What Women Make» ldf

WWM debuts at the London Design Festival!! We’re on!

Chauncey Zalkin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:52:48 +0000

Looking for innovative, envelope-pushing, culturally diverse female designers to come forward and join us to show at the 2010 London Design Festival.

We have 8 award winning or otherwise lauded designers, most of which have been written up right here on What Women Make, some brand new to WWM, coming together to show at the 2010 London Design Festival, from New York to Tokyo to China to the Netherlands, we’ve all come together. We’ve made it affordable for the best of the best of the emerging to come together and produce a high taste level, next level event and represent what women are creating and contributing all over the world. Now we’re missing one ingredient very important to the WWM vision: sustainable design / eco-design, ecologically sound design or design that solves some of the environmental and social problems plaguing this earth.

If you are an industrial designer or other female innovator or artist that could fall into the design category and you want to be considered for inclusion in a What Women Make design exhibit to run in London between September 23 – September 26th, please send me your portfolio as soon as you can. We have our core group but we’d like a few more superb thinkers to join us.

DESIGNERS, please send us your goods.

FRIENDS OF DESIGNERS, Please spread the word.

You can find us here now on the London Design Festival listing of events.

Looking forward,

Chauncey

Women at work: Insights from Women on the Front Lines of Polish Design

Chauncey Zalkin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:32:27 +0000

book by Gian Luca Amadei

Out of the ashes of a more austere and oppressive time comes a design landscape unfettered by a design past, one that is swiftly moving toward a vibrant future.

Gian Luca Amadei, product editor of Blueprint magazine, saw a spark in one designer from Poland who spoke with infectious enthusiasm about what she saw emerging on the home front. His curiousity led to an invitation to visit. When he got there, he was struck by the number of women leading the change. That discovery led to his book, Discovering Women in Polish Design.

: Sophia Lamp and (earring) Storage by Babaakc

I attended the launch during London Design Week but also had the pleasure of meeting Luca the previous evening where we talked heatedly about our mutual interest in the people behind the goods. After all, design is about people – the handiwork of the creator, human ingenuity, and the social ramifications of design in use. All too often design is presented as a faceless object. The book, which I read in full on the plane back to Barcelona, shines a light on the human factor, the people, the emotion, and the problem solving ability of design, in this case inside of a culture in transition.

Quotes from the panel discussion moderated by Blueprint editor, Vicky Richardson.

Women’s work

Ewa Golebiowska

‘(In the past in Poland), men were engineers and ran businesses. Women were in charge of decoration, family, nesting. Women can see in 3D. We are good organizers. We are synchronizing from the time we get up to the time we go to sleep. That’s why we’re good for the future of design.’

‘To me the friction is happening on the border of male and female energies. We used to live by “the Maria code”. Poland, Spain, countries where Catholicism was strong. Women got a place on the train. You carried bags for the women. Men constructed. Women were aesthetic.’

An industry in transition

‘Students focus on the creative object more than mass production. They don’t know about operations. Up until now, Polish design has been mostly handmade. Recycled. Not expensive. Not sophisticated. It is seen as fresh and exciting but we need to focus.’

‘(In the past in Poland), our everyday life was uncomfortable. Our shoes. Our buses. Design is the quality of everyday life. Polish design is still underground We honor Italian and Scandinavian design. We need Polish design in Poland.’

‘Know-how is being brought back to Poland. In Holland, everything’s been designed and re-designed where in Poland everything has never been done. (That is exciting.).

Zuzanna Skalska

‘We have (no old habits to break) so we can implement design thinking in everything. We are developing marketing strategy for design. Design of objects that go hand in hand with marketing strategy. We can (employ) design thinking from beginning to end.’

‘Polish designers are returning to their country more and more out of choice to improve Polish design instead of staying in the already established design cities.’

‘Poland’s position is unique. We have a system in Poland. The PPP, a private public partnership where the government partners with the private sector. The government acts as facilitator for the know-how that already exists in the private sector. There is money allocated specifically for design. Design used to be part of the department of culture but is now in the department of economics. Anything that is a key driver for economic growth gets the money so there is plenty of money for design initiatives. So for example, you have a private design school with 100% government money behind it. This is causing rapid change. We can move to new systems right away. We can take huge steps quickly. Design has become a tool to make Poland competitive.’ –trend expert, Zuzanna Skalska

(Indirect) Quotes from the book:

Beza Project’s Chestnut Stool

‘magazines should publish more challenging and avant-garde items and stories to push their readership to look harder, deeper.’

