This month’s design news focuses on the simpler things in life, from rag rugs and toffees to a nice set of curtains – simple but still very special. Please make sure you also register for the Design Council’s Design for Planet festival which takes place on 6 November. It’s free to attend these online lectures which look at how design is vital to economic and environmental success.
Body of work
What could you do with a 10-gram piece of wax? Chances are it won’t be a patch on the quirky works created for the Royal Society of Sculptors’ latest initiative. For their 10-gram Challenge, 40 artists have created sculptures from this amount of wax to be cast in bronze. There’s a leaping man from Antony Gormley, an Alan Measles – Grayson Perry’s teddy bear – and a lovely metal toffee from Richard Wilson, all teeny tiny in size. The pieces are now on show and available for sale on the Royal Society of Sculptors website. All profits raised by the sculptures will go towards the urgent renovation of Dora House, the grade-II listed home of the Society in south Kensington, London. It will also fund additional studio and community workshop spaces.
Rebecca Salter, president of the Royal Academy of Arts said, “I was thrilled to be asked to contribute to this project. The Royal Society of Sculptors plays an invaluable role in nurturing sculptors and encouraging a wider appreciation of the importance of sculpture. Our lives are hugely enriched by its presence”.
Go to the Royal Society of Sculptors website to see this year’s 10gram Challenge sculptures
Artistic vision
Just Looking is an unusual art book featuring images from contributors’ Instagram feeds. Rather than the symmetrical, colour-pop, grid-friendly perfection typically associated with the social media platform, these photos are a lesson in observation, an insight into how these creative minds see the world.
Jarvis Cocker has an eloquent way of describing the very particular way that many of us see the world in his introduction: “‘Just Looking’ is usually perceived as an apologetic phrase: you might hear it uttered in a shop when a prospective customer is being put under pressure by the shopkeeper to make a purchase. It’s an excuse: it means ‘I’m not buying, I’m just seeing what you’ve got’. This book attempts to rehabilitate the phrase. Within these pages, ‘Just Looking’ means something different. Through photographs by people such as David Byrne, Olivia Laing and Kamila Shamsie, this book will try to make you look at the world anew. To actually really see it.”
From Cornelia Parker’s beautiful striped tops, artfully strewn on a radiator, to the amusing juxtaposition of signs in a branch of Boots the chemist snapped by author Nick Hornby, these images offer wonderful windows into the minds of these creatives.
Just Looking, Snapshots, Close-Ups and Portraits of the Everyday (Redstone) is out on 4 November
Cutting a rug
Painter Winifred Nicholson first discovered the rag rug-making tradition of northern England in 1923, after she had moved to Bankshead, a farmhouse near Hadrian’s Wall in Cumbria. Hooky or proggy rugs are made from recycled rags of old clothing and textiles hooked through a piece of hessian and were commonly found in the rural communities around Nicholson’s house. In the 1960s-70s, Nicholson worked with local makers to create proddy rugs designed by her, her grandchildren and friends which were sold at a Cambridge art gallery.
This month, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art is holding a show of this craft, featuring rag rugs, paintings, postcards and Nicholson’s design sketches. It’s a fascinating insight into her inventive way of working and the skilled process of creating these rugs.
The artist’s grandson, art historian Jovan Nicholson, is co-curator of the show. “One of the problems with rag rugs is that by their very nature of being placed on a floor and hard use, very few survive. What is exciting is to have found so many rugs with lively images, and many of them in excellent condition.”
Elinor Morgan, artistic director at Mima, says: “Jovan’s research raises fascinating connections between art and life and traces the work of many previously forgotten makers. The tradition of rag rugging has long roots in the Tees Valley as well as the wider north, and we’re pleased to platform this important vernacular tradition.”
Winifred Nicholson: Cumbrian Rag Rugs is at Mima until 23 March 2025
It’s curtains for Ramdane Touhami
Few designers have covered as much creative ground as Ramdane Touhami. This French Moroccan first drew attention for reinventing the fragrance and toiletries brand Officine Universelle Buly. With his wife, Victoire de Taillac Touhami, the creative director made a magical brand of ornate boutiques and scents inspired by the likes of Empress Josephine’s rose garden and a Russian pine forest after the rain. Since then he’s started a podcast company, revived Cire Trudon, the candle maker which once made tapers for Marie Antoinette and his latest adventure is as a hotelier. The Swiss Hotel Drei Berge – originally opened in 1907 – has been redesigned and renovated under Touhami’s careful eye. Existing furniture and features were restored where possible but with the additions of bold colour and modern touches.
And now you can not only stay in the hotel but bring a little touch of its style into your home. The Drei Berge textile collection was previewed earlier this year at Salone del Mobile and is now available for interiors.
“Me, I hate to change curtains,” says Touhami. “So the idea is to have this winter-y thing, you push it to the side, and you have the summer one. And it’s beautiful. In the winter, you want cover, but you still want to have the light because there’s not so much light. In the summer, you really want dark. It’s the idea of playing with the light.
“This is the concept. I don’t know if it’s going to work, no one’s done it like that.”
Looking at Touhami’s track record, chances are – it will.
The Drei Berge Collection by Ramdane Touhami for Fischbacher 1819 is available now from Fischbacher’s stockists
Up tick
The Timex brand is known for producing a great variety of watches at prices that are within reach of most people. Now it has stretched the definition by producing a watch that costs £1 – or $1. The idea is informed by the 170th anniversary of the Waterbury Clock Company, the Connecticut-based brand that Timex grew from. The WCC also had ideals of democratising time. As its name suggests, it was originally in clocks – freestanding and mantlepiece versions, made out of brass and wood. Great for the home, not so practical for getting around with.
Waterbury then beat out competition to develop a pocket watch that could be sold as cheaply as possible, and in 1896 launched “the Yankee”, which retailed for $1. It proved so successful, and a boon to factory workers, farmers and railway men alike, that it became known as “the watch that made the dollar famous”. On 16 November, Timex will release 1,000 wristwatches inspired by “the Yankee” and designed by the respected watchmaker Giorgio Galli. “It just became a no-brainer, Shari Fabiani, CMO of Timex Group, says. “And really fun when we started talking about it.”
Timex $1 watch is available from 16 November
Just Looking edited by Julian Rothenstein (Redstone Press, £16.95). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
