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

This is a design that explores both narrative and production methods. The bed was made in Birmingham by a company who would normally produce standard park benches. They were able to manufacture the bed using their existing tooling jigs, skills and material suppliers, for a fraction of the price of a hand built bed, made by other UK joinery firms. They were also able to include other lovely details such as the engraved text in the headboard and they explained the bed would be “vandal proof”.

There are associations of sleeping on a park bench that provide a narrative to fall asleep to.

The first sleeping rough bed was made in 2000.

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.

Talco produce metal tool boxes in the west midlands with a relatively low perceived value. We developed this bathroom cabinet to be manufacturable using the companies existing manufacturing capability.. The project was conceived to offer an established British manufacturing company new market opportunities. Where a toolbox would normally wholesale at £8, we thought a bathroom cabinet might wholesale at £25 to home-ware retailers. The higher perceived value increases the profit whilst working in similar materials and production techniques.

The toolbox cabinet also makes reference to the fact that a bathroom is full of tools for personal maintenance.

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