 2019.  And it transpires he has quite a bit more to say too.  We discuss growing up in Hong Kong and moving to an English public school at...

For this episode Material Matters travelled to Paris to chat to up-and-coming designer Marlene Huissoud about her relationship with propolis (or bee glue) – a substance made up of wax and resin that bees collect from vegetation and use to seal the honey frames inside their hive.  Working the material a little like glass, the Central Saint Martin’s graduate has created a series of cooly dark, vague...

Tom Dixon is one of the biggest names in design with ‘hubs’ in New York, Hong Kong SAR, China, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo. In this episode we sat down in his King’s Cross complex to discuss his days welding scrap metal into pieces of baroque furniture but we got into quite a lot more besides. There’s his appearance on Top of the Pops, for example. And the time when some furniture he’d produced...

Adam Nathaniel Furman is an artist and designer based in London. His work has been exhibited in Paris, New York, Milan, Rome, Eindhoven, Minneapolis, Portland, Kortrijk, Tel Aviv, Veszprem, Mumbai, Vienna and Glasgow as well as his home city, and is held in the collections of the Design Museum, Sir John Soane’s Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Abet Museum, and the Architectural Association....

Mourne Textiles is a rather brilliant hand-woven textile company based in Northern Ireland. It was founded by Gerd Hay-Edie after the Second World War and quickly went on to create pieces for the likes of Robin Day, Terence Conran, Liberty of London and fashion designer Sybil Connolly, becoming a staple of British modernism.  After some difficult years, it has re-emerged from the doldrums and appe...

Sculptor Laura Ellen Bacon weaves extraordinary structures out of willow. Her work has been shown in venues such as the Saatchi Gallery, Chatsworth, New Art Centre, Somerset House, Sudeley Castle (for Sotheby’s) and Blackwell – The Arts and Crafts House in Cumbria. Meanwhile, in 2017 she was a finalist of the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize at the V&A and was selected for Jerwood Contemporary Makers...

Simone ten Hompel started her career as an apprentice blacksmith but has gone on to become one of the most influential metal artists in the world. Over the years she has had a major retrospective at the Ruthin Craft Centre and shown her work at fairs such as Collect at the Saatchi Gallery and What is Luxury? at London’s V&A.  In an extraordinary interview she discusses: her ‘alternative’ East...

James Shaw is an up-and-coming designer who has made a name for himself through his use of that most controversial of materials – plastic.  Using a gun-like mini-extruder, he produces sausages of the material that he subsequently manipulates to create a huge variety of products – from candlesticks to tables. His work is an attempt to change its perception, to persuade people to treasure plastic, r...

Kate Malone is one of Britain’s most important ceramicists, with pieces in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Manchester Art Gallery and the V&A, to name just a few. She works in many different areas, from nature-inspired gallery pieces to batch production mugs via public art and architectural commissions – as she puts it rather wonderfully, her projects range in value from £...