ARTISTS TALKING

Andrew Tanner celebrates his tenth birthday as a designer maker in 2008. The phrase which is now increasingly used as the term to describe the activity of a growing number of makers involved in the development, design and manufacture of batch produced or limited edition work.

Training

Tanner moved from Leicester to Brighton to study on the wood, metal, ceramics and plastics undergraduate course, where he felt no pressure to produce purely functional work. He concentrated on making sculpture with a quirky functional edge, loosely inspired by themes of growth and the clinical environment.

He was drawn to work that he describes as “high volume” with a characteristic play on words; work that features multiple objects or repetition, citing Antony Gormley’s Field as an example of the hand-made bringing individuality to the repetition and conformity inherent in making large numbers of the same object. The lively Brighton crafts scene opened his eyes to the range of opportunities available to a crafts practitioner as maker and designer, producer and salesman.

Development

In 1997, the newly graduated Tanner exhibited his sculptural ceramic work at New Designers. He also brought along samples of his Padded Cell floor tile and it was these that unexpectedly brought him positive press attention from Wallpaper magazine and a meeting with Peta Levi, director of Design Nation, who he calls his design guardian angel.

It was this encouragement that contributed to the self-belief that enabled him to set up the HUB design partnership with Anna Thomson in a small studio in Brighton. Together they designed and made products from start to finish: mould making, slip casting, firing, decorating and marketing. Crisp geometric silhouettes and the pure white surfaces of ranges like Alba or the Crate fruit tray became HUB’s signature style.

The knowledge gained from involvement in all the processes relating to ceramic manufacture is key to the way in which Tanner’s career has since developed. He says it gives him the “element of empathy and shared passion” that enables him to work with all levels of the industry – crafts people, designers, managers and marketing departments.

When Thomson decided to move on, Tanner abandoned HUB as a brand and used his own name to promote his business, believing that “companies value the idea of working with a creative individual” and that a focus on the personal reinforces the message that the objects he designs in collaboration with his clients retain, in some measure, individuality and elements of the hand made.

Young Designer of the Year 2005

Three years after establishing Andrew Tanner Design, Tanner won the Young Designer of the Year Award in recognition of his ability to design and make innovative products that blend contemporary form and techniques with traditional or historic imagery.

The collections that he had completed by this point included Flock tableware – simple cast white forms embellished with relief patterns inspired by the flock wallpaper in Indian restaurants and the Off the Wall range inspired by wall coverings made by Cole and Son, which featured subtly coloured decorative panels laid over simple cast vases, bowls and beakers. The judges’ statement that “this designer will soon be copied the world over” has proved fairly accurate.

Tanner maintains that he was lucky to be at the forefront of the renewed interest in wallpaper at the time and cites his ability to foresee design trends as important to his clients.

Influences and inspiration

The key to Tanner’s success was the marrying of historical references in the decoration of objects with the clean lines of contemporary functional ware. Historical research provides inspiration. A collection of botanical drawings from the archives of Crabtree & Evelyn, the gift and perfume company, inspired products he designed for them. Frieze, the new bone china range for Watts and Co Ecclesiastical Furnishings, with shapes and organic decoration inspired by Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, known as “the cathedral of the arts and crafts movement” has since been short listed for the Classic Design Awards 2008.

Equally he finds inspiration in day-to-day activity such as eating in restaurants, visiting Eastbourne Pier or in the observation of nature. Word play also features in the names of ranges incorporating humour or the unexpected in an understated way.

Tanner says he no longer reads lifestyle magazines, preferring to remain fresh and open to other influences, and expresses concern “that the design edge requires us not to mention the craft element” in the development of featured products.

Current practice and processes

Tanner has never known a working context other than the one that he has flourished in over the past ten years. He says he is driven by his passion for the work and that the comparatively new tag “designer maker” could be equally be “materials empathiser”. In order to collaborate with the skilled workers of the UK ceramic industry, Tanner must understand and practice as far as possible all the processes that are involved in product development and currently runs two studios – a clean one for design, and a plaster studio. He makes all the prototypes of his ceramic designs, produces the moulds and works with technicians to make the casts for each edition.

Design consultancy now takes up much of Tanner’s time. Working to briefs from companies that have included Crabtree & Evelyn and Maw and Co Tiles he offers a service that follows the manufacturing trajectory from initial concept to marketing the finished object. He also creates new corporate identities and sub brands for clients who wish to attract a new target audience to an existing brand or name. He enjoys “the challenge of giving a new twist to an established product, combining contemporary design with ‘heritage’”. These products include floor and wall tiles, interior accessories, tableware and decorative pieces.

Tanner is realistic about the marketing and publicity required to promote his designs. “The press exposure given to HUB made people think we were much bigger than we were.” Swing tags and labels draw attention to the handmade contribution to his ranges. The largest run of his designs is a thousand Flock mugs, costing £15.50 each, while his current in-house range of Silhouette plates each run to one hundred units and retail at £60. Compared to an edition of prints, he argues, this is good value. But where no one would question the handmade genesis of the print, the skill involved in making the ceramic remains obscured by a public lack of understanding of the processes of ceramic manufacture.

In the slow period for trade, the first three months of the year, Tanner concentrates on developing his own ranges of ceramics, hoping to produce at least one, if not two, new lines each year, as “the constant development of in-house collections is key to maintaining the interest of commissioning companies, and something new is expected every six months or so.” He collaborates with other artists in creating works such as ‘Snail Service’ with Alice Maher, and with organisations such as ‘The Project Group’, which provides a creative, progressive and entrepreneurial environment for individuals in touch with Adult Mental Health Services. Tanner has created a series of works with this group called ‘Message in a Bottle,’ which combines the poetry and inspirational thoughts of the group through the process of mould making and the creation of slip-cast pieces.

The future: crossing boundaries

Andrew Tanner is aware of the tensions inherent in crossing the boundaries between the world of the individual maker and the world of industry. He believes that the “passion behind the piece” should be discernible in the end product and it is the overarching role of the designer maker, combined with the input of other skilled and committed technicians that leads to the special blend – uniformity enhanced by individuality – that is characteristic of his work.

He expresses regret at the decline of the UK ceramics industry over the past decades in the face of competition from the Far East, citing the closure of over ten ceramic firms in Stoke in the few years that he has been working there, but he describes his collaborators as receptive and imbued with the same passion that he has for making. He would like his work to contribute to the industry’s rejuvenation through the application of the collaborative process that is central to the production of his designs.

Recently Tanner has started to work with new materials. At Staffordshire Crystal, one of the last remaining cut glass companies in Britain, unable to use the tools himself he sees his role as a catalyst, encouraging the skilled workers to try something new. He is also creating a rug collection which is being hand-tufted in West Yorkshire using traditional craft skills and he is just undertaking a new collaboration with Wentworth Pewter, based in the heart of Sheffield.

There is also a book, Batch, in the pipeline, in which he intends to reflect on his experiences over the past ten years in parallel with the rise of the designer maker.

Links

www.andrewtannerdesign.co.uk

The writer

Penny Jones is an arts education consultant, with a special interest in cross art form practice in galleries and health settings. A ceramics maker and teacher, she currently co-ordinates a teacher CPD programme for Engage, the national association for gallery education, and manages an NHS arts programme.

Penny Jones

Penny Jones