Unfortunately I’m still struggling with a bad bout of M.E. at the moment, so I’ve spent more time resting than beading this week. On the plus side, resting usually means hundreds of new ideas popping into my head, so I’ve been staring at five buttons in the hope of getting one of those Eureka moments!
Back at the end of August I went to the Heatherwick Studios exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I’m ashamed to confess that I had never heard of Thomas Heatherwick until the opening ceremony at the London Olympics in July. For those of you who are still mystified, Heatherwick designed the Olympic Cauldron. I thought that Cauldron was fantastic and it turns out that I had a couple of bead friends who both knew a lot about Heatherwick. By the time I got to the exhibition I had heard about a few of his other projects and was thoroughly intrigued.
This exhibition did not disappoint in the slightest – except perhaps it would have benefited from being allocated a little more space to share even more ideas! I was struck by the huge variety of designs produced by the studio – everything from small interior pieces to large scale architectural projects all over the world. However, they all had something in common: they seamlessly combined practicality, ingenuity and beauty. Take the Olympic Cauldron as an example, since most of the world saw it in action. I loved the way it embodied the idea of the Games, uniting every nation in a common endeavour, each nation literally bringing in and contributing an integral part of the Cauldron. The ease, practicality and cleverness with which all those small kettles transformed into a single cauldron of fire provided a stunning finale to the opening ceremony. Finally we were left to admire this thing of beauty for the entirety of the games. It is all too easy to get carried away with a design that is pleasing to the eye, but then lacks practicality. Conversely too much focus can be placed on finding a clever solution to a problem, but never mind the fact that solution is an eye sore. In every project, whether it is the bridge in the Far East that transforms from a flat structure, accessible for pedestrians, into a traditional-looking arched bridge to allow boats to pass underneath, or the designs for an environmentally friendly power station that actually looked beautiful and merged seamlessly into the landscape, the Heatherwick studios combine beauty and ingenuity. Behind this lies hours and hours of research and experimentation with new materials to work out how best to use them. Every project involved geometric precision and mathematical calculation to create a workable feat of engineering. It is safe to say that the exhibition made me think in new ways, inspired new ideas and has made a lasting impression.
So, being at the V&A, how could I resist looking around the V&A shop? Pretty soon, ‘looking’ became ‘buying’ and here I am staring at five pretty buttons that I bought there. I decided I would buy something that I could incorporate into a piece of jewellery that would then have memories of my day out. I am also thinking that piece of jewellery ought to try and embody something of the principles of design to which I was exposed at the exhibition: beauty and ingenuity. So I’m waiting for my Eureka moment in which I come up with a plan for a piece that incorporates all of the above. At some point, there will be a ‘Heatherwick Buttons – Part 2’ in which I will share my results with you!
