The top talent to look out for at New Designers 2018
The top talent to look out for at New Designers 2018
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1/5 Woven fabrics
Majeda Clarke, 47, a woven textile artist born in Bangladesh, has lived in London for 25 years. Her studio is at Cockpit Arts in Deptford, where, after graduating, she spent two years on a Clothworkers/Cockpit Arts Award, weaving and sampling all her designs. She makes bespoke scarves and window panels and her blankets are woven in a Welsh mill. "Woven motifs and patterns are often very familiar," she says. "The challenge is to adapt them in a contemporary way and also reflect my multicultural upbringing."
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2/5 Sustainable prints
Lucy Grainge, 23, is from Manchester, living in Glasgow, with a BA in Communication Design from the prestigious Glasgow School of Art that was sadly gutted by fire this month. Her work focuses on dyslexia, which she has experienced from an early age. She is showing stencil-based risograph prints — "an affordable and sustainable way of printing" — priced from £15, plus tote bags and other textiles. Grainge has also produced a book, titled A Different Way of Brain Processing, and is looking for a publisher.
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3/5 Ceramics with mystery
Verity Howard, 25, a ceramic artist, graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2015. She shares a studio in her home town of Hereford, exhibiting her slab-built sculptures nationally and internationally. She will bring eight to new designers, at prices from £400. Howard is inspired by Alfred Watkins, a Hereford naturalist of the early 1900s who recorded local ley lines. "I am responding to his photographs and maps," she says. "There's a sense of stillness and mystery with something of a sinister undertone."
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4/5 Fine furniture
Andy King, 40, from Bristol, trained as a fine furniture maker in 2015 and set up his company with business partner Rob Webbon last year. "I make free-standing and fitted furniture with simple shapes elevated by texture and colour," he says. On show are bespoke commissions such as this two door sideboard with mustard yellow doors, handmade in solid English oak and "blending a Seventies retro revival with Art Deco". A similar bedside table is £995. An updated school desk has traditional sliding dovetail joinery that reveals generous storage with moving dividers.
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5/5 Textiles inspired by the grey light of the north
Hayley McCrirrick, from the Scottish Borders, studied textile design at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, graduating last year. Now she makes small runs of hand-dyed and screen-printed textiles at her studio in a converted coach house in Selkirk, which looks out upon a loch. "The ragged horizons and beautiful grey light of the north" inspire her work. She is showing large-scale floor cushions at £170, each one unique, handprinted using a special dye technique. Also on view will be large canvasses: "I'm subverting screen printing," she explains. "I don't follow exacting ‘repeats’ but embrace irregularities so that no two prints are the same."
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The top new talent in British design, craft, interiors and architecture arrives in Islington today for the New Designers show, which runs for two weeks and will feature the work of more than 3,000 graduates from 200 design courses nationwide.
Event director Chris Hall says: “Since 1985 it has been an annual showcase for the people, products and trends that will define our design future.”
The event is open to all. Make a beeline for the agreeably air-conditioned balcony — most of the Victorian glass-roofed venue does not have air con — and explore the section called One Year In.
Here are goods to buy now or commission, from adventurous designers who started up just a year ago or less.
Rheanna Lingham is curating One Year In for the fourth time. She has her own fashion, accessories and homewares store, Luna & Curious, in Shoreditch. “There is no other show in the UK that offers such a good platform for start-up businesses,” she says.
This year’s One Year In will be the biggest yet, with more than 90 designers showing.
Week One covers jewellery, textiles, metalsmithing, ceramics, glass, craft and fashion. Week Two is devoted to furniture, graphic design, illustration, animation and product design.
Flick through the gallery above for our pick of the best young creatives and book tickets online.
