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This is a piece I had to write for mu Uni blog… I think it’s interesting to really look at how you are inspired by previous designers…

Imagine you are going to curate an exhibition on the history of your discipline. Compile a list of 10 practitioners (or specific pieces of work) that you would include and write brief notes on why:

Interior Design has some key practitioners over time, and here’s my top 10 of who I would include:

THOMAS CHIPPENDALE
Furniture designer  (1718 – 1779)

​Not just a cabinet maker, but also an interior designer, and the creator of one of the first ‘catalogues’ of furniture for buyers from all markets and walks of life.  This catalogue defined ‘good taste’, meaning the buyer feel that they were able to participate in upwardly mobile and socially acceptable ‘tasteful’ behaviour if they had the money to buy the furniture.  A wealthy working class businessman could buy the same piece of furniture that an aristocrat owned, creating feelings of upward mobility.  This meritocratic business acumen by Chippendale made him incredibly successful, and is an early example of inspired mass marketing.

CHAIR NO. 14 – THE VIENNA CAFE CHAIR 1859
Michael Thonet (1796-1871)

This chair can be seen as the first ever flat pack piece of furniture design, and is still in production today.  Thonet pioneered new techniques of laminating wood to create mass produced furniture for the first time ever, and created designs that could be shipped in pieces and assembled onsite.  Like Chippendale he created catalogues for customers, so that pieces could be ordered from anywhere in the world.  These could then be shipped cheaply in large quantities as they took up less space when in flat packs, and he even owned his own transportation services.  Chair No 14 is one of those pieces of design which everyone recognises, creates historical connotations and reflects the importance of industrial mass production.

LAURA ASHLEY
Fashion & Home Designer (1925-1985)

A Welsh fashion designer and businesswoman. She originally made furnishing materials in the 1950s, expanding the business into clothing design and manufacture in the 1960s. The Laura Ashley style is characterised by Romantic English designs — often with a 19th-century rural feel — and the use of natural fabrics.  Although not to everyone’s taste, her designs, like Chippendale’s, transversed social class boundaries due to their relatively low prices and popular styles, and anyone of any class could become the owner of the rural English idyll.

DAVID HICKS
Interior Designer & Curator (1929-1998)

David Nightingale Hicks was an English interior decorator and designer, noted for using bold colours, mixing antique and modern furnishings, and contemporary art for his famous and wealthy clientele.  His extremely strong use of colour palettes and patterns is still seen as inspirational to the designers of today, to the point that some of the colours he ‘evolved’ and used are still named after him.  I am including Hicks in this list specifically for his use of bold swathes of colour, which become almost abstract in their intensity.

ROLF ENGSTRÖMER
Architect, Designer, Interior Designer (1892-1970)

Rolf Engströmer, was a Swedish architect, interior designer and furniture designer, and a representative of Swedish grace, the Swedish interpretation of the Art Deco style.  His entrance hall at Eltham Palace is a masterclass in Art Deco linear design, with every detail and piece of furniture made for the room in 1933.  His work embraced the new modernist approach to design.  His work is important to me in that it signifies a historical change in direction in Interior Design both with an aesthetic and architectural focus, and you can relate it to development of artists in other fields at the time.

SIR EDWIN LANDSEER LUTYENS
Architect & Interior Designer (1869-1944)

Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings.  He would also design furniture to fill his house designs to complete his vision, and promoted the arts and crafts movement with the most natural and raw state of materials exposed and celebrated.  He could be seen as the ‘mash-up’ architect in that he would mix architectural styles as he felt fit, and so created a postmodernist, non-judgmental approach to architecture at the time.  For this reason, he is in my list.

ANNIE SLOAN
Decorative Artist & Designer (b1949)

Annie Sloan is a British artist, colour expert and author. After studying Fine Art at university in the 1970s, Annie Sloan went on to write several books on traditional paints and decorative painting techniques, starting with The Complete Book of Decorative Paint Techniques in 1988. She developed her own line of decorative paint “Chalk Paint” in 1990.  From this she developed the ‘shabby chic’ look which has been prevalent for the last 20 years in home decor.  Some may curse her for it, but the mass appeal of the style shows how people buy into a look and follow it slavishly.  As a result it has been copied worldwide by manufacturers which shows the cultural significance of her work.  The actual recipe of her paints is an age old tradition harking back to distemper and lime paint which has become very limited in use, yet she has resurrected it hence inclusion on this list.

