Ideas of Exchange

Whether examples of postmodern elision or the continuation of the English 'popular' style. Our interiors are essentially eclectic. Handmade has always had a cachet within the interior market. Consumers have new desires and aspirations; they want their homes to reflect a different ethos to their workplace.

'Joan Heckermann, a buyer for Nicole Farhi Home, is convinced that people are rejecting big-time consumerism 'They want to find little one-off things,' she says pieces that look handmade, that have discrepancies and drips'.

This presents a problem for the high street retailer hand produced textiles such as embroidery and hand painting suggest objects that have inherent difficulties in terms of supply. This problem could partly be alleviated if the objects were manufactured by someone other than the craft maker. The new dilemma: how to translate the quirky idiosyncrasies of the, handmade one off or small batch run into mass production, whilst meeting the specific quality controls imposed by the high street.

This paper explores issues around the interpretation and translation of design ideas from a practitioners perspective.