Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien founded their eponymous design studio, Doshi Levien, in 2000. The duo, who are also real life partners and met while studying at London’s Royal College of Art in the late ’90s, came to prominence in 2003 with an extraordinary range of cookware, designed for French company, Tefal. At the time, the pieces seemed different and more than a little exciting, a combination of contemporary European design and thinking from somewhere else entirely. In terms of form, each it...
Mar 04, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 13Ep. 4
Peter Lord founded Aardman Animations, with his school friend David Sproxton, in 1972. The Bristol-based company rapidly became known for its witty, character-driven, stop-motion work in Plasticine, giving the world characters such as Morph, Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, as well as working on a dizzying array of feature films, shorts, TV shows, adverts, music videos, computer games, TV idents… Frankly the list goes on. The studio has won Oscars for the likes of Creature Comforts , Th...
Feb 24, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 13Ep. 3
Alison Britton is a ceramicist, writer and educator, who emerged as part of a revolutionary group of artists from the Royal College of Art in the 1970s, which was determined to provided an alternative to the then-dominate school of pottery, led by Bernard Leach. Instead, their work was angular, abstract, urban, a little bit feisty and, hey, Post-Modern, provoking one critic to write in Crafts magazine that these were pieces which rejoiced ‘in a hideousness that does not even have the excuse of e...
Feb 17, 2022•43 min•Season 13Ep. 2
Tom Raffield is a designer and maker who has built a hugely successful business by creating an array of products from wood that have been steam bent into extraordinary shapes, and, subsequently, are sold by the likes of John Lewis and Heals. In doing so, he has effectively brought craft on to the British high street. Not only that, but he has designed installations at the Chelsea Flower Show, created steam bent coffee kiosks in London’s Royal Parks, and built his own breathtaking house in south ...
Feb 10, 2022•39 min•Season 13Ep. 1
Lucy Sparrow came to widespread attention in 2014 with an extraordinary installation held in a derelict site in London’s Eastend. At The Cornershop , she assiduously recreated everything you might find in a traditional newsagent – some 4000 items – in felt. This was followed by The Warmongery , a gun shop in Bethnal Green and, in 2015, by Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium , a felt installation of a sex shop in London’s Soho. There have also been shows in the US and China, while this year she launche...
Dec 08, 2021•52 min•Season 12Ep. 5
Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg started her career as an architect, before going on to study on the revolutionary Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art in London. While there, she became fascinated by synthetic biology and set about finding a place for design within this emerging field – bringing together scientists and designers to collaborate on a variety of projects. More recently, she’s turned her attention to the relationship between technology and nature, producing a string of...
Dec 01, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 12Ep. 4
Robert Penn describes himself as a journalist, woodsman and lifelong cyclist, who has written some of the best craft-based books of recent years, including It’s All About the Bike , where he travelled the globe finding the best components with which to build his dream bicycle, and The Man Who Made things out of Trees , which told the tale of what he did with an ash tree that he felled in some nearby woods. The titles tell a personal story, which Penn deftly combines with a broader history and, s...
Nov 24, 2021•48 min•Season 12Ep. 3
Carmen Hijosa is the creator of Pinatex, a new, non-woven textile made from pineapple leaves. After finishing a PhD in textiles at the Royal College of Art, she founded her company, Ananas Anam. And subsequently, the new material has been specified by brands such as Hugo Boss, Chanel, and Mango for bags, shoes and clothes. It has even been used for a vegan hotel suite at the Hilton Hotel Bankside. Meanwhile, Pinatex production offers additional income to more than 700 families from farming commu...
Nov 17, 2021•51 min•Season 12Ep. 2
Amin Taha has been described as ‘London’s most controversial architect’. This is largely due to 15 Clerkenwell Close, a development that is defined by a single material, stone. The building (which houses his collective practice, Groupwork, and where he also happens to live) was shortlisted for this year’s Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, despite that fact it was finished in 2017. And it’s fair to say the nomination came as a surprise. This wasn’t simply to do with th...
Nov 10, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 12Ep. 1
Did you know that, for years, paper was made from rags rather than wood pulp? No, me neither. Mark Cropper is chair of the extraordinary paper manufacturer, James Cropper PLC. And it’s fair to say that the material has dominated the life of his family for over 175 years. The company has been based in the picturesque village of Burneside, near Kendal in the Lake District since 1845 and Mark is, rather remarkably, the sixth generation to run a firm that currently employs around 600 people. He also...
