The rug was launched at a solo show in Tokyo called ‘Lovable, Alternative Folk Design, during their design week in December 2007.

Link to rug on Trico’s website

A photo frame for two photographs that employs the action of turning a portrait face down when you’re up to something you don’t want it to see. The dovetail wood working joint makes associations to lovebirds and ‘fitting neatly’; appropriate connections with the mythologies of complicated love lives.

The pictures are installed by sliding the dovetail joint along which exposes the one open side to the frame.

The picture frame was developed for the exhibition ‘Them Indoors’ at the Geffrye Museum. 2005.

The ceramics are produced in the usual way, with transfers applied to standard white ceramics, but this time with each piece ‘wearing’ the wrong ceramic transfer. The saucer has the graphic that would normally wrap around the cup, while the cup has the saucer transfer. The large plate has the graphic that fits the side plate and the smaller plate has only room for a section of the larger plates decoration.

I have not ‘designed’ anything here. Simply interfered with the production process. The result is to see more clearly the the people on the production line as they are given the small freedom to choose how the product will look. Each object it’s different.

The Chinese Whispers crockery set was designed for Trico in 2001.

Click here to go to the cups and saucers on Trico’s website

Click here to go to the sideplates on Trico’s website

Click here to go to the plates on Trico’s website

I wiped stop-out varnish onto mirrors and allowed the varnish to run as it dried. The mirrors were later emersed in a bath of sugar acid, which etched into the glass that was not protected with varnish. The mirrors were then cleaned of varnish to reveal a series of unique patterns that resemble condensation. The design now produced in Japan by screen printing in a matt clear lacquer.

Click here for the mirrors on Trico’s website

One of my early experiments with manufacturing intervention combined with narrative from 2000. The crockery was produced by a well-known ceramics factory in Stoke on Trent where I was allowed to interrupt the production line in mid flow. I sat and bit the plates myself as they were produced, leaving them to continue through production to be picked up in quality control.

The final result appears as if someone has been so hungry that they have tried to eat the plates.

Cutlery that has been laser cut and formed in stainless steel. Produced in a limited batch of fifty sets.

The Fold cutlery set is one of a range of laser cut stainless steel products I developed after graduating from my silver-smithing course. The range included salad servers, egg cup and spoon, napkin rings and coasters as well as the fob off key-rings now produced by Trico. All the pieces have a underlying concern with the use of off cuts which I now believe to have been a hang up from working in silver, rather than for any eco reasons.

The Negative range was developed in 1997

Produced by a C.N.C. punching and folding machine, in sheet steel, using the dimensions and construction language of manila envelopes.

Designed in collaboration with Carl Clerkin.

This design grew from the observation that when identical objects roll off the production line, it is the mistakes that have more quality and personality.

With the difficult craft of glassblowing, the more skilled you are, the more perfect or identical your blown pieces will be. The better you are at the craft, the more your output will look like a machine had produced them. It seems a shame that one of the aims of the skill is to hide itself.

The ‘Drunk’ wine glass was blown by highly skilled craftsmen, but only after they had been drinking wine. It shows a little more clearly that it has been blown by a craftsman and not a machine. The wine forces the mistakes and the otherwise standard glass takes on the character of drinking wine.

Link to glass on Trico’s website

The mitre breadboard help with the cutting of bread at 90 and 45 degrees. The ability to cut bread straight has always been a competitive sport in my family. The salt and pepper holder is a cross between a marking out guage and an oil stone box. Both standard Emir products. The toilet roll holder was named ‘Billy’s willy’ after Bill, who had managed Emir for many years.

These objects were all subtle variations of tools already produced by Emir. Our interventions celebrated the honest utility of tools, the quality of an old british tool making company and also attempted to move Emir towards a more lucrative domestic furnishings market.

Designed in collaboration with Carl Clerkin for the exhibition Industry of One.