For me, the aim is to produce pieces of fine craftsmanship, using a combination of old and new technologies. The balance is set to maintain an economically viable range of products that have been made by myself for the general market.
The viability of a product in the market depends on the perceived value of the product, minus the cost to the producer. I aim to produce items that are unique, beautiful and valuable but affordable.
The quality of a product depends fundamentally on the design and the skilled execution. The design accounts for how the product is intended to be used, the types of materials used to perform their tasks, the way these materials relate to each other and form a whole. The level of skill determines how close the finished artefact is to the designed ideal. The combination of these two things produce the outcome. There is a real sense of joy and satisfaction when an item is finished (as finished as it can be – nothing is really ever completely finished) and you have produced what you envisioned and ironed out any mistakes on the way.
Mistakes. A heavily loaded word. My grandad said to me, “You can make any mistakes you like, but only make them once.” Mistakes can be seen as two things: an opportunity to change something, like a random mutation in the evolution of a product, or an opportunity to make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future. Mistakes are good if they are harmless. Although they are usually frustrating at the time, I think it’s good to make the effort to calmly watch them happen, as a detached observer, and take mental note of them. Then ask, “how can this error be developed into a beneficial feature, either in terms of the aesthetics or the functionality?” In this way, many of the things I have designed have emerged from something which would have been less steered by chance, and possibly less beautiful and useful.
Chance is a friend and an enemy. As well as generating novelty (I’m sure chance has something to do with creativity in general), it can ruin things, so an ideal balance must be met between focused diligence and openness to novelty and change.