Retox: New Designers Exhibition – Part Two

Written by Helen Simmons

Note: The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of RetoxMagazine.com

Design by Faye Murphy.

New Designers Exhibition – Part Two

My Brush With The Designers

A veritable hub of exhibiting excitement, Part Two of this year’s New Designers Exhibition was absolutely no let down. Bustling with fresh and truly inspired ideas, the event was bursting at the intricate yet perfectly amalgamated seams with remarkable talent and innovation. With so many stands to see, products to peruse and projects to ponder, I had categorically no envious feeling towards the judges whose job it was to pick the winners of the ten awards being given, including New Designer of the Year, The New Designers John Lewis Award for Design Excellence and Innovation and the New Designers 100% Design Award to name a few.

Cool Jewels

As well as furniture and product design, graphic design and spatial design, another category on display was jewellery. Jo Hathaway’s Bespoke Mixed Metal Jewellery in particular caught my eye owing to it’s aesthetically unique nature, which was further cemented by its equally compelling design and engineering ingenuity. She takes what is essentially scrap metal and crafts it into contemporary unique pieces of jewellery. This process means that each and every item is completely different from the next.

Exhibit at New Designers 2013. Design by Faye Murphy.

Who Wooden Want One?

Possibly one of my favourite collections from the exhibition, Faye Murphy’s furniture presented a cleverly executed design concept questioning gender in furniture. Her tables, made with acrylic tubes for legs, allow the owner to fill each of the legs with his or her personal items, which in turn dictates to an onlooker to whom the table might belong thus giving the table a gender. On the stand, Faye had a feminine table whose legs were filled with items such as make up and jewellery. Her masculine table’s legs contained Yorkie Bar chocolate wrappers (a chocolate bar arguably only for men – I tend to disagree…) and one leg even contained Durex Condom wrappers, a PLAYful option I thought. She also had a smaller table with legs displaying hair bobbles, brightly coloured sweets and toys for a little girl.

All in all, a wonderfully polished and presented performance by all involved, providing bags of food for thought and an enlightening and fascinating glimpse into the future of design. I had thought that perhaps I might try to design something but after having seen the array of talent… I shelved the idea!