The Maker
Laura-Jane Atkinson is a Manchester-based designer-maker specialising in handmade interior accessories that re-appropriate and re-contextualise often under-celebrated materials, with the aim to highlight these materials’ overlooked qualities. Her design process is rooted in design by making, allowing the personality of materials to drive the nature of sampling. Laura-Jane’s studio produces commissioned and batch manufactured statement products, blending traditional craftsmanship with material innovation. Laura-Jane sees her work as ‘jewellery for the home’.
The Object: Lio Single Stem Vase, 2018
18.5 c h x 6cm diameter. Linoleum flooring, enclosed glass tube. £80
The Making
The LIO Single Stem Vase is inspired by the material itself – the potential of the under-celebrated qualities of Linoleum flooring, one of the most environmentally clean surface materials, yet largely replaced by vinyl flooring which is quicker, cheaper and brighter. By transforming this industrialised product into something intimately social, the product aims to celebrate Linoleum’s malleable personality. Blocks of laminated squaresare stacked together and turned by hand on a lathe to create simple elegant shapes in surprising colour combinations.
Accolades
This product inspired 100% Design to commission Laura-Jane to design and make a bar in 2018. The process she uses to make the vase was used to make tiles that scaled the surfaces of the bar.
Laura-Jane on her Signature Style
‘The LIO Single Stem vase is part of the LINO Lab collection – my studio’s first product range. The vase exemplifies my chosen focus: materials that are under-celebrated in some way due to social perception or material advancements, and how I go about processing them. My approaches are borrowed from numerous disciplines: the design has been developed in a textiles-like manner – pieced-together colour in considered arrangements; and processed like wood in traditional wood-turning practices.’
Expert Eye
The design skill to produce a desirable product whilst mastering a “different” material is to be admired – so much so that we’d love to work with Laura-Jane sometime, to see if we can mix our materials and skills with those that she produces. Richard Abdy (Wentworth Pewter)