Latest / The Unmaking / Hidden in plain sight.

Transcript

Hidden in plain sight. · The Unmaking

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: So Ed, where are we sitting today and why here?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: What's the significance of this location for you?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is somewhere I've moved to about a month ago,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: so it's a little cottage on Lake Hayes that's been here for quite a long time,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's been here since the 1860s,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: since I think It's one of the oldest buildings around.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was part of a farm,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: originally,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't think there were any other buildings on the shore of the lake here,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: so it's pretty amazing.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: This little stone cottage feels It's a bit like you're in Scotland maybe,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: particularly today with the weather.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can see the waves lapping along and hear them.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, it's such an amazing location.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's got such great energy, which is the reason why I decided to take it.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm just going to be renting it for about the best part of a year.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: We first met a year ago in your beautiful former home over near Coronet Peak.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us what's shifted since then that's led you here?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, quite a lot.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Quite a lot.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my wife and I separated about this time last year and I moved out of the house
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: at Coronet Peak.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: We've been there for about 20 years and so I shifted out which was a bit of a tough time really.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly since we built it,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: it started off as a paddock and we put everything into it and did all of
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: the planting and, you know, the beautiful mature trees there and things there.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite amazing.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Funnily enough, we're showing the kids pictures of it yesterday.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were all out for hours.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Out for dinner together and we were showing the kids pictures of it just
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: after we'd finished building it and there were no trees, nothing.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was just this quite stark,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: very modernist looking house on an open landscape and now you can hardly even
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And see the house,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: it's just absolutely surrounded by beautiful, big, mature trees and planting.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's sort of surreal.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so I moved out of there
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: and kind of not knowing what the future held for us.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I was out in towards Gibson Valley for a little while, just living by myself.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that was kind of weird and pretty tough.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a It's been a strange, it's been a strange year.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And consequently,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I sort of had a very quiet,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had a really quiet year last year, creatively and work wise.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I just, I just kind of hid myself away really.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And, and I guess it was just in,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: in sort of,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you put it really,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: kind of healing mode, grieving mode for several months.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that was interesting to say the least.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's been a shift since then as well.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I looked after a client's house after I moved out of there, which was in April this year.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was offered a house set by a lovely client of mine who lives in a beautiful, beautiful house.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: They said, would you look after a house while we're away in Europe?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been there for three months.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really interesting because it's almost like another,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: it was almost like a I was a very different season moving out of the other place,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: which represented,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: that sort of difficult kind of recovery mode almost into a new spot where things,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was starting to feel a lot,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: a lot better in myself and starting to feel,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know, coming out of kind of coming out of hibernation almost.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah lots of great things have happened since then so that's felt really positive.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm just about to move out of there next week and then that overlaps with this place.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really nice because it's given me time to get set up here gradually rather
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: than Loading up a whole van full of things and shifting again like the last couple
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: of shifts,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: which is pretty brutal actually when it happens, I think physically and emotionally.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty brutal when you just up sticks and move everything.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been nice because it's been a sort of a gentle transition into a place
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: that I really want to be in.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the great thing about here is it's a totally empty property as well.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm now getting all of these special things of mine,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: artworks and piece of furniture and things I've collected over the whole of my life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And actually having my own space again to put them.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that feels really good.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it surprised me how significant that is.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just having what is your own.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Another interesting thing is whether it's your own and whether you're renting it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a space that you have autonomy in.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have the choice to do whatever you want with it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I think when you're,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: particularly if you're occupying a house where you might be taking care of it
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: for somebody else,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: it's full of all of their things, the stuff from their lives and the...
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Objects and art and everything else that is special to them
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: so you almost feel slightly disjointed from the from the building from the from
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: the property and from what is your home kind of doesn't quite feel like your home
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: because it's doesn't contain your things.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously not comparable to the significance of the end of such
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: a long-lasting relationship like that,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: but did you have other benchmarks from your life or from friends' lives
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: that you could reference in terms of understanding perhaps the way to navigate
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: that transition and also how to deal with it personally?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I guess my initial reaction is not really.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what's really fascinating about it is everybody's different take or their different opinion.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: On what you should do.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: On what you should do.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And often,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's based on their own experience of maybe what happened to them or didn't happen
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: to them.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or possibly in the process of happening to them.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's, it's, it's, it's a real eye opener.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that it's really taught me is to,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: to listen, to listen to the people's opinions, listen to their advice.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But to not let it soak in too much and to try to,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: for me to try to listen,
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: or not listen to, but tune back into your own, you know, your own inner voice.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Which I think at times like that can really get lost and it gets sort of overwhelmed
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: by everything else that's going on and other people's opinions.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's no right answer, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I heard recently the expression of divorce doula, which I'd never heard of before.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's a death doula,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: but it's like that concept of somebody that has been through it personally,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: that understands,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: that has really done research and been trained and learned about,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: okay, these are the things that are going to be coming at you.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: These are the things that you need to be aware of to really help people through things.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so things like the...
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Something like a transitional place that's not the forever home as soon
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: as you move out, but it is associated with that first move away from that place.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that probably shouldn't really be the one that you're going to stay on
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: because it will always be associated with that day where the morning you were in
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: that home and then in the evening you're in that new home with a whole bunch
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: of boxes and memories and frustration and sadness and grief
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: and everything else that's going with it.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's been really interesting kind of watching myself
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: through those transitions of those like this,
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know, this is now the third will be the third property since that break.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of gets easier each time,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: it's because you're,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: you're almost these buffers that between you and the,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: that very difficult leaving, um,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's an interesting process.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the really significant things I've noticed is
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: negativity around
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: situations.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot of...
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  SPEAKER_00: I think there's people immediately jump on a kind of blame bandwagon.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: They want to be able to blame somebody.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we do it internally within the relationship and within the situation.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: But what's interesting is other people's opinions.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why I say it's really careful.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to be really careful to be paying more attention
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: to your own inner voice is that There's a lot
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: of blame gets thrown around really quickly and I think to try to step away from
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: that blame is really important.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And whether that's you blaming the other person or you blaming yourself
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: for what happened, I think it's
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's very easy for that transition to then become a negative story when it doesn't need to be.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can... Oh, it's the classic thing, isn't it?
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  SPEAKER_00: Is it the end of something or is it the beginning of something?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think in the early days when you're really raw,
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: you can't help but be magnetised to those feelings of...
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ending and loss.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I think as you move through it,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: you start to see the positive sides of things about what could be in the future,
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know, what new things are going to be born from the unraveling.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And also not allowing the unraveling to be absolute, you know, not to let it destroy things that
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't need to be destroyed.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: They don't need to be damaged or they can be.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you're more gentle about the whole thing, you can kind of.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I love that analogy of you can almost like put things away in shoeboxes.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to look at them at the moment because
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And some things are just too hard to look at at that point.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: But when you look at them later and you reflect on them later,
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: they're,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: they're just things and they're things that happened and things,
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  SPEAKER_00: conversations that were,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: conversations that happened, things that were said,
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: things that were said that
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: You perceived in particular ways as well at the time because of your,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think your own emotional state,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: which when you look back at them in retrospect,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: they can, you realize that they were, they maybe weren't that thing at all.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: They were something quite different.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And also you were only seeing it from your perspective.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You weren't seeing,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: you weren't seeing it from the other person or the other people's perspectives.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's quite,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think that also gives you quite a lot of respite or it's given me quite a lot
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: of respite and a lot of hope as well around
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: to gain those perspectives.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in all areas,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: whether that's a personal relationship or whether it's a business relationship or
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's...
