Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Name: Martin Bourne.
Occupation: Stylist, designer, and craftsperson.
Instagram: @martinrbourne.
Hometown: Welwyn Village in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.
Studio Location: Brooklyn, New York and Long Eddy, New York.
Describe what you make: I am a multidisciplinary artist and craftsperson working across printed fabrics, hand built ceramics, photography, and painting.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: My homes. Above all things, the environment that I inhabit is the most important. This includes the gradual development of my home, garden, and landscape in upstate New York, which serves as both reflection and development points that then feed into all other aspects of my work. I have also lived in what was a minimal industrial loft space in Brooklyn which has transitioned into a maximalist kaleidoscope of texture, color, and art. I recently also worked on a contemporary home in L.A. with my husband which has become an exercise of restraint and careful curation.
Describe the problem your work solves: While it may not address global issues, my work fundamentally offers solutions to the wholesale homogeneity of design and mass produced “taste.”
Share the project you are working on now: Currently, I am exploring larger hand-built forms in clay that are simple vessels, designed for everyday but also having a sense of the ancient and familiar without the museum reverence. In tandem with my glazes and forms, I have been developing a series of simple striped and checked fabrics using my own marks sometimes over already woven scraps and pieces to also produce something familiar but also playful and modern.
What you absolutely have to have in your studio: My ideal studio environment is a cool September day with the stove lit, my two dogs and some good coffee. I tend to work in the quiet and typically there are the odd small vases with some wind fall blooms for color inspiration.
What you do when you’re not working: The division between the 9-5 and leisure has never really existed for me. I have always been very fortunate to make what I do part of my complete life and I am always exercising my creative muscles.
Sources of creative envy (dead or alive): The Bloomsbury Group. Their lives as a group were so intertwined with their individual creative outputs. Their farmhouse home near Lewes in East Sussex is a masterclass in color and decoration. Also for his sense of eternal joy in color and form is David Hockney.
The distraction you want to eliminate: “Experts,” providing cut and dry answer on what’s good and what is not.
Concrete or marble? Marble.
High-Rise Or Townhouse? Townhouse.
Remember or Forget? Forget.
Aliens or Ghosts? Aliens.
Dark Or Light? Dark.