Oct 06, 2021•51 min•Season 11Ep. 5
Claire Wilcox is best known for her work as senior curator of fashion at the V&A, where she has staged shows such as Radical Fashion , Vivienne Westwood , The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-57 , and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty , as well as launching the groundbreaking, Fashion in Motion in 1999. She is also professor in fashion curation at the London College of Fashion and is on the editorial board of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture . More recently t...
Sep 22, 2021•46 min•Season 11Ep. 4
Piet Hein Eek is a world renowned Dutch designer, who made his name when he graduated from the Academy for Industrial Design Eindhoven in 1990 with a cupboard made from scraps of wood he found in a lumber yard. He set up his own practice three years later creating furniture that, in his words, was designed from ‘available possibilities’, with pieces using waste from other processes and, sometimes, waste from that waste. Products are created around the materials the practice has in stock – whethe...
Sep 15, 2021•59 min•Season 11Ep. 3
Emma Witter is an emerging artist who has forged a reputation with her delicate sculptures that often resemble flowers but are created, rather intriguingly, from animal bone, such as oxtail and chicken feet. Her pieces straddle our sense of beauty and the macabre. As she told one writer: ‘I am fascinated with the diversity of death and burial rituals across the world… In the floral motifs, I do like the balance of representation of life and death, fragility and strength.’ Emma graduated in perfo...
Sep 08, 2021•45 min•Season 11Ep. 2
Chris Day is an emerging artist with a fascinating hinterland. The glassblower was a plumber and heating engineer in the Midlands for two decades before deciding to change his life. Since graduating from Wolverhampton University in 2019, his rise has been startling. That same year, he received a special commendation at the British Glass Biennale, which was followed by a solo show at Vessel Gallery in London’s Notting Hill. And at the moment he has an extraordinary, and genuinely moving, installa...
Aug 31, 2021•57 min•Season 11Ep. 1
My final guest of the latest series is Emily Johnson, co-founder of the Stoke-on-Trent-based, ceramics company 1882 Ltd. Clay is part of the former TV executive’s DNA. She is the fifth generation of Johnson to work in the industry, with her father and business partner, Chris, spending over 30 years as a production director of Wedgwood, after it bought the family firm in 1964. Since launching a decade ago, 1882 Ltd has worked with an eclectic roster of designers including: Max Lamb, Faye Toogood,...
May 25, 2021•44 min•Season 10Ep. 6
As regular listeners will know, every once in a while I break free of Material Matters ’ self-imposed format and meet someone with an overview of the design world. And in this episode, I’m delighted to chat with Sir John Sorrell CBE. It’s a question really of where to start with John’s career (but here goes). He was chair of the Design Council from 1994-2000; chair of CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) from 2004-2009; vice-president of the Chartered Society of Designers...
May 18, 2021•49 min•Season 10Ep. 5
What does an artist do when the material he has devoted his working life to runs out? Garry Fabian Miller is a renowned photographer, who doesn’t use a camera in his practice. Instead, he works in his darkroom and relies on a combination of light and cibachrome paper, using exposures that can last between one to twenty hours. His extraordinary, abstract pieces are inspired by nature and the things he sees on walks around his home in Dartmoor. His work is held in an array of public and private co...
May 11, 2021•55 min•Season 10Ep. 4
This episode investigates the near-future and how material technology could transform the way we live. Mark Miodownik is the UCL professor of materials & society. He received his PhD in turbine jet engine alloys from Oxford University, and has worked as a materials engineer in the USA, Ireland and the UK. For more than twenty years he has championed materials science research that links to the arts and humanities, medicine, and society. This culminated in the establishment of the UCL Institu...
May 04, 2021•56 min•Season 10Ep. 3
One of the joys of Material Matters is that it allows me to roam across disciplines. So one week I can discuss carbon fibre and Formula 1 racing with John Barnard, while in the next I could be talking taxidermy with fine artist Polly Morgan. My guest in this episode is the excellent Sarah Wigglesworth. I think it’s fair to say that Sarah has been a pioneer of sustainable architecture through her eponymous practice. Over the years projects have included cultural centres such as Siobhan Davies Dan...
Apr 28, 2021•58 min•Season 10Ep. 2
Jasleen Kaur is an artist, designer and maker, who graduated from the jewellery and metal course at the Royal College of Art in 2010. Since then her practice has encompassed pieces created for gallery spaces as well as work that is socially-engaged. She has described herself, rather intriguingly, as a ‘cobbler’. Recently, she has created films and pieces of text which investigate untold histories and notions of identity that are both personal – detailing her Sikh background from Glasgow – and, i...