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: A structure,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: something that didn't go well or something that you wished had happened differently.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just to have that reflective perspective on things I think is so important for us.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it's one of those things we're left to figure out on our own.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: We're not given those skill sets.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And even around such a fundamental thing about the understanding
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  SPEAKER_01: that what you hear is not perhaps what the other person intended
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: or What you're saying is perhaps not what the other person is receiving because
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: of their filtering or their upbringing or their past traumas or whatever it is.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it's such a basic thing.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's the sort of thing I think we should be teaching in schools,
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: the significance of that, have that sort of level of understanding.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: How has that impacted your work or what role has your work then played for you over
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: the past year or so?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's fascinating about it is that three or so years ago,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I decided that I was going to start pursuing
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: more conceptual ideas,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: things that I'd been using in my furniture practice for a long time since,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: well, actually what I realized is probably forever.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ever since I started now, I've always been drawn to creating situations
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Where people get together,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know, when I went back and kind of analysed what I've always done.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And furniture itself is something that human beings,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know, we inhabit and often we inhabit them to be...
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Either close to ourselves or close to each other.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they are actually one of the very few things that connect us to the earth, in effect.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're either sitting apart from maybe a floor.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're really the only thing that connect us to the earth.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you're sitting in a chair or sitting at a table,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: you're either doing it for yourself,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: if you just want to be comfortable and rest,
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: or you're interacting with other people.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that I realized,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: because I did a sort of a deep dive about probably getting on
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: for Five years ago now,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: we did a bit of a deep dive with a couple of really clever people
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: about why I do what I do and what do I do?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: we're trying to get why do you do it and what do you actually do and how do you go
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: about creating the end result?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: After quite an arduous day of them just kind of teasing,
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: teasing,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: teasing,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: teasing more and more out of me,
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: me actually getting,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: and it's quite frustrating because you go, well, that's just what I do.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, not what you do.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, why really?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you do it at the deepest level?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you do it?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And at the simplest level,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: if you can summarize that and you know,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: we got to the,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: We dug down and down and down and came up with, for me,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: the realisation that,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know, I've always loved creating space for conversations that matter.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just the deep, lovely conversations we have with each other.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it sounds,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want it to sound pretentious or to sound,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know, arty or whatever, but it's as simple as
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's as simple as what are those amazing conversations that you have
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: with your closest friends,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: or not even necessarily your close friends,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: your family,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: even somebody that you've just met that you have a great connection with.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the epitome of it is when you sit around a campfire.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's when those conversations really, really happen.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something about,
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's something about fires that relaxes us and makes us open up.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's that feeling,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: so then whether it's sitting around a family dinner table or,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: or sitting on a beautiful,
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: comfortable,
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: big sofas chatting with each other and having a glass of wine or whatever it is,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: or sitting by a fireside,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: um, Yeah, I realize I've always loved creating space for conversations that matter.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: So going back to your question,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I decided that I wanted to explore that more at the deepest level,
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: which for me,
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: and I'd already been working with ideas in my furniture for a while,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: but it's quite hard to...
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was really interested in...
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of deeper communication, how do we really connect with each other?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was fascinated by that.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd been working with a little bit of my furniture since about 2010 of infusionment.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Using the furniture with messages, but kind of hidden, subtle messages.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's in the context of what it means to the person.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Say, for example,
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: if I'm designing a dining table for somebody,
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, how do I really find out what is it that makes them tick?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then how can I then respond and create something different?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: That becomes more meaningful for them.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when they sit at the table,
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: it has a real connection,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: simply being there around this table that was designed for that purpose,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: to sit with their favourite people and have great conversations
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: about things they really care about.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd been working with,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd started using braille back in about 2010 as a way of expressing language
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: and meaning, but in a way that was, in a way that was
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of coded and concealed.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: But also that created curiosity because when people see it,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: when people see Braille, and when I say Braille, it was a...
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: A version of braille that I was using.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually piercing holes into braille patterns and often at different scales,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: much different scales than braille would be.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole point was people would see it and recognize it as being some means
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: of communication.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you don't know what it says, you don't even know what language it's in.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing I loved about that was that it meant everybody had
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: the same initial interpretation of something they couldn't understand.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it became...
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what I really liked about it is that anybody from anywhere in the world,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: regardless of their race or language or anything,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: politics,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: religion,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: everything,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: everyone's on the same,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: actually is on the same level of, and more so misunderstanding than understanding.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a curiosity about, I wonder what it says.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Which is exactly what it's evolved more and more to be.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they're now...
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I started making... To cut back to the point, I started making artworks that had the same...
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: They had the same intentions as when I started putting the language into furniture.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it's quite striking what the minute you put something...
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: On a wall in a recognizable format as a work of arts, it's seen as such.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got collectors who've collected my work for years who,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: they still say, well,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: we always bought your,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: we always collected your furniture because we considered it
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: as three dimensional art,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: but they were,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: they were people who were into,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: they were people who were into furniture as, as a, as an art form.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas for most people, furniture is a utilitarian, it's a utilitarian thing.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: really striking,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: the change in perception.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: People immediately would say, wow, that's interesting.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: What does it say?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Not what's happened?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of what was the change then for you with that?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you actually, it starts to...
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: It starts to be much more powerful as a means to start those conversations.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And also when you see something which is obviously projecting a specific message as
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: a work of art.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: People are much more likely to say,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: to start the conversation, I wonder what it says, or what does it say?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I found when I was using it in furniture,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: people would just sort of brush over it and say,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: oh, that's interesting, and they'd kind of move on.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because they weren't expecting it to be saying anything, they just think it was decoration.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was a big shift in...
