Linden Reilly, a lecturer on my MA course at London Guildhall University said to me in 2000: ” I want you to tell me about what you like…”. Of course she was talking about lines, angles, materials and products. But the most obvious and recurring answer for me was:” boxes, I’ve always liked boxes. Metal, cardboard, wood, paper boxes..I have lots and can never throw them away.
The house we were renovating at the time had a cheap grid-patterned lino on the floor and one day I put this together with my love for boxes. What if I joined boxes together in a grid-like construction to create surfaces ? A first model highlighted some of the problems I would face in prototyping but Linden encouraged me to pursue it, and so I did.
My friend Malcolm Baker ran a cabinet-making workshop on his own, making one-off commission pieces. Highly skilled and meticulous, he sometimes wished he could be more of a designer. Whereas I could have twenty ideas a day but not always know to bring them to reality.
To some extent my ignorance of the practicalities of making was bliss at that point. I remember People saying: “it won’t work”. But with Malcolm’s patience and his teaching, I managed to make my first table… and get my MA.