​CECIL BEATON
Photographer, set designer, interior designer (1904-1980)

Beaton was a multi talented designer across several disciplines, who created theatrical interior spaces.  His use of clashing colours and patterns show a return to colour after the austerity of the second world war, and he used to introduce ‘the vulgar’ into the traditional, sort of like the punk rocker of interiors at the time.  His clientele tended to be the aristocratic and the famous, who let him run riot in their homes.  His theatre, ballet and opera sets are inspirational, and still used today by The Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera House in productions.

THE DANISH -HYGGE  (Collectively)
Late 20th century onwards.

Hygge (/ˈhjuːɡə/ HEW-gə or /ˈhuːɡə/ HOO-gə) is a Danish word for a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment. This covers an entire  interior movement of white interiors, sheepskins, natural materials and pared back interiors.   There is no one designer associated with this style, but given it’s enduring popularity I think it is worth including.  Like Shabby Chic, it appeals to the masses in that it is easy to achieve and promotes an appearance of ‘good taste’ and ‘style knowledge’ but is relatively easy to replicate and purchase off the shelf. 

THE LOUIS GHOST CHAIR
Phillipe Stark, Designer (b1949)

This chair takes a subversive action, from mimicking a royal chair made for Louis XVI, and subverting it into modern day use.  It has sleek lines, can be stacked 6 high and is mass produced,  and takes the essence of the original into a postmodernist form.  As Starck himself said, the chair “has a mix of materials and styles based on our shared memories. We all own this piece in a way.”  This chair to me is rock’n’roll, and so included in the list.

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Since my last very long time ago post, I bit the bullet and enrolled back at university to study Interior Design with a slant on architectural spatial design.

Since September it has been a whirlwind of learning, late nights (working, not partying) and me banging my head on the desk as I start to learn 3D design programs such as CAD and SketchUp.  However, I am LOVING it, even if I am frazzled and sleep deprived…  So far I have designed spatial installation art pieces, a theatre set, a piece of modular furniture, designs for the BRI hospital in Bristol for staff rooms, and am currently working on a Pavilion design with a bar for an English Heritage site.  I have learnt to weld and cut metal, 3D and laser print items, woodwork in various forms, digital fabric printing, architectural orthographic drawings, a plethora of design packages for the computer (yes, adobe creative suite I love you), model making and loads more.  Oh and I forgot to add concrete, clay and resin modelling as well….  I still have a lot more to learn, but am enjoying the journey as well as still holding down a part time job, running a house and being a mum.  Women out there, we are the mothers of all multitasking….!

I have to run a blog as part of the course, more analytical than design based, so I’ll post over onto this site if anything is relevant to it.  Plus of course anymore DIY tutorials, I’ll posy a prepping for laser cutting one as it’s a genius machine and can cut and engrave anything from fabric to leather to acrylic.  I have my summer break soon so I can add things more frequently.

Until then….

At certain points in life a crossroad is reached.  Mine came at the end of last month, very unexpectedly.

THE CATALYST

I have spent the last 18 years working around my children, their schools and schedules.  So I was always working part-time and with lots of different roles meaning that I was around after school and in holidays.  My husband works away all week, so I have been the main responsible parent for what seems forever.  As a parent, you don’t stop using skills and learning more – bringing up my children I have been a driver, tutor, cook, cleaner, taxi service, accountant, decorator, gardener, driving instructor and many more thin,   It might be the empty nest syndrome starting, but about 2/3 years ago I though I should really try and find one direction to head in, focus on one role only and get ready for the day that my chicks will have both flown.  I had a very high powered job pre-children, and it was my choice to give it up to be with them as they grew up.  I never thought it would be hard to return to work as a result.

As you may be aware from the blog, I have had about 3 different roles over the past few years; teaching art, doing up houses and creating social media for clients amongst other things.  But not one of these roles was something that could be consistent, full time, financially sound, and most importantly something that I would really enjoy doing every day.

APPLYING FOR JOBS

So I started sending out my tentacles, and applying for a wide range of roles that suit my skill set, (God, I hate that bloody awful word).  I do live in the middle of nowhere in terms of local work opportunities, so I had to expand the radius to 50 miles.  But I am willing to travel for the right role, so applied away.