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I guess a big shift in my intent to continue that journey for myself and to be able
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: to express what I wanted to,
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: what I'm exploring, which really is all about human connection and how can I
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: In really simple terms,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: how can I make the world a
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: little
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: bit more tolerant,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit more peaceful by the time I disappear?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: What positive effect can I have through what it is that I do?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I love the serendipity of what connected us initially, which was your fire poker.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Unknowingly, I was visiting a house in Northland, beautiful home.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: The owner wasn't there.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was there with my good friend and the architect.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they had this magnificent sort of industrial looking fireplace with this amazing fire poker.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we picked up this fire poker and had a look at it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, look at this.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen such a beautiful fire poker.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a little bit of sort of rock and roll sort of horns on it on the end of it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, beautiful leather grip.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And most incredibly,
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: a mouthpiece on it,
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: and it was obviously, hey,
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: this is hollow,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: and it's been designed that you can blow through it,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know, to help the ignition of the fire.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Without knowing who, where does it come from?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's heritage whatsoever.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a big connection for us.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the three of us discussed this amazing work, this amazing object.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: what was it,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: eight months later,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: you and I are introduced by a mutual friend of ours and said,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: you should go and talk to this guy over in Queenstown.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I come and meet you and there's this poker and I find out that you're
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: the guy who's designed this poker.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: that fire poker and a lot of my work comes from my,
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I trained originally as a cabinet maker and then I got into industrial,
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: I did a degree in industrial design in London and then got back into the furniture.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: When I say got back into the furniture,
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: got back into the more slightly traditional timber furniture with
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: the company I was working with in London.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that fire poker is very much a bit of industrial design,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: but it was something that I'd always I was fascinated by having seen,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: much older ones like,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I guess people have been blowing through hollow sticks for thousands of years
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: to get fires going.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it was just something that grabbed really kind of grabbed my attention
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: and probably a memory that popped back into my head.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: When I first got to Queenstown,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I thought,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I really want to,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: because it's cold and lots of people have open fires,
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I thought,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I really want to design a really cool fire poker that you can,
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: it's called the Inferno Raider,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: because when you blow through it, it really gets the fire cranking.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where And funnily enough, you know, all of these connections and serendipity.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I had in my position at the time was
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: a beautiful tapered marine stainless steel tube from The reason I came
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: to New Zealand originally,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing some design work on a yacht that was being built up at Alloy Yachts at
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: the time in Auckland.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they had these beautiful tapered safety rail around the edge of a sailing boat.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they were these lovely tubes.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was thinking about the fire poker design that was in my head,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I suddenly thought,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: oh gosh,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if the guy who makes those beautiful safety rails,
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if he could supply me with the tubes because they were such a nice shape.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, he did.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've made a lot of amazing discoveries since moving back here,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: but one of my personal faves has definitely been 1964 magazine,
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm stoked to welcome them on board as The Unmaking's first partner.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Laura and Nathan produce four beautiful issues a year,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: celebrating the special individuals and creativity to be found
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: in Aotearoa's more remote locations.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Each issue features the work of over 20 writers,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: photographers,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: illustrators,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: designers,
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: artists,
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: and poets, and showcases small local businesses making and doing good things.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's essentially a Venn diagram solar eclipse with The Unmaking's guests.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: A 1964 subscription is hands down the perfect gift to yourself or a loved one
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: and you can get your swagger on and the knowledge that for the cost of
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: a flat wipe per month you'll also be supporting around 100
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: of our independent creatives each year as well as helping me keep the lights on here
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: at The Unmaking.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what those in the trade like to call a win-win-win situation.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of dubs, head to www.1964.co.nz forward slash dubs.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: One of the fascinating things I'm having fun with at the moment is I'm a furniture designer.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now making artworks.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, whatever your perception is now I'm an artist.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: But also I'm an industrial designer.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's what I find intriguing is how some people just say, wow, it's amazing.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course,
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: you can do all of these different things and,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know, we can all be whatever we want to be.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And other people really struggle with,
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: well, how can you be, if you're that, how can you be this?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're that, then you can't be one of those as well.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, why not?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's just all creativity and, you know, craft and all of these different aspects of art.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a writer as well.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: My artworks start off with,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I write a piece that I don't want to express in three-dimensional form,
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: which is what I do.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm finding that more and more intriguing.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I am also finding more and more intriguing people's opinions
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: How can you be this multifaceted creature?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: But yet we all are, you know, we can all dig a hole with a spade.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: We can all whistle a tune.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can all, you know, and I just
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: I actually love that experimentation and I love instilling that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Also by demonstrating,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: by doing it yourself,
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: you can show people that, well, of course you can do what you want.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something I love telling kids particularly.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can do whatever you want.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah,
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: but so-and-so told me I'm not very good at music or so-and-so told me I can't draw,
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know, and we carry that as adults later.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, God,
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: often when I'm working with clients and I,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: you get the sketchbook out and a pencil and start sketching something
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: and people are, so many people are totally blown away.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: I could never do that.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're so lucky to be, I said,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't born a, I wasn't born being able to sketch, you know, something you learn.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we do, we learn to do.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there are geniuses amongst us who do have some kind of bizarre
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: innate ability
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: to do something to an incredible level,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: but most of the time we learn the skills that we have.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the confidence and the ability just increases the more you do something.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: That is a very broad skill set,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: entirely complementary though in many ways,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: but is there friction between those various roles that you have and is one sort
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: of always in the driver's seat?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it always the furniture maker that's actually at the wheel
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: or is it more actually it's actually the artist that's sitting in the driver's seat?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say it's the, I mean,
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: I hate putting that label on it because I don't,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't consider myself to be an artist,
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: but I think it's the artistic side of me that's always been in the driving seat.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was doing industrial design at college in London and being sort
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: of pulled up by some of the,
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the, the,
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: the visiting lecturers who would talk to us about industrial design and what it is
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: and you need to be doing this and that and the other.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, yeah, but I want to make it beautiful.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: First and foremost,
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make it beautiful and I want to make it relate to
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: the person who's using it.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there's lots of different ways of looking at the same, even within the same faculty.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of different opinions about how you should do it.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the inspiring things I took away from design college was when we had
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: a visit by one of the
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of the sort of senior people from Alessi in Italy.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember being
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: really struck and sort of unmoved by their Their attitude
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: towards design, about where they start.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I just love the...
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: There was this beautiful sort of poetry and...
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or should I say this poetic approach to where they begin the idea for their work.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: So they might be designing a teapot or a kettle or whatever,
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: but there was always this lovely, playful, open, almost childish...
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Experimentation in the beginning.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it was also about what really matters to people.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I always remember there was a specific example.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost that feeling of a children's book is where it starts.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you end up with this beautiful award-winning piece of incredible industrial design.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the heart of it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think for me that's probably what underpins everything.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of the heart at the deepest level of...
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is we're making,
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: whether we're writing poetry or whether you're writing music or performing music
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: or whatever, it's the heart that really touches us.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you can reach that point with anything that you do is when it really,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: well, it's meaningful for other people as well.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you can, I think when you dig really deep
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Into your,
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: what you really care about in your own heart is when,
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: what I see is that's when it talks to other people.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's really authentic, you're not doing it.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I try increasingly now when I'm working on anything,
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really doing it for,
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: I realise I'm not doing it for anybody else anymore, I'm doing it for me.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And all of my most successful
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Things that I've designed,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: whether they're artworks or tools or pieces of furniture,
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: it's the ones where you started off with something you really wanted to achieve
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: for yourself,
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: where you create something that makes a difference for you and something
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: that you really care about.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that people say, wow, that's...