‘Iker (the design group) is not investing much in advertising, instead focusing on design’

–A Jacobsen-Cielecka, journalist and curator

‘you need a visionary designer and a visionary manager’

‘if I’d written a business plan, I wouldn’t have done what I have done’

– M Lubinska, Founder Moho Design

‘There are designers who are not just talking about sustainable design or eco or ergo design but thinking of people’s needs. I need these designers.’

– B Bochinska, President of the Board, Institute of Industrial Design in Warsaw

“(20 years ago, when you couldn’t buy tiles in Poland), all international calls were blocked so you’d have a special lady to say: ‘I want to have a connection with France.’ And she would say: ‘Okay, this will be a two hour wait.’ In Communist time, you couldn’t have direct contact with the west.”

– A Wojczynska, Interior Designer

: chair by Teresa Kruszewska

‘One outcome of the Communist era, you learn how to make something from nothing.’

‘(when asked to present at schools) they usually want to know about marketing. They know how to design, they want to know the practicalities.’

– A Siedlecka

The book was published in loving support by Blueprint magazine. To find out where to buy the book, go to the website or Amazon.co.uk.

Two great Polish design blogs I found through further research:

Zsah Blox and Design Girl

I particularly liked Aze Design’s philosophy and thoughtful ethnography design projects that merged new and old techniques realized by the BERDO craft womens group

Anna Wojczyska Ghost Sink, Logo Design

Pocket Wall by Maja Ganszyniec

What Priscilla said: A design world legend goes back to basics

Chauncey Zalkin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:16:47 +0000

I didn’t have a set of interview questions. I merely walked into Few & Far, an eclectic design and treasures shop on Brompton Road in London. It was on my design map. I spent the first few minutes eyeing the delicate leaf plates (made of brittle leaves and therefore impossible to buy and tuck into a suitcase), a red stool with a base of fanned pages made by Paola Navone, and white plates, bowls and dishes that look like they fluttered down from the treetops with their uneven leaf-like edges by Brigitte de Bazelaire.

A tall striking man with sweeping gestures and a gentlemanly demeanor almost immediately offered Priscilla to me after I explained my visit. “I’ll go see if she’s free?” His instant receptivity gave me a smile.

This is one woman who truly has made an imprint on our visual imagination as design director at Conrans and head of styling for a product group at Habitat (where in the 60s the sales women had Vidal Sassoon haircuts and wore Mary Quant dresses), alongside her brother, Sir Terence Conran who opened the first multi-disciplinary design studio in England. Conrans was heavily influenced by the American modernists. According to the Conran history slideshow on the site “Habitat embodied a world in which more women worked and people increasingly took holidays abroad.” Hallelujah.

While I waited, I was ushered downstairs by a very knowledgeable and affable young woman who explained a line of architectural clothing that you tie, loop, and tailor on your own body, with conceptual styling in the vein of Rei Kawakubo. I took a moment to walk out to Mint next door and the Libby Sellers pop up gallery and when I returned ten minutes later Priscilla was there waiting for me wearing a blue tab collar blouse, pants, and no makeup, just a summer glow, with tousled well cut gray hair and bright blue eyes. Cappuccinos were placed in front of us and she folded her hands ready to begin. It was obvious that she was a seasoned interview subject.

Here’s what I learned:

Priscilla believes that women are natural at managing design.

She believes that design has focused too much on designer personalities, which to her, isn’t the point.

The point of design is beauty, utility, and the material.

She believes the recession is an opportunity to change that. People have a chance to connect to design again. To place value on quality, to pay for the better made object and go for longevity.

She says, ‘cheap things are historically made under terrible conditions, you know.’

She advises to save for the thing of quality. To buy something you have an emotional attachment to.

She also thinks we have lost the art of living life where some of the best things are indeed free.

It’s that spectrum between free and costly quality that bothers her most.

Priscilla is not a retailer. She’s a shopkeeper.

