The Local Design 11 to know…
Curated by the talented designer, stylist and creative director, Emma Elizabeth and her entrepreneurial brother, James Coffey, LOCAL DESIGN is an online and offline platform for Australian Designers, enabling them to showcase their work and providing a unified community of creative professionals all with the vision to support the local. As the local design landscape becomes more and more global (with online shopping & sourcing dominating the market) LOCAL DESIGN is a way forward for both consumers and designers, steering away from replica products and towards high quality, original designs crafted by local talents.
Last week in Milan, Local Design presented LOCAL MILAN – a collective of 11 LOCAL DESIGNers exhibiting at Salone del Mobile Milan inside the iconic Oratorio Della Passione, which was overlaid with over 8000 la paloma bricks in collaboration with Brickworks. A truly wonderful feat for Australian Design and each of the individual 11 designers …
Curator of LOCAL DESIGN, Emma Elizabeth, is a highly innovative creative who lives by her ethos that “design is nothing without style, and style is nothing without design”. With over 10 years industry experience, both local and abroad, Emma’s work lies across many disciplines such as Art Direction, Design, Styling and Creative Conceptualization. Her expansive career has included many projects with the highly acclaimed Designer Rugs collaboration at the forefront, exhibiting all over the world from Milan to New York, London and Sydney.
Furniture and lighting designer, Ross Gardam embodies a unique and contemporary aesthetic across his work – pairing traditional crafting techniques a high-end manufacturing technology to create products that are both elegant and beautifully simple. With an extensive career involving a multitude of disciplines such as environmental design, interior design and product design, Gardam is currently working with one of Australia’s leading product distributors, Stylecraft whilst also exhibiting a number of acclaimed lighting and furniture products, our favourite – The Ora Desk Lamp.
Industrial Designer, Tom Seekhan specialises in commercial furniture, lighting and product design following an informed design process that considers the life of the product and how it will be used in a specific environment. With a large portfolio of beautifully restrained, contemporary products, Seekhan is changing the way commercial spaces look and feel – all for the better.
Driven by a love of nature and light, Industrial Designer Christopher Boots explores the architecture and geometry of organic shapes throughout his work, often inspired by the patterns, shapes, and structures found in plants, animals and minerals. Boots has worked on a multitude of projects including a collaboration with designer brand Hermes on a mesmerising series of lighting displays for their Madison Avenue store. Christopher is a dedicated craftsman who has a way of transforming and elevating materials to highlight their natural beauty and form.
Kate Banazi and Ryan McGoldrick
Experimental, intuitive and often playful, the work of artist Kate Banazi celebrates the subtle variations of serigraph printing and explores the layering of colour. London-born, Kate currently lives in Sydney and has developed a series of wall light fixtures with Ryan McGoldrick that draws inspiration from linear structures, movement, shadow and colour.
Recently featured on In/Out, Jon Goulder is a fourth generation furniture maker, leaving his family business to study furniture design and fine woodworking at Canberra School of art. He is currently the Creative Director of the Furniture Studio at the Jam Factory in Adelaide and is a master craftsperson, a skilled designer and currently focused on developing his 1 off and limited edition collections for representation in Australia, America and Europe.
Dale Hardiman and Adam Lynch are the young, enthusiastic creators behind Melbourne studio, Dowel Jones. Interested in simplifying objects to their bare essentials, the pair works with local manufacturers to design products that minimise materials and manufacturing, without compromising aesthetic value. Currently based in an old mechanics garage in Preston, Dowel Jones are certainly ones to watch.
Creating his first successful production design in 1993 (the SW1 Swivel chair for Norman + Quaine), Furniture Designer, Charles Wilson was launched into the industry establishing an ongoing relationship with manufacturer, Woodmark International, for whom he has since created a range of furniture pieces for local and international distribution.
Artist Anna Varendorff’s studio, A.C.V is an experimental practice takes the role of the true craftsperson. Formally trained as a metalsmith and artist, Anna creates sculptural forms that act as fine vases for delicate foliage and flowers. Her whimsical aesthetic captures the essence of beauty in simplicity, the emotion of shape and her hand made approach means that no two pieces are ever exactly the same.
Unifying functionality and aesthetics, Australian designer Adam Goodrum is making his way to the top of the furniture design industry with a list of accolades to his name and being named one of the most influential Australians in the Bulletin‘s Smart 100. Goodrum works both on personal projects and for an impressive list of clients including such companies as Capellini, HAY, Alessi, Verve Cliquot and Norman Copenhagen.
Connecting with people through materials, finishes and innovative design, Tom Fereday develops lighting and furniture products based on the principle of honest design and that relate to their environment and end purpose. He celebrates natural materials and the design process to create enduring products that result in intelligent and meaningful design solutions.
Images Courtesy of Emma Elizabeth & Local Design