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: A really cool thing or a really cool idea what it is,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: but I think it's because it's really honest and really authentic.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Was it Philippe Stark who was the designer of a lot of their
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: work?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think Alessia is such an interesting example, particularly in New Zealand.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think there'd be not that many sort of middle class homes that wouldn't have had
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: at least one Alessia piece in the 90s.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And for a lot of New Zealanders,
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was almost an introduction to really good product design.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: But hey, it can be a pepper grinder.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it can also have a message or can it can be fun and it can simply be fun
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: that makes you so much of their work just makes you smile when you see it
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: because it reminds you and it reminds you of something else it reminds you of Yeah.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating because normally it's such a transactional,
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: functional thing, like a pepper grinder or a citrus bowl or whatever it is.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: But that element that they brought in just gave people a little bit of everyday joy
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: in that little moment,
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: that feeling of holding almost those Mickey Mouse ears on the pepper grinder kind
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: of thing and giving those a twist or the kettles.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: You remember the juice squeeze as well?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: It looked a bit like a sort of kind of alien spaceship.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so clever because the juice would just drip off the shape of it.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a teardrop, like an upside down teardrop.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you would squeeze a lemon and it would just all run down the teardrop.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: designed to be
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: on the bench top, not in a cupboard.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and to be appreciated and to look beautiful.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that was always my thing.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want it to look beautiful.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want it to be appealing as well as really, it has to be.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: My ethos has always, always, always stayed with me.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be faultlessly useful.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it has to work really well.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's got to last.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's got to be well made.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's got to be really well considered.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it can still be fun and it can still be beautiful.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: So was that a revelation that happened for you later in life?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Or what was your upbringing like?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Were you surrounded by beauty, by objects of art, by functionality?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not really, no.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: What was that like?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: You grew up in Manchester?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in between.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: So my parents are from Liverpool.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then I grew up in between Liverpool and Manchester.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I just had really quite a simple upbringing.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't surrounded by, my parents didn't collect art or anything like that.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: But my dad was really, my dad was an engineer.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he was very, he was extremely good at making things, fixing things.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: He worked for IBM back in the days when,
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: international business machines,
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: which a lot of people don't realize that's what it stands for.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: back in the day when they were machines,
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: he was kind of a genius at fixing the machine.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then after he retired, he got into horology.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he was studying watches and clocks and he was absolutely fascinated by that.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was really into navigation as well.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was a big sailor.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he was a real,
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think he had an amazing eye and he had incredible skills,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: physical skills to make and make and repair and invent,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: which I think is a lot, I had a bigger influence on me.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't until I went to design college and then really started to sort of tune
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: into tune into things.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was just to begin with was traditional cabinet making.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I was looking at a lot of lovely antiques and that kind of thing and started
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: to really appreciate how important the proportion and
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Proportion and also evolution of objects.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: with cabinet making,
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: you'd see beautiful chairs from hundreds of years ago,
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: but what you realise is there were families that had been making these chairs
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: for three or four generations.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's all they did.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the skill and the evolution of the elegance of these particular chairs was
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: over hundreds of years, which is why they were so beautiful and so...
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well executed and well made and why they last,
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: why they have such incredible endurance even if they're quite fine.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's because they broke hundreds of them and realised how to make them so
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: that they wouldn't break.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: That was quite a revelation for me to realise that there's so much more Things
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: that have been really well done,
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: well made,
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: well designed,
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: well executed, well crafted, there's so much more to them than you realise.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just jump in afresh and think you're going to revolutionise something
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: because you've got to understand things.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to understand how they were done for them to become so good.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a big thing.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then design college,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: which taught me more about process and the kind of logic and ethos behind
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: the way you go about creating something.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then working with Lindley in London, who were probably one of the
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, incredibly high quality
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: furniture makers, furniture designers and makers.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then really was surrounded by the best of the best of the best all the time,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: like whatever we did.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I worked a lot on custom projects.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: You would always work with the best people, certainly the best people in the UK.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if the best people at that particular craft or business,
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: or means of
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Producing something, whether that was art or whether it was glass or leather.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: We'd go to them and often they'd be somewhere in Europe and they'd been doing it
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: for hundreds of years.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I remember going to a company in Florence that we were using on a specific project
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: and they were 450 years old.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we got to have these amazing experiences with just the best of the best
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: and it just gave me a whole other insight into You know,
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: how important knowledge is and how important traditional these things
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: that were being passed down through generations
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: and
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: these beautifully intricate little details and kind of tricks of the trade,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: that people devise over,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: literally over generations that make their particular one so special and
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: so virtually impossible to copy or to reproduce.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And again, which it also taught me where brands, it showed me the real value of a brand.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because in our day and age,
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're probably maybe moved on through that a little bit now,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: but for a long time, you know, the
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: The order was wrong.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: People were creating a brand.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd go to a fancy branding company.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: They'd create some amazing brand for you.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they'd kind of write the story.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go, oh, what should we design to fit the brand?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just total bullshit.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's the other way around.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: A brand is something you put on something you're proud of.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: So consequently, you spend...
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Generations making something so well that you've become the best in the world.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, it wants to have your brand on it.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: And people buy it because it's so good.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: They don't buy it because it's...
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people buy because of the brand, but the brand exists because the thing is so good.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, the brand doesn't last.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: It comes and it goes.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you look at some of the most famous brands in the world,
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: it's because the product is so good.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Lindley,
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: the founder of Lindley,
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think David Lindley,
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: the Queen's nephew,
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine that comes also with that level of reputation and quality
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: and longevity also with a relatively interesting client list.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: What was that like?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have a lot of client interaction or were you more a backroom?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: I started off as a freelance designer as the go-between just when I was coming out
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: of design college.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: I almost didn't take the job because I thought...
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm kind of going backwards because I,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was coming out with these sort of ideas about how to go about designing
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: and what's important and conceptual and da-da-da.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was offered a job by Lindley and I was offered an interview.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I almost didn't take it because I thought,
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: oh, it feels like I'm going back into this kind of traditional world.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know whether that's really me.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember a friend of mine kicking me up the backside and saying,
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: come on, mate, you're just coming out of college.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably one of the best furniture jobs.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I started off just freelancing being a go between between the workshops between
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: the designers in London and the workshops in who were most of them were out in
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: the West Country.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Around sort of Wiltshire and Oxfordshire and places.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so because I had a foot in both camps of the traditional making and the design,
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: I could kind of navigate and in effect be an interpreter between the two.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where I started off.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then the company was growing really quickly and I ended up becoming the head of
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: the design team and growing the design team from Me and one other guy into
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: about I think we had about a dozen people within three years.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then I became so through Becoming the head of the design team,
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: I became a kind of design manager,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: and then with the old inevitable evolution into a management job
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: where you're getting further and further away from the thing that you love.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I just found myself sitting in too many meetings talking about
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the structure of the company.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: and I think it happens with so many companies, is the money starts leading things.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the conversation is about how can we make more money?
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: How can we increase our profits?
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: How can we, or,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: limit our losses, whatever, however things are going for the company at the time.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I just got to a point where I suddenly realized, I just hate this.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sitting in all these meetings,
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: and I kept saying,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: In some of these meetings,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that we focus more on the design and more on the creativity.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: The money will follow.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: The money is always going to follow great things.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you make something great, people will buy it.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't put the cart before the horse again and expect people
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: to buy something simply because, you know, you're going about it.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's upside down.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember saying to David, I think it was the next day, I was having a chat with him.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: I said, look, David, I think I'm...
