"Hello, How are you?.... oh yes, it will be lovely to see you too..... Huh?, no no, the cat is still OK, although he did actually catch a cold the other day. I arrive at 8am Tuesday..... I know early flights..... Yepp yepp, anyhow, what's the weather like there?"
An answer to the brief ‘explore the concept of visiting through objects’.
Photography by George Ramsay
Umbrellas usually mean the beginning of a long, grey, damp winter, here is an umbrella full of lightbulbs that brings the opposite.
Materials: Umbrella / mild steel tube / light bulbs / turned wooden handle
Size: 1050mm Diameter light and stand
The Visitor - An exhibition exploring the concept of visiting through objects
How's The Weather
My interest in the Rapid Manufacturing project lies in the possibility of producing high quality custom made models. I wanted to explore how this technology could provide a service to parents to produce personalized toys for children.
Children’s drawings are precious things. They are totally unique and express the uncontainable imagination of the child. The service I am proposing lifts the drawings from the page and turns them into real models, which the child can then engage with on a new level.
The original drawing sent to the company offering this service, is broken into elements and then modelled as a complete kit, something akin to those offered by Air fix, yet rather than being industrially manufactured, these are bespoke items. This model is then packed and sent back to the child who is able to reassemble it. Depending on the age and ability of the child, different complexities of assembly could be offered.
DOODLE DUDES
Turned from wood with a metal plug in the base, Buoy always finds its upright position, where it can either float with the stem of the flower dipping in water, or sit on a plate/bowl.
Made using the same production techniques as balsa wood fishing floats, with bright bands of colour for visibility.
BUOY OH BOY
Competition entry for Don't Panic, a music and arts promotion company.
Don’t Panic invited proposals from the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art for a new dispensing unit to hold their weekly publication packs. The unit would be placed in selected shops around London city, and was to be produced in the thousands.
Andrew Haythornthwaites entry was selected for development and these pre-production prototypes were made.
DON’T PANIC
Pods for holding your peanut butter and jelly sammies, books and pencil case / or your nose plugs, goggles, trunks and towel – whatever it is you need to get in, or get out for that matter, are presented, upon a giant, scribbly, wire plantation that takes root in your home, dividing space and creating environment, with an array of pods ready for deploy.
SPROUT
A series of explorations into the redesign of three commonly found, ubiquitous objects- a wooden clothes peg, silver crown light bulbs and an A5 envelope. When an object does its job perfectly well, what value can design bring?
Charm is an elusive and complex quality; it feels almost romantic in nature, an auxiliary narrative seemingly separate from reason or practical rationale. Ornament and decoration feel, to me, like a shortcut to charm, frustratingly they often have no relationship to the objects use, usually exist via a process that adds cost and frequently compromise its ability to do its job well.
It seems that charm and usefulness are at opposing ends of a scale where one may cancel the other out. This enquiry looks at the relationship between narrative and pragmatism and ways that they can live together in charmingly useful objects.
Wooden pegs are made by passing a length of wood through a series of U shaped cutters that carve out a profile; this profile is then cut up into peg halves that are joined with a spring. By altering the angle of cutting, the U becomes lopsided, creating a love-heart when the two pieces are joined together. Peggy Sue works just as well as a normal peg, uses the same cost effective production process but she has a heart where most pegs only have a hole.
PEGGY SUE
A series of explorations into the redesign of three commonly found, ubiquitous objects- a wooden clothes peg, silver crown light bulbs and an A5 envelope. When an object does its job perfectly well, what value can design bring?
Silver crown bulbs are a useful tool for protecting our eyes from the glare of an exposed filament; however they do create a sharp line of contrast between light and shade, bringing an industrial, hard quality to the light they cast. The general solution to this, in a domestic environment is to cover the beautiful form of the glass bulb with a lightshade. By agitating the surface of the electroplating solution with bubbles the silver has a broken edge casting a soft lightshade-shadow on the walls.
BULBSHADE
A series of explorations into the redesign of three commonly found, ubiquitous objects- a wooden clothes peg, silver crown light bulbs and an A5 envelope. When an object does its job perfectly well, what value can design bring?
Envelopes are made by stamping and folding paper that has an application of glue. The sealed folds are usually at the back of the envelope and a postage stamp is glued to the front. By using the stamp as a seal to ‘glue’ the envelop shut, not only is the gumming stage of the production eliminated but the recipient breaks the seal to open the letter, reminiscent of the wax seals of years ago. The lack of fixed structure also allows this envelope to be refolded in reverse and reused, which prompted its name- the RSVP envelope.
RSVP
A process to express a different kind of narrative in the objects decoration- the story of when clay became cup (or plate or teapot).
Pattern and ornament on tableware’s have a rich history, they tell stories of love, where they were bought or who painted them. Experts ‘read’ the ornament and can tell us much of their historical context or value as a result. This project explores the idea that pattern/decoration could tell something of the story of the way the object is made.
There is a fascinating paradox in ceramic mass production; when casts are taken from molds, a human hand removes any blemishes and makes the object 'machine perfect'. This process is called fettling and uses a damp sponge to smooth out imperfections.
By adding a pigment such as cobalt to the fettling water, a trace of the journey of the sponge is captured in the clay. This process would leave a trace of colour wherever there had once been an imperfection and as each cast needs slightly different fettling, each would be differently patterned. The strong blue hue of cobalt is one that has been used for centuries to pattern ceramic, here it is used in a different context, as an integrated stage of production rather than an additional process.
STORY OF THINGS
Apparently when a bird craps on you its good luck.
Here is an industry to manufacture luck.
GOOD LUCK INDUSTRIES
This mythological object has been crafted to induce flying dreams. Give the little dude a push and watch him light up and fly around. Fall asleep and you will be flying around in no time, have fun.
The purpose of this project was to create an object that helped induce flying dreams. Repetition and physical activity are key elements to help one achieve this.
The flying dude is a little character, whom when pushed, lights up and rotates around in a smooth bouncing motion. In the dark, one is only able to see a glowing outline of the little character flying through the air, and as the dude slowly comes to rest, so does the light slowly fade away as you fall asleep