What I have found, and it is a definite, is that after a certain ‘age’ work is much harder to find.  I know that companies are not supposed to age discriminate, and it would be really hard to try and prove that they have, but I do suspect that it happens a lot.  I spent a lot of time crafting my CV for each specific role, making sure that whatever attributes were needed were clearly identifiable.  What I really wanted to write in bold letters at the top was ‘Won’t leave for breeding purposes – I have 20 years before I will even think about retiring, and I have a wealth of experience’.  Your age can be deduced from the roles you have done as they want years and dates, and even you don’t legally have to give your D.O.B., they all ask for it and it would be churlish not to put it in.

So… I have applied for jobs that I could do in my sleep, with masses of experience, (if not over-experience!), and 90% of the time did not even get a response.  What is this culture of not responding to a job application, regardless of the amount received by a recruiting company?  The amount of time and effort people put into a job application could at least be rewarded with a response email.  Sometimes I would worry that my application had not been received if it was a job I knew I was well qualified for, so I would send a polite email asking for acknowledgement , and I was lucky if I got a response to that at times.

Becoming really worried about a lack of interest, I asked recruiters to check my CV – was I doing something wrong?  Did it need changes?  Is my interviewing style bad?  No, they’d be mad not to interview you I was told.  But again, and again, and again I got no responses most of the time.

For those that did decide to interview me there were some hilarious moments – the time when I was sat down in front of a 20 something year old possible boss who looked at me with undisguised ‘OMG, you’re as old as my MUM!’ eyes.  On another occasion I met with  company owner and his underling, the latter who would have been my line manager and who had the final say over the hiring for the role.  The owner and I got on like a house on fire, and over the course of the interview I could see in the underling’s eyes the dawning realisation that if I was taken on I would be so much more experienced than her and it would show.  So that was a no then.

THE CROSSROADS

 

So back to my crossroads – Last week I was interviewed for a job that was not particularly lucrative, but I could do it easily and well and it was only 10 miles from home, plus I offered up my marketing skills for free as temptation for some added value for the organisation. I heard back a couple of days later that I had not been successful… “high standard of candidates.”, “hard decision”.. blah blah….

Something switched in my brain at that point.  Not impatience or rage, but instead I just thought I simply cannot tell my friends and family yet again that I have failed to get a decent job, and then watch them looking surprised and upset.  It set me thinking.  What do I really want to do, what do I love, I am only on this earth once and should make the most of it?  For me, it is all about being creative; whether it’s in film or interiors.  The former means a move back to London, crazy hours and the pay if half of what it used to be for double the work.  The latter, which is my main passion, is impossible for me to really get into properly without formal training.

THE RESULTS:

So in the papers that day, news came of the A level results around the country.  Clearing was open to those who needed it and who had not made their grades.  So I emailed the head of a department at a Uni who I knew had a great Interior Design course, and got a call back within an hour.  The call sort of went along these lines…

Got any spaces?

Yes.

Can I come?

Tell me about yourself & your interior work so far..

Which I did, then I got a yes.

A quick phone call to the Admissions team, where it turns out I have UCAS points pouring out of my ears, and I had a place to study for 3 years in a very architecturally based Interior Design BA Hons course.  One more phone call to Student Finance to arrange a mega loan, and I started yesterday.  More on that later…

I will probably never pay back the loan in full, but you know what, I really don’t care.  I would rather be a financially challenged student and learn for 3 years to do something well, than apply for one more underpaid, undervalued position where actually my chances are 1% of getting it anyhow as I am ‘too old’.  Who know what will happen when I leave Uni, no doubt I’ll be in the same position and even older.  I am hoping that a good portfolio might open some doors, but maybe not if I am interviewed by a youngster who cannot see how valuable experience is.  The HR departments

So this article is dedicated to all the ladies out there who took a career break to have kids, and then find that now they are undervalued, under appreciated and ‘unemployable’.  It’s really tough out there in the job market which can be very hard on your confidence.  But if I was an employer I would hire you like a shot.  You ladies can multi-task like nobody’s business, have years of really valuable experience under your belt in all areas, and you are not an aged hindrance but an asset.  You are just GREAT.