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm done.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be on the management team anymore.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking, well, unfortunately, maybe that's the end of my time at Lindley.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I need to go and do something else.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, he used to call me crookie.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he still does, actually.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, you know, what do you want to do?
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, I love designing things and I love spending time with the clients.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: He said, okay, well, you can join the sales team.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: I said, no, I don't want to join the bloody sales team.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: He said, no, hang on, hang on.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, you won't have to sell anything.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: He said, all I want you to do is go and talk to people about what we're doing.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, okay, that's interesting.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: He said, just go and talk to people.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, you know more about what we do than pretty much anybody.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, and you're also, you know, you're good at talking to people.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he said, just go and do that.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, well, I'll.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Give it a go.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: And, um, so that's what I did.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember buying, I went out and I bought a little Vespa scooter.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I just used to buzz around going to meetings for lunch and lunch and dinner
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: and coffee and, and, and just seeing, seeing clients.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: And, and, um,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: so we'd just sit and we'd chat and they'd tell me what it was they were thinking
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: about.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get, we'd get to the end of the, of our, um,
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they'd say, oh, so how do we go ahead?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd say, with what?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what we've been talking about.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: We want to go ahead and we want to buy one of those things.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that one you showed us,
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: we'd like it to be like that,
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: but we want you to sort of remodel it a bit or give it a slightly different function
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: or whatever it is.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I quite quickly kind of became the sort of,
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: Top salesperson in the group of,
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: I forget how many of us were, four or five people, I think.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it just didn't even feel like work.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was just going out,
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: enjoying myself,
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: chatting to people,
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: and then coming home with the new project every time, pretty much.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: And David said, there you go, I told you.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that was quite funny.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I became,
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: I started working quite closely with him on some of the sort of special,
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: the bigger special projects.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: We did all sorts of things, boat interiors, and I came to New Zealand to do that.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we did a limited edition Range Rover because he had really close links
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: with Land Rover through the family.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just got these incredible experiences.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so David and I jump on his motorbike or jump in a car and drive to the other end
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: of the country and go and work on all these amazing things together.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was so cool.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is that phase,
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: the time that you attribute the development of your skill
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: in actually articulating what you do now?
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Looking at that interpreting,
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: translational kind of role,
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: communicating,
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: understanding also,
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: you've already been communicating between design and manufacture,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: and then with the clients.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it was incredibly diverse today.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: As you can imagine,
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: really incredibly diverse range of people that I was talking to on a daily basis.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've been talking to the,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: the cabinet makers,
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've been talking to the design team,
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: talking,
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: to all the other guys in the team there,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: but then going out and meeting all sorts of people,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: and a really wide ranging group of clients, you know, and some of them were
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: There were all sorts of people,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: but some incredibly well-known people,
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: incredibly wealthy people, all sorts of people who were just interested in...
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Creating something beautiful, interesting that was going to probably last.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the outlook was usually they want something that's going to last to be able
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: to hand down to their children and their children.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: And often that and that was David's ethos was very much about longevity.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we worked on one project David and I worked on.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: We went to Norwich Cathedral.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: And quite a funny end of it.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful summer's day and we ended up, the bishop at the time, he's a great character.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we arrived there about lunchtime.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: He said, oh, we've made a bit of lunch for you.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we went into there.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: We went inside and he said, would you like a glass of wine?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, okay.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we ended up getting sort of half drunk with him.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's hilarious.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was a real character, this guy.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gave us a tour of Norwich Cathedral and all these places
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: that you don't get to go to unless you've got the right keys and that kind of thing,
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: which was mind-blowing.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think Norwich is one of the oldest cathedrals in Europe.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: But point being,
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: we got the project was to create two chairs to go alongside the bishop's throne,
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: which was about nine, this chair was about 900 years old.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it had been set in by pretty much all of the kings and queens that we studied at school.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Had pretty much all sat in this chair at some point.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just mind-blowing.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's little old me from Warrington,
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: measuring,
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: turning it upside down,
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: measuring it and doing some sketches and plans and photographs and stuff.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then David and I designed these two other chairs that would sit alongside it,
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: were modern versions of, you know, that somehow echoed elements of it.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was really...
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was very sobering and very,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: I realized I was in an incredibly lucky privileged position to be able to do to work
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: on some of these projects.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: What does success look like on a project like that when in terms of,
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: okay, you know that you've nailed it.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got the brief,
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: we need some chairs that are going to go alongside this and not look out of place
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: or make that one look stupid or whatever the brief was in terms of generically
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: or holistically.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of you saying, okay, yep, we nailed that.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: What would success have looked like then?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know,
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's, well, for me,
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: you can only speak from my point of view,
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: really, is just knowing that you've done it justice.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've thought hard and you've thought hard enough.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd always do a lot of research as well into the background of,
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know, why something is what it is.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: So for me,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: it's always, well,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: have I actually somehow managed to capture some of the essence
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: of why this thing is what it is and why it's important and maybe some of
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: that history
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: that is contained within it.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Things have their own energy and I always think when you get it right,
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: somehow they'll sit comfortably with each other.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have any temptation to put any sort of Easter egg in there for somebody in the future?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, we actually did a lot of stuff.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I learned is people are fascinated by those little secret details.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so in lots of the pieces, I designed loads of, say, desks and...
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: And pieces like that over the years.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they often had,
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: and it became a bit of a hallmark of some of the Lindley work,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: was that they had little secret compartments or secret drawers.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I love designing.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love designing, you know, again, the industrials.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: A designer in me loves designing little mechanisms where you can,
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: and going back to my dad as well, he was a master at that sort of stuff.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: you push a button here and another button pops out there and you press that one
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: and you turn this and then it goes click and the drawer opens.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you'd never work it out unless you knew how to do it.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I love things like that.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: And people, I think we are all fascinated in those things.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've done,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've done quite a few pieces in New Zealand that have had those sort
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: of little idiosyncrasies about them.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Surprise.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Rise and Delight, I think.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: I love that concept.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: What about yachts?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: The constraints are so tightly defined on a yacht.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: With a table,
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: it needs to be able If you visit 12 people or whatever the constraint is there,
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: you've got a little bit more wiggle room.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas with something like a yacht, that's it.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's very much constrained.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: How did you find that?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Was it easier, more fun?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do you work when constraints
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: are so tight?
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly not easier, but it's definitely fun.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: And my attitude is always that other people often know a lot more about their subject than I do.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: When I first came out to New Zealand to work on this boat,
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: the client was from London,
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: and he's somebody that we'd done quite a bit of furniture for,
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: and he was telling David and I that he was building a yacht in Auckland
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: with Alloy Yachts, because at that time, Which was late 90s.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: He could get the whole yacht finished,
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: completely fitted out,
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: everything done, all of the rigging, the whole lot, and completely fitted out.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: All the cabinetry, all the fitted furniture and everything.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: All done for the same price he could get the same thing,
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: sorry, for the same price he could only get the superstructure for in Europe.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if he'd gone to Holland or Italy or Germany or where all of the,
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: or the UK where a lot of those super yachts are built,
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: he was getting so much more in New Zealand, which is why he chose to come here.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: But what I really enjoyed,
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: so he said, could you go, could, Could you guys design me a table to go in?