She explains the difference: Shopkeeping is about having passion for the things in your store.

Shopkeepers can sell buckets and string but they know their customers. They sit down and have a cup of tea.

‘I’m not buying into any kind of a market.’

What matters most to her in her store are beautifully wrapped parcels, care taken, an informative staff.

I ask her about women starting businesses.

“This might not sound terribly liberated but one of the most creative thing you can do as a woman is bring up a child. But don’t juggle. It’s not on,” she says. “You don’t have a child like you have a washing machine. That’s why there are so many problems. It’s not the government or the schools responsibilities. It’s the parents responsibility.

She advocates a simpler way of life. A way of life that is not so demanding. Maybe this is a shift in her thinking after a long and busy career and with her current pared-down focus.

But you had a career, I say, a long one.

“Yes but I had my children first.”

I hesitate and say, that happens less and less.

She nods at what my grandfather would call ‘a conundrum in a vacuum’ then I take a look around me and the conversation moves back to design.

‘I’m a photographer by training. It all started with an eye for the picture’ she tells me.

She tells me she changes things all the time.

“It’s important to be constantly changing,” she says.

store taken another time by Blueprint Magazine

store with Indian Summer theme

-Chauncey Zalkin

Paola plate

Women Stand Behind Their Work: 100% Design London & Designers Block

Chauncey Zalkin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:14:39 +0000

Recent design school grad Freya Godwin-Brown clutches one of her resin and fabric sculptures after we chatted for thirty minutes about everything from her upcoming move to Australia to the skies of Shanghai which inspired this body of work.

Eleanor Young, textile designer, shows an exciting juxtaposition with her dainty vintage furniture pieces that she's upholstered with her bold asymmetric geometric patterns, creating something entirely feminine out of shapes ordinarily associated with masculinity or 80s pop 'topshop' style youth wear. What she's created here feels fresh and sophisticated at the same time. She also tries out digital printing for the first time as seen on the pillow on top of the small bench which worked really well with the embroidery. The way she matched her dress to her collection was also a nice touch.

Camilla Meijer is not a recent grad. I didn't even get a chance to stop and talk to her - but I love her patterns (see Abigail Borg, a rising star as well).

Eadadin Dempsey sits in her final project after she talked excitedly about her first show. Simple construction, nothing extraneous, inspired by thatched roofs in her native Ireland. She's a graduate from Dublin Institute of Technology.

Aimee Louise Hartshorn who came from Dublin with Eadadin sits on her twelve-legged rocking stool.

Yura Kim from South Korea made these resin light fixtures by hand but don't ask her how she did it because she won't tell you. She said, "sorry, I took a long time to figure out how to do it." Fair enough and she's done a beautiful job. They are even more impressive in person. The one behind her in pink looks like a fragile shell or a birds nest.

These three women make up Rooms Design, an interior and product design company from Georgia (the country, not the state). Quite an interesting trio. The woman in the middle is the business side and the two women on the ends are the designers. They also worked in collaboration with a fashion designer who dressed chairs in military uniforms. This collection was a inspired by the recent Russian invasion and communist occupation of Georgia during the cold war. The fear is that 'things will become drab again if freedom is threatened'. The lamp in metal represents the Soviet Union and the wooden lamp is modeled after an American 50's desk lamp, a bold expression of designs potential to communicate political sentiments, something you might not expect from a commodity.

Holly Palmer creates whimsical furniture that doesn't overpower. I want that table and the teacup behind her. More Alice in Wonderland charming than boutique hotel showy, these struck me as great for small spaces.

What Women Make’s London Design Festival Wrap-Up 2009

Chauncey Zalkin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:18:17 +0000

The Chair Arch at the V&A

*F means feature to follow in the coming weeks

The week transcended all expectations. With a day’s distance from my time at the fair, I see the trends as follows: Reality skewing shapes, new world order inventions for sustainability rocketing us into better mousetraps, intellectual pursuit, bold against black, color and self-assuredness. Here I recount my path of discovery:

9/19

The day of my arrival in London was spent gearing up for a week of design immersion. I went to Sainsbury’s to get cereal and yogurt so I wouldn’t be slowed down by morning hunger and was wowed by the convenience of automatic check out. A system that dispenses bills no less. Much easier than Ikea’s system. Do we (America) have that anywhere? Easy, clear, convenient and fast. My good branding and service loving side was in heaven. (I’ve been living in Paris and Barcelona for the past three years.)

