resting

At the age of 16, with no career plans or qualifications, Paul Smith was propelled by his father into a menial job at the local clothing warehouse in his native Nottingham. However his real passion was sport and his ambition was to become a professional racing cyclist, until aged 17 years when cycling-mad Paul was in a terrible accident. Six months in hospital followed and during this time Paul made some new friends. After leaving hospital he arranged to meet them again and by chance the meeting place was a local pub that was popular with the students from the local art college. They talked of Mondrian, Warhol, Kokoshka, David Bailey and listened to the Rolling Stones, Miles Davis and much more. It was then Paul knew he wanted to be a part of this colourful world of ideas and excitement. Within two years, Paul Smith was managing his first boutique in Nottingham and with the encouragement of his girlfriend Pauline Denyer (now wife) and a small amount of savings, opened a tiny shop i...

Accelerating from the 50s, the design industry has been in a race to find more economical ways to produce higher volumes of goods, leading up to where we are now which is seeing most items coming off huge production lines in China. This has given the world well priced items readily available with a variety of choices. It has, however, also created negative and far reaching effects on the environment as well as other countries’ economies and sustainable manufacture. Countries which once took global pride in their hand-carved furniture, beautiful fine fabrics and intricate marquetry have seen these iindustries, which in many cases have been handed down for generations, diminish in size if in existence at all. The east has perfected cheap replication and the masses have lapped this up due to the affordability. The unfortunate truth is that this has had a dramatic effect on design and craftsmanship as a whole. But like everything, for every action there is a reaction, and alth...

Overall we are seeing a backlash to mass production, as we have realised just what damage this caused, not only to the environment but also to small industry and localised businesses. Prior to the recession we saw the closure of many of these small industries worldwide in our quest to get everything manufactured cheaper and more effectively in China. We saw fabric mills close in Europe which had been around for hundreds of years as well as family traditions like the handcrafted furniture industry for which Italy had been world renowned for, for hundreds of years. Here in South Africa we followed this trend, with big retailers filling their stores with mass produced product from Asia, not giving the talented industry we have right here on our doorstep a chance at all. We are now becoming very aware of this situation and want our individuality back; we are no longer interested in merely being style drones, but wish to have our own identity and style. We want our homes to be the san...

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 532. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States. His work includes original and innovative examples of many building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer i...