From established to new names, the exhibition at the Geffrye Museum draws attention to a plethora of contemporary East London design talent
Photo credit: Mandy Williams
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”, William Morris proclaimed in 1880, and it’s this mantle around which the new design exhibition at the Geffrye Museum, useful + beautiful: Contemporary Design For The Home, has been carefully curated.
It’s an important year for the Geffrye, which celebrates its centenary as a museum as well as the 300th anniversary of the construction of the almshouses in which it is housed. useful + beautiful takes inspiration from the Geffrye’s founding principle: showcasing the craftmanship and skill of local furniture makers and designers in London’s East End. 100 years have passed, but East London remains the epicentre of British furniture design, as reflected by the works on display, many of which originate from workshops in Hackney. In a broad stroke, the exhibition also presents works from established industry figures such as Jasper Morrison, Doshi Levien, Jay Barber and Edward Osgerby – the former also helped curator Alexandra Goddard in selecting objects for the exhibition – to upcoming designers fresh from university.
Though not exhaustive (such a task would be impossible) the exhibition offers tastes of key design pieces from the area, designed and manufactured since 2009. Echoing Morris’s quote, everything in it exemplifies the design ideal of functional beauty, from Barber Osgerby’s famous Tipton chair and Levien’s Capo chair to table designs by Tomas Alonso, Bethan Laura Wood and wallpaper by Tracy Kendall.
The exhibition also touches on the topical: 3D printing rears its plastic head in the form of Assa Aschach’s (quite lovely) Femur chair. Produced using algorithms – and based on the principle that the human skeleton is an excellent example of good design in practice – I’m forced to (begrudgingly) admit that this form of conceptual 3D printing is particularly interesting, as is Joni and David Steiner’s Edie child’s stool, an example of increasingly popular open source design – where plans are made publicly available, and can be downloaded and printed at local stations using laser-cutters, eradicating the manufacturer’s carbon footprints (as much as possible).
The focus isn’t solely on furniture design: wallpaper designer Tracy Tubb’s fantastic origami wallpaper is a nod to bespoke, handcrafted design and stirs a genuine sense of wonder at its creation. Likewise, London-based Silo Studios’ tactile moulded glasses are testament to process: created by blowing coloured glass into textured, hand-sewn fireproof sack moulds, each piece is unique in shape. Their glass vessels offer an insight into how industrial processes can be used in handcrafted ways to produce arguably imperfect, though beautiful, design items.
I also got a kick from graduate Leala Dymond’s bungee sofa, which looks directly at practical problems and the individual user’s requirements in a playful, though aesthetically simple way. Bungee chords hold cushions, television remotes and TV guides in place, and can be moved around per the user’s needs. The result, for me, is charming. Dymond is a talent to watch, and it’s this mix of emerging and established designers that useful + beautiful really succeeds in capturing.
Useful + beautiful runs at the Geffrye Museum until 25 August 2014 at 136 Kingsland Road, Hoxton, E2 8EA. Discounted tickets priced at £10/£7 (concessions) are available for their panel discussion ‘An Ideal Home?’ tonight at 7pm, where industry insiders – Carmel Allen, Creative Director at Heal’s; Wayne Hemingway, Gareth Williams, formerly Senior Tutor at Royal College of Art; Sean Cook, Head of Design at First Base; and Kirsty Minns, Creative Director at The Future Laboratory – debate what is good design for the home, now and in the future. Quote ‘Port’ when ordering via email or telephone: 020 7739 9893. Click for further details on the event