Apr 21, 2021•47 min•Season 10Ep. 1
Alice Potts is a material researcher, who ‘explores the poetry of the human fluids’. She caused quite a storm when she graduated from the fashion department of the Royal College of Art in 2018 with a collection of crystals grown on various garments – including an extraordinary pair of ballet shoes dyed in red cabbage juice. These crystals were a little different though as they were created from the user’s own sweat. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the collection was entitled PERSPIRE and Alice was quick...
Mar 04, 2021•57 min•Season 9Ep. 6
Thomas Thwaites was one of the first people I wanted to interview when I started Material Matters in 2019. I’m not entirely certain why it has taken so long to arrange a chat. The designer graduated from the Design Interactions course of Royal College of Art in 2009, with a piece that has gone on to become genuinely iconic. In The Toaster Project , Thwaites set out to make this industrially manufactured product by hand. He mined his own iron ore, extracted copper from water and attempted to pers...
Feb 24, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 9Ep. 5
Gregg Buchbinder is the owner of US-based furniture manufacturer, Emeco. The Electrical Machine and Equipment Company was founded in 1944 and quickly created the 1006 chair for the US Navy. The piece, made out of recycled aluminium, has gone on to become a design classic but its story is far from straightforward. By the time Buchbinder bought the firm from his father in 1998, its factory in Hanover, Pensylvania was on the edge of closure. He pumped its chest with a roster of high profile designe...
Feb 17, 2021•57 min•Season 9Ep. 4
Yinka Ilori started his practice from his parents’ back garden in 2011, after receiving a £3000 loan from the Prince’s Trust. Initially, the designer made his name by creating a string of chairs, notable for their strong use of colour that came from his Nigerian heritage, and a profound sense of narrative – the pieces were often based on the stories of old school friends and parables his parents told him as a child. However, after creating his eponymous studio in 2017, the scale of his work star...
Feb 10, 2021•52 min•Season 9Ep. 3
Stuart Haygarth is an artist and designer who works with the stuff that other people throw away. After beginning his career as a photographer and illustrator, he burst onto the design scene in 2005 at Designersblock in London’s Shoreditch with a pair of extraordinary chandeliers. Millennium was made from a series of party poppers he’d collected on the first morning of the year 2000, while Tide comprised of flotsam and jetsam picked up over several years from the Kent coastline. Subsequently othe...
Feb 03, 2021•35 min•Season 9Ep. 2
Juli Bolaños-Durman is an artist and sculptor best known for her work with cut and engraved recycled glass. She was born and raised in Costa Rica, initially studying graphic design. However, in 2010 she moved to Edinburgh to take an MA in her chosen material and her career took off. Her beautifully colourful, joyfully decorative, genuinely jaunty pieces have been exhibited at the V&A in London, Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, Somerset’s Make Hauser & Wirth, Design Days Dubai and the Corn...
Jan 27, 2021•48 min•Season 9Ep. 1
Usually on Material Matters I speak to a combination of designers, architects, artists or makers. This episode is a little bit different. Steve Barron is a multi-award winning movie and television director, who made his name in the eighties with a slew of iconic videos featuring artists such as: Michael Jackson, Dire Straits, A-ha, Madonna, Paul McCartney, David Bowie and The Jam to name just a few. Subsequently, he segued into films – directing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Coneheads, and Mike ...
Dec 22, 2020•40 min•Season 8Ep. 6
As regular listeners will know the idea behind the show is that I speak to a designer, maker, artist or architect about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discover how it changed their lives and careers. However, every once in a while I mix the format up a bit and talk to someone who has an overview of the design world. This is one of those occasions. Paola Antonelli is senior curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the Department of Architecture & Desi...
Dec 09, 2020•47 min•Season 8Ep. 5
Sarah Corbett is an award-winning campaigner and author. She began her career in activism at the ripe old age of three and went on to have a successful career working for NGOs including Christian Aid, Oxfam and the UK Government Department for International Development. However, her life took a different turn in 2009, when she created the Craftivist Collective, which champions ‘gentle protesting’ and ‘slow activism’, often using stitching and embroidery as a fundamental part of its process. Sinc...
Dec 02, 2020•57 min•Season 8Ep. 4
Phoebe Cummings is an artist who works in clay. Intriguingly, she uses the material in its raw form – so unfired and unglazed – for sculptures that are usually site specific. Inspired by nature (either real or imagined), her pieces are ornate, fragile and, often, decay over time – giving them a wistful dynamism. The writer, Imogen Greenhalgh, has described them rather lyrically as ‘holding bays for her thoughts and ideas’. This is clay as performance art but, perhaps most importantly, in her han...
Nov 25, 2020•38 min•Season 8Ep. 3
