By Cassandra Turner, Interior Designer at Turner & Roberts
“Even if you have a great historical past, if you don’t make the things that people like or think that’s coming on, you come to a grinding halt”.
And so the words of Michael Doulton, great, great, great grandson of the founder of Royal Doulton, sum up the ethos behind the quintessentially British tableware and ceramics company. Transcending any preconceived idea that Royal Doulton only produce products aimed at our grandparents and great grandparents, the brand proved that you are only as old as the genre you work with when it announced collaborations with a selection of hot-right-now designers and artists from the fields of street art, fashion, textiles, architecture and interior design to mark the brand’s 200th Anniversary.
It’s likely that at some point during your life you have experienced Royal Doulton yourself – if not as a baby being fed from its delightful Bunnikens range, then perhaps as a young child, playing with your grandmother’s intricate ceramic figurines and those humorous Toby Jugs. And who wouldn’t recognise the Old Country Roses Collection – 24-carat gold-trimmed, fine-bone china lined with roses reminiscent of an English garden – pride of place in countless homes, being used for only the most special of occasions, following the old adage that all beautiful items should be saved for best.
Well, save for best no more, the pieces that have come out of these unexpected but brilliant collaborations are not for putting away behind glass doors. And we have that from the mouths of the RD crew and the collaborative designers themselves. “The brand has always looked to the future” according to Dik Delaney, Royal Doulton’s Design Director. Dik speaks of the brand with unbridled energy and enthusiasm, much of which is based around the lack of restraint and boundaries it puts on ideas. Despite its history, he says, it has a very modern way of thinking and is very aware that the way we live and eat now is very different to 200 years ago.
It was this uninhabited mindset that allowed Dik and his team the freedom to look to production techniques and genres of collaborators not before associated with the brand. Pure Evil and Nick Walker, two world-renowned street artists produced creations that elevate the brand in both modernity and technology, utilising 3D scanning and printing to bring their stencil and spray techniques to life. Ex Red-or-Dead fashion label guru, Wayne Hemmingway and daughter Tilly created a collection with a strong nod to mid-century design and Textiles Illustrator Charlene Mullen continued what could be known as a Royal Doulton tradition, by using illustration to create a beautiful selection of tableware that offers not just utility and aesthetics, but memories and stories that last a lifetime.
The research that went into finding the collaborators took from years to months Delaney tells us. Each of the collaborators has had been working closely with the brand for up to 5 years prior to the launch of their products. This really created a sense of family between the brand and the designers, and the love is all around, as I discovered when I spoke with Dik Delaney and one-half of the duo behind the fifth external collaboration for the anniversary, Jay Osgerby, of internationally acclaimed interiors and architecture studio, Barber Osgerby at the newly refurbished Observatory Hotel in Sydney recently.
ROYAL DOULTON X BARBER OSGERBY
It’s a little known fact that Sydney is underlayed with Royal Doulton pipes. One of the first ceramic products the Doulton family produced in the early 1800’s was sanitary ware and earthenware pipes. For Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, founders of UK-based Barber Osgerby, the simple timeless and simple shape of the pipe became the overriding concept for their Olio collection. The range comprises 40-piece range that includes ceramic tableware in various guises, stainless steel cutlery, and oak serving pieces. Restrained and minimal in detail the pieces were designed to blend with other products.
“Early on we knew we wanted to do a collage of different textures and finishes and materials where you choose one piece of it, and that would be fine, you don’t have to buy it as a set. The way we live these days is much more informal and I like the idea that you can mix it with things that you already own, that’s important”. “We said we were interested in working with stainless steel, ceramic and oak and they were like, ‘OK!’. Nothing was a no, Royal Doulton were so easy and enthusiastic to work with”.
That’s not at all surprising, as Dik had nothing but praise for the firm “As far as the selection process went for collaborators, they were a no-brainer” he stated . “They are at every [British Design] awards, always there and always present”.
Barber & Osgerby have designed everything from furniture to The 2012 Olympic Torch (the design of which started out as an Ikea cheese grater), and have worked with brand giants of the likes of Knoll, B&B Italia, Vitra, Capellini & Flos. They designed the New York flagship store for Stella McCartney, an installation for Sony at the Salone de Mobile 2010 in Milan and the unique folded cladding that you would see on the H&M store in LA.
But it wasn’t without its challenges for the boys. “We felt a responsibility to the company to do work that looks like them, looks like their brand”.
Not being from a background that produced 2D items, the boys had to start with nothing. “We had to make the shapes, choose the clay, make sure the jugs don’t drip, the teapot pours… it’s incredibly involved! Hopefully because of the energy that went into it, it should have a long life-time, I hope. When you put 3 years into something you want it to last forever”.
“If you design things that are deeply thought through, and intelligent and quiet you like them immediately. I like creating calm things that hopefully have a much, much longer lifetime”.
ROYAL DOULTON X ROYAL DOULTON
As well as being integral to all the collaborations, Delaney personally worked on an extension of the 1815 collection, looking back into Royal Doulton’s archive of shapes, textures and techniques for inspiration.
“We wanted to create a connection with Royal Doulton history that wasn’t pastiche… not to play on the history, but to contemporise” he explained. “We really liked the detail and texture that the old hand-made process produced and knew we wanted to do something utilising the old glazing techniques of dipping and back stamping. The dipped glaze is a reference to the original Royal Doulton Lambeth ware.
Dik explained “I think we are embracing colour a lot more in homewares now. There’s always a place for the all-white sets, but there is a definite shift happening. That gave us the opportunity to play with colour for this collection, bringing it into 2015”.
ROYAL DOULTON X PURE EVIL
“We knew we wanted to work with street artists but it was a matter of finding the right ones. We definitely wanted more than one, and the selection process started with 20 artists until we found the guys that felt right. With Charlie, it was the pop aesthetic of the Nightmare Series (a collection of Warhol-esque portraiture featuring Hollywood celebrities crying black tears) that originally drew us to him. ” Dik explained. The result of this unexpected union is perhaps more unexpected than first thought. Enter the Royal Doulton Evil Bunny.
A cute little character until you get up close, the Evil Bunny, which appears in 5 guises, including Gold Bunny, Camo Bunny, Nightmare Bunny, Touch me I’m Sick Bunny and Dipped & Dripped Bunny, reveals it’s masters childhood love of horror and vampire films (“that’s why it had to have fangs”) combined with a shooting mishap as a child. Charles Uzell-Edwards, AKA Pure Evil, explained how this little rabbit has become his alter ego after he accidentally shot a rabbit as a boy in Wales. He was so horrified of his un-intentional evil deed, that the three legged, fanged bunny became his signature and indeed his moniker, reminding himself daily of the guilt he felt and still feels today. (He even named his daughter Bunny, what more can a man do to right his wrongs?). Unfortunate for the bunny but fortunate for Charlie, as he is affectionately known, and indeed fortunate for Royal Doulton, who now get to share in this quirky story and immortalise the little fellow in ceramic.
“When I’m in a new city, I go out, usually at night and put the bunnies out in the street when the city is asleep and I take a line for a walk. It’s like being a flâneur, or a somnambulist. Every time I paint it’s a 5 second mantra, it’s 3 loops down and two loops up, 2 dots and a zig zag fang. Then I’m off to the next street. I know its bad but it feels so good.” – Pure Evil on the joy he gets from spraying his beloved bunny around the world.
The Royal Doulton 200th Anniversary Collection is available in stores now.