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: It began with one piece on his boat.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: He only wanted one piece of us.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we, over a nice lunch,
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: we sort of talked him into me coming out to New Zealand to come and meet
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: the boatyard and see how else we might be able to contribute to the design.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I came out and it was quite funny.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I rocked up in...
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: I rocked up in the middle of summer in Auckland in a suit and,
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know, with my looking sort of very formal.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember turning up at the boatyard and all these guys sitting around
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: with their arms folded in their jandals and shorts and, you know, looking at me.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was this guy coming out from England to tell us how to design a boat, you know.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first things I said to him, I looked around and I thought, oh, God.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Look at me, sitting here, you know, arriving in a suit.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I took my jacket off, and I think I might have even had a tie on in those days as well.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I took that off, and I just sat down.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: I said, so,
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: you guys are going to think,
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: who is this guy arriving from London to tell us how to sign a boat?
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I can see it in the way.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: The body language I know.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'll tell you, I'm feeling pretty uncomfortable right now.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: One of them goes, yeah, you bloody should be, mate, you know.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so we immediately started off having a bit of a laugh and I said,
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: look, I'm not a boat designer.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to tell you at all how to design boats, but I'm good at designing furniture.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I've been doing for, you know, a long time.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've got some ideas with me about what the owners said he'd like
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: to integrate, but I'm in your hands in terms of you, you know, you need to
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: You need to teach me how to how we do this together.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I've never designed something that's so three dimensional,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: everything's curving,
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: everything's changing,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: shifting,
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know, it's not like designing a freestanding piece of furniture in any way.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that really kind of broke the ice, you know, and then we got the sketchbook out.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: The minute you get out a sketchbook with anyone who's creative or a maker,
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: it all changes, you know, and I hand it to them.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the designs and things that I,
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: that I'd been mucking around with and then just handed it over to them and said,
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: well, look, you know, tell me how, oh no, mate, you can't do that.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do that.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, okay, that's, that's cool.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how can you do it?
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're going to do that, you do it like this.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, brilliant.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're, we're, we're starting to get somewhere.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, um,
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: and then we all,
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think we all went out,
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: had a couple of beers at night and we were chatting away and, and, um,
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, oh,
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: we usually get idiots like you turn up and they think they know everything
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: and they just tell us how to do it and it all goes wrong and it costs the owner
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: a fortune.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, but you're one of the only people who's ever turned up and actually listened to us.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, I've been, this is exactly what I've been doing for 10 years.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: I work with cabinet makers in the UK and they're much better at cabinet making
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: than I am, even though I've, you know, I've studied it to a reasonably high level.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't do it to the level that you guys actually do it.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: For, you know, as a profession.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got massive respect for what you guys do and more so you guys build boats.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've got no idea how to build a boat.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: So from then on we got on, we actually got on...
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: Really well.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a mutual respect there, you know.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we did all kinds of cool things that nobody had ever actually done before
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: on boats because we were integrating different things.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: You see,
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: and it's funny now because I look around,
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: I see quite a few things in the super yacht world and we would have been one of
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: the very first people to do some of those, that kind of detailing.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's...
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was pretty cool.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then I came out about six,
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think, about six or seven times during the process of building the yacht.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then came out for the launch.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, that was the first time I came.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: Each time I'd come out,
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'd always tack on a week or so so I could travel around New Zealand a bit
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: and see different parts.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the last time I came down here after the launch of the boat in Auckland,
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: I flew down to Queenstown and had about 24 hours here, I think, and just loved it.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: I really loved it and I thought, wow, there's something about this place.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew there and then it was going to play some kind of role in my life in
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: the future, but you have no idea what that might be.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I just remember sitting having a coffee on the wharf in Queensland and going,
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: wow, there's something about this place.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: You've also spent time in the Swiss Alps, ski instructing, French Alps.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're not shabby in terms of places and scenic beauty.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: What was different here that struck you like that?
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it felt,
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: because, well,
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been in,
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: when we decided to move here,
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: so by that time I'd got back in touch with an old friend of mine who then became,
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: she was living in Sydney and I was still in London.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we ended up, I ended up going out to Australia and we sort of got together over there.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then we decided we were going to head back to the UK and I was maybe going
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: to start working for Lindley again.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she was finishing off her medical training.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, well, why don't we?
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd met each other years ago in Switzerland teaching kids to ski.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Tonya?
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we thought, well, why don't we go via New Zealand?
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Tonya said, oh, I've come across a job in a place called Queenstown.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where I can be a medical, you know, work on the hell in first aid.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: Work on the hill in first aid.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, oh, you won't believe this.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: She said, watch that.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: I said, that's one of the few places,
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: well, the only place I've been to in the South Island, I think.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: I said, oh, it was amazing.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'd love to go and do a ski season there.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we did.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that was in 2002 when we first came here.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it was,
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: but to answer your question,
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: it was the, New Zealand just felt really familiar, I think coming from the UK.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: And also there was a quite a,
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: we'd really enjoyed Australia,
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: but it was culturally, it just didn't quite feel like a fit for us.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hence, we were on our way back to the UK via New Zealand.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: But New Zealand just felt so familiar.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as I arrived,
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, God,
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: this just feels...
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd already had that experience from the yacht project, but...
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: It just feels easy and also Queenstown,
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know, 25 years ago, arriving in Queenstown was quite a different experience.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was just very, it was so quiet and, you know, it was so sort of open.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everything felt easy to do.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was really sparsely populated and also we bumped into very quickly,
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: made some really good friends.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, just stuck.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I went off the idea of moving back to the UK and said,
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: well, why don't we stay here a bit longer?
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it was 25 years.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: And did you start working creatively then?
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: How long did that process?
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: Not for a while.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just got in.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was just skiing all the time.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I did some ski training and got the New Zealand ski instructor ticket.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: it was I was just loving skiing and then had a bit,
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: got enough of a good thing and started getting, and I hadn't worked for a while.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was almost, that was probably a year since I'd left Lindley at that point.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I started getting kind of itchy fingers to get back onto...
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: Creating some things again and just started doing a few little projects for friends
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: and colleagues of Tonya's at the medical center who said,
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, could you design something for us?
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, and then,
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: and also when I came here,
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought there's no way I'm going to be able to further my career from
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: where I've been.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: To this tiny little town in the middle of nowhere at the end of the world on
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: an island in the middle of nowhere, you know.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then started realizing actually there's some pretty interesting stuff going on
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: and some people building cool houses and some good architecture.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I just started getting more and more involved.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then a couple of years, well, 18 months later, I think I had my own shop in Arrowtown.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: How long was it before you noticed the local environment,
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: the specificity of Aotearoa starting to influence your work?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or was that a conscious thing that happened?
