Sebastian Herkner

'Sebastian Herkner has his own studio, where he designs lamps and furniture, among other things. His product designs combine current trends and familiar forms, challenge these forms, and reveal his own creative and playful approaches to materials, craft and technology. His work is shown at a variety of fairs and exhibitions.'

Piece Bell-Light
Date 2009
Source www.sebastianherkner.com

I like the honest combination of new and old. The use of the light fittings themselves shifted only slightly out of context is refreshing.

Katachi: The Subtle Form from Japan

This exquisitely curated exhibition which I saw at the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin made me really think about the unity of aesthetics and function in everyday usable objects.

'Lacquered dishes, bamboo lamps, paper fans, wooden bowls and iron teapots: The exhibition “Katachi – The Subtle Form from Japan”, which runs from 3 March to 2 May 2010, will be presenting over 100 examples of contemporary product design from Japan. The exhibits combine design and craftsmanship, the traditional and the contemporary. Whereas some have been manufactured in almost the same manner for centuries, others interpret traditional products in entirely new ways. Masterly craftsmanship and the sensitive treatment of materials, forms reduced to their bare essentials, and absolute functionality lend these objects their timeless aesthetic appeal.'

Text www.bauhaus.de

Reinhard Dienes (furniture designer) Last great exhibition you saw: KATACHI, at the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt, about the relationship between Japanese craft and industrial design. (Katachi is the Japanese word for form.) There were objects from the 1300s until 2007, my favorite being the chasens, bamboo whisks used for making tea. It’s amazing how they’re made, by twisting the same material in different directions. You can use one of these whisks often, and it won’t lose its form — all these properties from a very simple item made from bamboo. Incredible.

Source www.sightunseen.com

Restless

Ron Arad's retrospective at the Barbican.

'Ron Arad: Restless explores three decades of Arad’s designs from his early post-punk approach of assembling products from readymade parts to his exclusive and highly polished sculptural furnishings. Featuring a dramatic exhibition design by Ron Arad Associates using the latest LED display technology, Ron Arad: Restless also includes architectural designs and immediately recognisable mass produced pieces. Highlighting the significance of experimentation, process and materials in Arad’s work, the exhibition offers a timely insight into the development of objects from initial idea and fabrication to finished design.'

Text www.barbican.org.uk



Designer Ron Arad
Date 2010
Source www.youtube.com

Here the degree of experimentation and combination of materials and processes really excited me. I was really fascinated by the juxtaposition of well crafted precise pieces against the more intuitive haphazard aesthetic of others. Knowing when to excerise control and restraint or when to be more fluid is something I aim to consider more within my own work.

Kurt Schwitters

'The Merzbau in Hannover was a fantastically constructed interior, as bewildering as it was abstract. The walls and ceiling were covered with a diversity of three - dimensional shapes and the room itself was crowded with materials and objects - or "spoils and relics", as Schwitters himself put it - which were contained in countless nooks and grottoes, some of them totally obstructed by later additions to the work, with the result that their contents then existed only in one's memory of the Merzbau in one of its former states.'

Source www.merzbau.org

Title Reconstructions of the Merzbau, Fig. 1a

Artist Kurt Schwitters
Desicription Merzbau
© DACS 2007
Photo: Wilhelm Redemann, 1933
Source www.tate.org.uk

Schwitters is much more famous for the Merzbau but I find myself drawn to the following two pieces by Schwitters that make me think about how work is presented or described. Note these are described as 'constructed painting'.

Title NA
Artist Kurt Schwitters
Description constructed painting with frame
From a photograph taken by Cecil Touchon at the Modern Art Museum in Mexico City Aug 2003
Source www.kurtschwitters.org

Re-Use of materials

The re-use of materials is no new concept. In choosing most materials for re-use I find that already a creative mind somewhere has exploited my material of choice. I am interested in the journey of materials, that is the processes that a material goes through until it ends up in a place where I gain access to it. This is a physical processing of the raw material itself as well as a physical journey of where it has been in the world, another intriguing side of this journey is to do with these materials coming into contact. For example,

Material 1: Pallet

Material 2: Tin Cans

There are many examples of re-use of these materials individually but I find it interesting to romanticise the idea that these two materials which I have obtained from separate places had met previously. It is highly unlikely that these commercial size baked beans cans had been transported on this particular pallet but the concept remains to be explored.

I sketched the design for two side tables with the intention of using the pallet that I had found. My design of a wooden frame (pallet) which supports a metal (tin can) top is informed by the idea that the pallet would have supported the tin cans through transport. The following few sketches illustrate this.

Diagram

Frame

Top

Design Copyright © 2010 Youssef Daoud

Clear, Green and Brown glass

This is the first attempt at resolving the module system that exists in my head. I imagine this system might be self supporting, for application primarily in decorative sculptural lighting but it could have applications beyond this realm. I imagine the modules would be cast using bottles and I guess the effect would be enhanced with an application in lighting.

Design Copyright © 2010 Youssef Daoud

It is starting to remind me of a clumsy version of a lego set, not sure how I'm feeling about it.

More cutlery...

Title Cutlery Candelabra
Artist Osian Batyka-Williams
Description
Discarded cutlery is used to create natural forms in these candelabras. Floral shadows are created by the silhouette of the piece, growing larger the lower the candles burn.

Title Cutlery Chair
Artist Osian Batyka-Williams
Description
Some restaurants change their cutlery as often as every nine months. The Cutlery Chair utilises these hard to recycle, unwanted cutlery pieces as building blocks to create truly unique pieces of functional furniture.
Source www.osianbatykawilliams.com

I'm not sure what the fascination with cutlery is, could it be that this is one of the most personal yet public of everyday objects? Designed to be used over and over again, here this intended cycle stops or continues in a different way?