The Design Process & launch of the Roulette Pot

The Design Process & launch of the Roulette Pot

Developing pots that will be produced in quantities of scale is a big deal for the team of designers and artisans Morris & James! If you frequent the pottery you’ll know about the one-off pieces and ‘gems’ in the showroom, as well as batch production work. Many of the production designs started life as individual art works, but have been reworked to capture the original character in a form that can be reliably reproduced.

Often the ‘one-off’ pieces are exactly that, and are nearly impossible to reproduce so this process of ‘translation’, from one to many, can be challenging for the design and development team. Essential visual qualities are identified and specialist team members work on methods to combine and apply the glazes so that consistent results can be achieved.

A by-product of this process is often unexpected but interesting results, which have to be firmly put to one side to revisit in the future. It takes quite a lot of discipline to remain focused on the matter in hand, and not get drawn into new areas of exploration! Once the trials are completed the design is documented and a trial run of perhaps 20 pots undertaken by several different decorators to make sure that things turn out as required. Only after this process, which can take months, does a new design get proudly handed over to the Showroom for display and promotion.

To celebrate and showcase our latest work we collaborated with artist Sophie Foote to generate a stunning mix of visuals to support the new release, and we were delighted with the results. Sophie also happens to be our Head Potter Ian’s better half, an art & creative power couple!

Sophie graduated from Elam School of Fine Art last year. Exploring themes of ‘oneness and junctions of distinction’ her layered digital media works printed to canvas are particularly fascinating and we were intrigued to see how she would engage graphically with the captivating three dimensional qualities of the Roulette pots. The results speak for themselves but in many ways also echo the way in which visual ideas are captured and sensitively reinterpreted early in our design process.

To find out more about Sophie's work visit https://sophiedale.wordpress.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/contemporaryartsophiefoote/

 

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