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think the most significant thing where I look back and I really see an influence was
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: The piece that I designed called the Koru,
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: the Koru chair,
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: which is like a kind of a two-person,
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: well, one-person or two-person seat that's in leather and possum fur.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of fascinated,
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: as everybody is when they arrive in New Zealand and they see And down here,
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: particularly seeing things in possum and coming from the UK,
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: it's kind of not very cool having fur.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then you realise actually it's part of the culture down here.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: And also, of course, possum being a pest, it's not such a big deal.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: that was a chair that I designed that was all lined in possum,
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: which I never would have done in a million years had it been elsewhere.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it was designed to be this sort of really lovely cosseting experience of being
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: in a cold place where you can wrap up.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: And actually it was inspired by the daughter of some friends of ours who...
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: We were sitting around one night having a drink in a very cold cottage in front of
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: the fire and she came in dragging a possum throat that I think I'd maybe just got
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: for Tonya for a birthday present and she came in and wrapped herself up
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: in this possum throat.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: We were sitting in front of the fire.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: She was probably four or five at the time and just kind of fell asleep
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: with her thumb in her mouth in front of the fireplace
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: and we were all giggling saying,
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you've got to design something that makes adults feel like that.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where that came from.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a very specific,
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, that was a very specific influence created by a change in environment, yeah.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: Separately from the work, when did you start to feel that it was really home?
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously you felt that initial attraction and appeal.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: When did you start to feel like, yeah, okay, this is it.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a local, the tap route's going in.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is it.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: Fairly quickly, I think.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: Probably within, I'd say within a couple of years.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we bought,
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_00: we went in to rent a house and ended up coming out of
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: the real estate agents having bought it on the same day,
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think, which is a bit nuts.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we lived there for a little while.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was in Arrowtown, but we always had this dream of...
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: of buying a piece of land and building a house
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: and funnily enough sitting right here now looking across the lake over the back of
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: the hill here was the first we bought a piece of land just tucked in over
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: the back there um we just put it in and things were going nuts you know
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: the property market then was that was early 2000s and it was going crazy and we put
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: a deposit down on a piece of land over there and um free um we had a year to pay
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: for it I think and uh And within
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: that year we realised actually we couldn't really afford to do this.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: The piece of land we'd bought justice,
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was, you know, 10 acres of this incredible, in this incredible spot.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: But just as sometimes happens,
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: it was great timing and somebody else came along and said,
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: oh actually we'd really like to buy it off you before we were due to settle on it.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we said well okay and they offered us, you know, a A price that worked.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so we sort of walked away from there,
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: having a bit sad to let it go,
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: but equally thinking, well, why don't we look for somewhere else?
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we found somewhere with some friends of ours.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: They, in fact,
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: they found it and said to us,
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: hey, we've just found an amazing 20 acre block right in the middle of things.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And would you guys be interested in going halves in it?
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we did.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the days when, you know, you look back now at the prices and you think, God, the
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, we subdivided that into two blocks and then built our house on it.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: How's your relationship to Britain then changed over the years?
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not always easy living away from your home culture, your culture of birth.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Has that changed?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Have you struggled at points, missed things?
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously you would have missed a lot of significant milestones, friends and family.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's probably the biggest.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably the biggest things.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when things are...
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: when things are difficult,
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well,
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think it makes it hard being that far away from home because you don't have
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: the support.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have family support.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have mothers nearby or,
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: your best friends who are best friends and confidants who you can,
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_00: who you grew up with, who know you better than, better than anybody.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there were, there were challenges there.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Equally,
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_00: we equally,
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: we made,
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: you know, wonderful life friends here as well, who are still very much there.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I miss is
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: the culture in lots of different ways.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I miss some of the humour,
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: the kind of English humour,
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_00: which is always wonderful to re-encounter when we go back.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: I miss the history.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I miss that.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And having actually studied quite,
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: through my time in design and particularly with Lindley,
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: we spent a lot of time in beautiful ancient buildings and,
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: whether they were houses or,
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: like I was saying before, cathedrals and that kind of thing.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that I miss.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_00: You almost can't explain what that is, you
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: just feel it.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Being able to touch something or be something that's that ancient,
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: it moves you in a different way.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I remember the first time that my ex-parents-in-law took my ex-wife and I out
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: for dinner as a couple.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: We went to,
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was like an 800-year-old restaurant that had been in the same family for
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_01: over 800 years.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you're sitting in there and just imagining all those conversations and meals
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: that have happened and the families that have gone through.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite different.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I find it just gives me a sense of perspective on my, you know, my place in the world.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's...
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do I find?
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's quite humbling.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good ego check, isn't it?
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It makes you realise you really don't know
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_00: very much,
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: no matter how clever you might think you are or whatever you realise,
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_00: actually,
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_00: you're just a tiny little blip and a tiny little cog in
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_00: a gigantic machine that's been going for millennia, you know.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, that also gives me...
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's exciting because you realise how much you don't know.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: But also,
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: the other perspective it gives me is how important it is to do something meaningful
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_00: that can actually make a difference.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not let your life tick by and think, oh, maybe I could have done more.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I could have done something that actually really
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_00: If, you know,
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_00: if I were courageous enough to do something that actually makes a difference
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_00: to other people as well and not to ourselves,
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_00: because I think we get so easy to get selfish and introspective
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_00: about what we're doing to clean today's world where we're constantly bombarded with,
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the importance of self.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no,
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: actually the most important thing about self I think is not being selfish,
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: is actually sharing Sharing what you've got and what you've been lucky enough
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: to inherit in the way of,
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_00: when I say inherit,
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean in terms of skills or knowledge or education and actually share that too.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in some way,
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: make things better outside of yourself to help other people or to,
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: to, to continue some of that knowledge that you've got.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so for me,
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know, my, what,
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_00: what I, and I said earlier, my, I guess my greatest wish out of it all is to leave
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: A legacy of connection and how important connection is.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying I can connect people and make their lives better,
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: but just
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_00: to start conversations that people remember
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: that maybe make them act slightly differently, I guess is a way of putting it.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think if we can all do that, then the world changes, you know.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Talk us through your roundabout table with the Martin Luther King quote.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why that piece and why that message, talking about legacy and connection and message?
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the first...
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you like,
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: that was the first art piece that I designed or created and that was through
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: a great
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_00: client of mine who was a big sort of international art collector, dealer.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Impresario, whatever his whole life is about, is about art.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he was putting together a show in Wellington called Roundabout,
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_00: which was, he was inviting 108 artists all over the world to be involved in a show.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a central,
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_00: the central sort of ethos of it was,
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_00: and he was a, he's a kind of peace and love kind of guy, you know.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_00: He started off as a,
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think he started off as a,
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: As a banker in New York and then he got a bit disillusioned with the whole thing
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_00: and he got into art and made a business out of that.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: But he was incredibly sort of philanthropic guy and he loves helping people
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_00: to be creative and helping people to sort
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_00: of further their whatever their practice might be.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I designed a lot of Furniture for an apartment of his and
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_00: then I'd actually designed a whole art gallery for him that we'd built on the side
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_00: of his house.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which was amazing,
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_00: just full of incredible international contemporary art and also Kiwi
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: and Australian art.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he invited me to be one of the artists in the show that he was putting together
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_00: in Wellington.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole idea was to...
