Inspired by vernacular architecture, this collection ‘Points of Departure’, references details found in Victorian railway stations between Paddington and Bristol. Taken as starting points, these details are integrated into experimental and explorative furniture.
‘Temple Meads – Waiting Room’ begins with the refrain of picketed platform eaves, extending and layering them to create a space. Much like station waiting rooms, it is both enclosed and open – private and public – for the passing of time. ‘Paddington Walkway – Ottoman’ takes its structural form from the more industrial and brutal interventions in the otherwise light and airy Paddington Station. The interplay between the two pieces references the occasionally jarring yet necessary adaptation of these public-use buildings for contemporary use.
Attempt, accident and failure are all important aspects of the development of this work and in the piece ‘Paddington from Bristol via Warminster – Cabinet’ these are highlighted rather than erased to serve as traces of the object’s history and incidents. As in the buildings it references, which are constantly being repaired and adapted, faults and hazards are delineated and pointed out, rather than concealed.
The pieces are intended to communicate a sense of quietly displaced familiarity in which aspects of these spaces are abstracted, extruded and adapted to build new forms and celebrate materials, time and the relationship between those, the maker and the user.