As a designer myself, I know what a challenge it can be to come up with new ideas – and sometimes the imagery and ‘inspiration’ at every turn just makes it worse. The days of the excitement and anticipation of waiting your turn to thumb through the latest edition of Frame magazine are long gone. Today, an Instagram feed, refreshed minute by minute, highlights the next freshly shot interior, detail or product making it almost impossible to differentiate a creative thought you’ve seen, from something you’ve conjured up yourself.
If the old adage that ‘if you’ve thought it, it’s already been designed’ is true, why keep designing? As a process, design has become less about re-inventing, and more about adapting, crafting, and creating your own signature. One such designer who takes this approach, is furniture and product designer, Charles Dedman.
A graduate from Kingston University, he sets out his design goal as making “…contemporary, honest furniture that takes an evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach, refining the form and function rather than trying to redefine a product.”
Instead of reinventing the wheel, Charles has focused his attention on the chair, stool (above), coffee table, cabinet and lighting – adopting new methods and processes to put his own mark on familiar pieces that have been created many times before.
The honesty of his work not only comes from the pieces themselves, but from his selection of predominantly natural materials. For example, his Montado stool – named after the forest in South Portugal from which the cork it uses originates – is made from thin sheets of plywood, sandwiched between the cork, and formed into a softly curved, lightweight stool which is relatively easy to produce with minimal wastage. Having received extensive press coverage praising its simplicity and form, Charles hopes to put the stool into production later this year.
He has also experimented with the adaptability of wood in a hybrid of old versus new, an approach he has dubbed ‘craft tech’ which he defines as, “updating traditional processes with modern tooling.” The first piece to come out of this process is his Zapotec Cabinet. He created the parquetry-inspired design, using a CNC [computer numerically controlled] laser cutter – a far cry from the traditional technique of cutting individual pieces with a blade. The result is a clean, modern finish which celebrates both an ancient technique, and the craft of joinery in the 21st Century.
For the Turner Carver chair, Charles worked closely with chair makers, Sitting Firm. The company, based in Coventry, has worked with a range of designers to bring their chairs to life. Charles’s version exudes quality and modernity, and he will be presenting the final piece at this year’s New Designers One Year On.
When there are already countless chairs to choose from, it could be suggested that it’s futile to create another one. But then a new designer emerges who takes a new stance – challenging methods and techniques. Charles’s approach is sympathetic to the traditional crafts of furniture making and yet uncompromisingly contemporary – and he is arguably creating the design classics of the future.
Charles Dedman is one of Look Like Love’s ‘One-to Watch’ designers, find out more about him and his work here.
