The Aram Gallery is currently showing ‘6 Hands’ an exhibition of hand-made work by three London-based designers, Peter Marigold, India Carpenter and Ella Robinson, all working in the fields of furniture and textiles. In the past the gallery has presented a series of exhibitions about prototypes which featured handmade tests of designers, pairing the methods of handmaking with the forms of pre-production prototypes. While that is a common encounter of the hand-making process in the field of design, we are refreshed  here with collections of handmade work presented as finished objects. Curator Ellie Parke walked me through the exhibition to talk about the ideas and process behind these pieces, revealing the wonderfully subtle qualities of handmade accomplishments.
The most notable element of this exhibition is that these designers have chosen to work by hand, which doubles the feature of the show in a way that one can imagine the processes, then consider the results. The three proposals are incredibly different in what they choose to make by hand and how these processes fit into their more typical work routine. We can see that the prompt of hand making something yields conceptual test-work from one to final products of another.

Peter Marigold takes a step away from his furniture for this exhibition, showing a series of objects that are the result of a wood-formed casting concept. In the back corner of the gallery displayed down the length of a narrow plinth and shelves, live three sets of what appear to be objects in stages of growth. Looking more closely one can see that they are made of press-molded clay and are the result of a reductive process. Each shows a step of the depleted interior of the wooden log molds. Initially Marigold cut the log into four quadrants, then began carving out the interior. Once a portion was carved away, he would press mold terracotta clay into each quadrant of the log, then tie it back together, casting the negative interior shape of the cavity. After pulling out the cast, he would carve away more, repeating this process until he had reached the limitations of the interior wall of the log.
This resulted in a fascinating set of progressive forms that exhibit both grain marks from the natural material and seam-line/casting marks from the process. These objects conclude as works that are neither functional or intentionally decorative, but use the idea of hand-making as an exploratory process, more relative to creating process-driven structures in design.

Adversely India Carpenter uses the handmade process in her final designs. This work was by far the most graphic and eye-catching with large, boldly colored, geometric block prints. A floating wall displayed four silk squares with geometric patterns which were digitally printed, one of her methods of working. These contrasted a larger double screen, and broken up installation of a screen construction in process. The set of unfinished hanging panels immediately reminded me of Matisse’s cut-out shapes from his later years; Their profiles were an extremely delicate contrast to the entirety of the geometric form. These wavers in the line-work which are shown in some of the detail photos, are a stunning result of her hand-printing. In pinning the silk for printing, the bands of the fabric are being stretched before they are printed on. When the clips are removed to release the print the line is distorted, no longer straight as it would have appeared to be when being printed.  The attempt of precise geometries in combination with the hand-making process is what brings complexity and a slight animation to these pieces, which are made for larger architectural room divisions.

Ella Robinson’s work is a complete contrast, in a way the least subtle and the most decorative. Her work involves the process of hand-wrapping around pieces of driftwood from her native Brighton, resulting in multitudes of individual wrapped forms. These initially set a tribal tone, a series of small celebrations, drawing us very close to them. The simple use of material is made contemporary with colored fibers, rayon thread, stranded cotton and plastic tubing. Unlike the other work in the show these objects are conclusively decorative and are the least producible outside of the handmade realm.

6 Hands continues through 19th February 2011 at the Aram Gallery, 110 Drury Lane (near Aldwych) Covent Garden, London,WC2B 5SG.

Many thanks to Ellie Parke for the tour of the exhibition.