Creative treasures unearthed at Postgraduate Degree Show

An array of creative talent and craftsmanship was on show at Buckinghamshire New University’s MA Furniture Design & Technology Graduate Show.

Ten postgraduate students from the MA Furniture Design & Technology course exhibited the best items of their work created during the last calendar year. The Degree Show celebrated the talent, creativity and success of the students, who have been studying at Bucks New University for either one year full-time or two years part-time.

Dr Lynn Jones, Course Leader, MA Furniture Design & Technology, commented: “This year’s graduate cohort have proved once again that Bucks students are extremely talented, having won competitions and work placements across the board. Demonstrating huge amounts of design skill, creativity and unerring tenacity, these ten young enthusiastic people have shown great affinity with each other, and through their friendship and zest for life have given us a very optimistic, creatively diverse and commercially challenging end of year exhibition.”

Amongst the range of creations exhibited was the work of Jackie Hunt, an MA student with broad professional experience in museums, heritage, the furniture industry, horticulture and archaeology. Her MA project was based on furniture for how people live outdoors, and explores garden theory and real people’s experiences and perceptions of their own gardens.

Her exhibition included two large, structural pieces, designed to act as focal points in the garden and aid escape and contemplation. The first piece, a 'Sitooterie', is made of green ash and offers a quiet place to sit for solitude and seclusion. The second, entitled 'Far From The Madding Crowd’, takes its inspiration from the landscape and restorative nature of the Dorset countryside, and is a metal canopy with limestone seat below, made with dry stone walling techniques for relaxation and contemplation.

Jackie also exhibited tables that use structures already in the garden to provide support, including a study table which can be strapped to a tree trunk, a swing table suspended from a branch for picnics, and a cafe-style table that cleverly slots into a rotary washing line hole.

Also on display was the work of Nessa Doran O’Reilly, who was a furniture designer and maker prior to commencing her full time MA at Bucks. Nessa’s project, ‘Happy Furniture’, featured a coffee table and coat stand designed to optimise the unique light-emitting characteristics of live edge acrylic, an upholstered swinging seat that hugs the user, and a pine coat stand that welcomes you home with open arms! Nessa’s motivation for the project was to design uplifting domestic furniture, and she feels her objects encapsulate a happy energy, which create a positive and joyous effect on those who use them.

Fellow student, Luigi Santoro, graduated as an industrial designer in Naples in 2005, and has worked in various roles spanning the creative industries, including graphic designer, prototype maker, product designer and researcher. His work explores the design possibilities of ‘absurdism’ as part of a creative process, with references to pataphysics, the study of exceptions through parody and haphazardness. His creations included ‘Vanda’, a multi-functional colourful stool that can be used for both seating and as a storage unit for pencils or other design tools, with a removable cushion creating two height options.

Luigi’s ‘Boks’ creation is a modular-flexible shelving unit which can be adapted to different room layouts. It provides two distinctive living spaces, containing the cinematographic image of libraries with secret doors leading to ‘worlds of fantasy’. Triangular elements form the shelves of the library and represent the two different ‘worlds’. The shelving system can be used in environments with limited spaces, or can simply change the feeling of a room when its position is altered, just as people change the desk pictures on their computers, or ringtones on mobile phones.

Selected items of the students’ work will be on display once more at Bucks New University’s MA Furniture Design & Technology Exhibition 2010, hosted by Vitra, in its prestigious London showroom at 30 Clerkenwell Road, London.

A private view will be held on Tuesday 26 January from 6-9pm, and the exhibition will be open to the public on 27 and 28 January from 9am-4pm. For invitations to the private view or for further information about the exhibition, please contact Joanna Moore at Vitra UK Ltd, on 0207 608 6225 or joanna.moore@vitra.com.