Then I went to W.H. Smith and browsed the London city guides looking for something that wasn’t going to consider Big Ben the vital destination and ended up with just an A-Z mini map because everything from Time Out to Not For Tourists felt too commercial or too broad.

9/20

Ceramics in the City

It was only when I got to the beautiful, green and tranquil Geffrye museum for Ceramics and the City that I found Max Fraser’s London Design Guide which as it turns out had just been published and would be all over the place within days. It has clear maps by neighborhood and covers everything from big commercial design stores and hotels to the small and independent but it doesn’t consider fashion to be design other than a few biggies like Paul Smith and Dover Street Market and therefore misses the design worthy independents like No-one on Kingsland Road which I found to be a bit of a shame.

Geffrye Museum

At Ceramics in the City, a one day sale of local work, the big winner for me was Hitomi McKenize. Her pieces are a refined snapshot of the spinning ceramic wheel in motion. (F) The museum itself is like a hidden oasis in East London. Along the back there is a hall with small wooden benches and a wall of windows facing fluttering green leaves and dappled sunlight. A great place to sit and read or write.

I looked through all the Brick Lane and market stall stores stopping on my way back to talk with the owner of semi permanent pop up shop, Marsh-mellow, a store dedicated to festival goers in the UK. No longer just the one-off viral marketing stunts they started out as, pop up stores are now the norm for testing the marketplace before leaping. The vibe in London was palpably one of moving forward in creative, thoughtful and innovative ways though. I didn’t get a sense of doom and gloom or the impression creative types were holding onto a safety raft.

Next was dinner with a Japanese exporter who showed meticulously crafted leather goods at Maison & Objet in Paris for the first time and was only in London on his way out of town. We discussed a shared passion for the dying ancient traditional crafts of Japan at Sake No Hana in Mayfair which only made me long for the real thing. When I asked him why the Japanese always eat Japanese food when they’re abroad he said he can do with a few days of European food or Chinese but then he just finds anything but Japanese too greasy.

9/21

In the morning I went to pick up my press card and looked through the V&A Telling Tales exhibition of expressionistic escapist furniture and design.

I am trying my hand at agent as well as brand strategist to female led projects so I checked out a handful of recommended stores supporting independent designers. One of these was Beyond the Valley off Carnaby street where I met the affable but fashion week rushed buyer and had a chat.

Then I made my way to the famed “b store” on Saville Road which left me markedly underwhelmed. It’s one of those concept stores that are dark, cold, housing a paltry collection of overpriced garments exalted way beyond their level of originality or interest – with the requisite shelf of independent handmade magazines, “Me” magazine, the newspaper format magazines focusing on one very specific banal obsession, in this case ‘light’, and a self-involved sales staff that never looked up to say hello. There are one or three of these in every fashionable city.

me at Skandium

This was a surprise because everywhere I’d been in until now, the friendliness and charm had been total which I think is way more modern than aloof unfounded snobbery of past years (or of Paris in general) so with b store, I really could not see what all of the fuss was about.

Here’s a regret. On the other end of the humanist spectrum, I missed the ‘Reclaim’ exhibit at Eco Age. It was just too out of the way of everything else. I had really wanted to meet Orsola de Castro who with partner John Teal made art out of unclaimed luggage. I hope to catch up with them via email. I thought of them when my eyes landed on a quilt made from dolls and baby toys at 100% Design. They made a similar quilt out of the contents of the luggage.