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Bring a very diverse group of people together with a central ethos,
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_00: which was the quote, the Martin Luther King quote.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful quote.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've decided to stick with love.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Hates too great a burden to bear.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was,
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a speech in about 1968,
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_00: during a particularly tense time in the States when there's quite a lot of racial
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so the whole point was where you can bring all these people together
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_00: with different nationalities,
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_00: different languages,
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_00: different religions,
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: different politics, different life experience, but all work together.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Side by side,
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_00: not together,
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_00: but this fascinating
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: mix of how you can take one idea and for it to be reinterpreted
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: in so many different ways.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So David asked me to create a piece that was about connection,
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_00: so that it was about bringing people together,
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: funnily enough, in conversations that matter.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought long and hard about that for probably about a year,
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I spent on the ideas about what I wanted it to be.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted it to represent the 108 artists.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_00: In his, if you like, his brief, he said there's only two things.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said,
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like you in some way to use the quote and to experiment
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_00: with language however you might want to.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a brief that everybody had.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of took the love-hate thing out of the quote and...
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Playing with the idea of what a fine line it is between the two.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that it's such a fine line and it can go one way or the other
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_00: through the communication.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if communication breaks down, you can end up on the hate side of things.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've got great communication,
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_00: you can end up on the love side of things,
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: whether that's your neighbor or whether it's another culture or another person or...
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I was playing with ideas around that.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to use language, but I didn't want it to be overt.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the minute you use a specific language,
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: it's immediately exclusive to all the other languages in the world.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was...
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Battling with this idea of, well, how can you be as inclusive as possible?
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well,
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_00: if I can just suggest language without it actually being a language
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_00: that anybody can understand, then that's kind of a good way to capture everybody.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where I came up with the idea of using Braille and
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: the industrial designer in me as well.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've always loved the format of Braille and how...
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_00: How clever and concise it is to be able to communicate.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yet I was trying to not communicate at the same time.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was suggesting communication without anyone being able to decipher it, really.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can decipher it if you spend...
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of time and pay attention and maybe learn, you know, learn something more.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can understand it and you can decipher it.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that difficult, really.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Since in all that time,
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: since 2010,
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think one person has ever come back to me and told me what one of my work says.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Which is really telling.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people get frustrated that they can't read it and I won't tell them what it says.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well you could work it out.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I will.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go away and work it out and I'll tell you.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: I said, great.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Please get back to me and tell me what it says.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, but getting back to the table.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I made, I also made it from, I made it from materials that guns are made from.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I chose walnut and gun blued steel.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's exactly what a rifle would be made from.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole idea was you're making something which is all about connection, community,
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: A group of people working side by side, but with peaceful intent.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you make it from the materials that people usually would associate with guns and
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_00: with, you know, potentially with violence, destruction.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there was quite a lot of, you know, irony about the work.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_00: But they're very, you know, they're very beautiful materials too, which...
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So out of the irony, I wanted it to be a really beautiful thing.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it's about how we can...
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a lot about how we can misconstrue things,
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_00: how we can misunderstand somebody simply because we're different or
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_00: because we've got a preconceived view.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So again,
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_00: that really encapsulates the whole concept of what I'm still doing
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_00: and what I'm aiming for is to sort of create curiosity
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_00: and equally challenge people's opinions about each other and just try
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_00: and be more understanding.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about your father as an engineer.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was also an engineer.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I fully get the precision and the quality and that side of things coming through,
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_01: which is entirely evident in your work.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_01: But then also the softer side and the messaging.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't talked about your mother.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_01: What role did she have and what role has she played perhaps in the messaging
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_01: and what you want to communicate, how you want to connect people?
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, mum's still around.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Dad passed away over 10 years ago.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she was, you know, she's a wonderful mother.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Part of me wonders,
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: this exploration of connection and sometimes I think, well,
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: is it that,
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know, I yearned maybe for more connection when we were, when I was younger?
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had a Wonderful upbringing and very loving, loving parents.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But dad was probably relatively absent.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three, I've got two brothers and a sister as well.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, dad was a kind of typical working dad in those days.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_00: You did long hours and wouldn't see much of him.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And mum was probably carrying a lot of the,
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, carrying pretty much all of the family burden,
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_00: as it were,
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: of just raising four kids and feeding us and clothing us and getting us to school
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_00: on time and everything else that goes with it.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, she's wonderful.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes I do wonder whether that is my quest
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_00: for more Connection maybe goes back to something I wished for all of us as a family,
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_00: to have more of that sort of emotional connection with each other,
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_00: which I think for our, you know, people of our generation, it was quite a...
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't an unusual thing,
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_00: but you just wonder how different the world would be
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_00: if we were all better communicators.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my mum, she's quite a...
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say that she's a staunch woman, but she's pretty straightforward.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, northern England...
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_00: She's amazing and incredibly kind.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I guess so often that was demonstrated through actions, not through words and communication.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Fascinating parallels between our lives and family upbringing.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I fully relate to that.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to give my mother hugging lessons recently because she can hug
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_01: but she has such an unusual way of doing it that it actually
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_00: and now when I go home,
• 1:26:19
  SPEAKER_00: and hopefully I'll be going home in the next few months,
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_00: back to, interesting that I say home, isn't it?
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be going back to the UK, that home, in a couple of months' time.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And, yeah,
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I always notice it's a sort of unsaid,
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_00: it's almost an unsaid love, you know, the minute I go into...
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Being more expressive and emotional, you know, people get uncomfortable with it.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're not used to it.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the same with, you know, family and friends.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Most people aren't comfortable with deeper communication about your emotions.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you tell somebody you love them.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Does anybody need another cup of tea, you know?
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_01: After everything we've talked about today,
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_01: the craft, London,
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_01: the transition,
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Lindley, Ski Instructing, the Alps here, the personal upheaval of the last year.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you had to boil it all down to one sort of through line, what would that be?
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow, what a great question.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think, what would I say?
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think I would say appreciate,
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_00: just appreciate how important every day is that you've got
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_00: and
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_00: prioritise letting people know how much you care about them, you know.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you love them or not,
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_00: there are different levels,
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_00: but just communicate and let people know
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_00: how much you
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_00: appreciate and care
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: about them.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do you bring that then into a piece of work?
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for me, through the way it makes people feel.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I try and... Well, I don't try.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I put that into everything that I make because it's just...
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it's just something that's embedded in me and my psyche.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So for me,
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that that comes through whenever people interact with anything that I've made
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_00: or created.
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can sort of feel it intuitively or you can see it.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you get it right and when,
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_00: as I was saying earlier,
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_00: when you've really done it for yourself,
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_00: because that's just your natural way of being and of doing things,
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think it does come through.
• 1:29:40
  [music]