9/22

Tuesday the pace increased exponentially. I missed Responsible Design – and not because I was irresponsible! – but because the website said the talk was at 9:30 and it was actually at 8:30 but I recovered from the glitch while perusing the Brompton Design district. The Knit Wit exhibit at Skandium was lovely though I wouldn’t say terribly unique. The store itself is a joy, especially Klaus Haapaniemi’s Iittila cups. Afterwards, I sat down with the striking Priscilla Carluccio, owner of Few and Far and of brother Terence Conran and Habitat fame (F) and then went around the corner to Mint, a gallery shop that sits on the border of design and art, cherishing concept and metaphor over strict functionality. The staff were knowledgeable, unpretentious and welcoming and the content, strangely beautiful. The highlight was the “At One” couch made from ash, latex, crushed velvet, and foam by Charlotte Kingsnorth who was influenced by rising obesity and the paintings of Jenny Saville. The work is a comment on the relationship between a human being and their furniture “which has been devoured by its obese occupier.” This bulbous melting structure was actually pretty comfortable.

luch at Portobello Dock

Next I went to interview Dieneke Ferguson, founder of Hidden Art. For the duration of the London Design Festival, Hidden Art took up residence at Tom Dixon’s temporary exhibition and showroom space at Portobello Dock which also housed nascent designer projects. Dieneke who is Dutch, has been a kind of fairy godmother for independent designers and artisans in the UK for the past twenty years, eleven of which under Hidden Art (F). It was day one in the space for her and we took some time trying to figure out the process for ordering lunch. She had the rabbit. I’d eaten a sandwich in transit and had my third cup of coffee of the day which didn’t hinder my sleep one iota by the time I went to bed.

I ended the working day with an interview with Danish designer Nina Tolstrup whose Pallet Project created a second life for “pallets” (wooden crates) as chairs. She commissioned artists Gavin Turk and Cornelia Parker to paint a chair each. The chairs were auctioned off for a charitable organization where women in poor neighborhoods in Buenos Aires come together to make pallet chairs for their community. The woman who set up the foundation approached Nina with her idea after seeing her chairs online. (F).

9/23

Wednesday: the actual fair now a day away, I had a packed schedule. I attended the book launch of “Discovering Women in Polish Design: Interviews and Conversations” which to date was the most eye opening and relevant to What Women Make’s global / local female focus (F).

glass house at Wapping Project

At night I ended up missing Lee Broom’s opening that I’d RSVPd to as well as the London Design Medal which I do regret, but I made a new friend who creates textiles and innovates design processes, one of which will be used to ornament hospital ceiling tiles. I was introduced to her by the Blueprint Magazine product editor, Luca Amadei, who led and wrote the Polish Design book project. I’d met him the night bfore at Nina’s party and we hit it off right away. Ana Aranjo, who moved to London from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, teaches at Oxford when she’s not running her company, Atelier Domino. She invited me to a talk at the Wapping Project. We had dinner in the converted factory and she filled me in on London creative entrepreneur life as I considered a move there.

around the corner from Persephone Books near Russell Square

The highlight of my week was between breakfast and dinner. It was my interview with Nicola Beauman of Persephone books. It had nothing to do with design. After all, What Women Make is not just about design but about creative women and female leaders leading creative businesses. Ten years ago after stints at the Financial Times and the Observer, and a book of her own under her belt about women writers, Nicola founded her publishing house and bookshop in Bloomsbury. Persephone Books publishes out-of-print female authors from the 19th century that she personally loves. I won’t say any more. You’ll have to wait for the interview to post. (F)

9/24

The fair arrived. I started with Designers Block where I stopped four or five women designers whose work caught my eye, from recent grads to new entries, to the hugely successful founder of Ella Doran. The rest of the day was spent walking a maze of delight around 100% Design, definitely concentrating on the back center and right quadrant for new and experimental design and concepts dealing with sustainability. (F)

9/25

Reluctant to admit this is my last day, I was slower than the rest to make it out the door. When I did, I headed right to Brick Lane’s Truman Building for Tent thinking its at least a half-day event but I ended up seeing only one or two items of note and finish the single floor in forty minutes including a chat with a woman who upholsters beautiful antique trunks with her hand printed textiles.

All in all, my evenings this week were spent mostly with friends and not at parties, save one. That might bore you, but on my last evening dead tired and unable to make it back to East London for the festivities, I spent it gathered at a bottle of wine with a new New York acquaintance lamenting our city’s dwindling steam, both of us for the first time considering moves to the dynamic, engaging, poised, diverse, and somehow seemingly more intellectual and daring, London.

And that’s my trip. Please follow me on twitter and my RSS feed to be alerted to the interviews and features as they post. A selection of photos of women and their work will post next and a video of the week will be coming shortly after.

-Chauncey Zalkin