3D FDA Furniture BA (Hons) Fashion BA (Hons) Furniture BA (Hons) Jewellery and Silversmithing BA (Hons) Product Design BA (Hons) Textile Design
MA by Project MA Fashion MA Jewellery MA Furniture MA Product Design
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part of our history, but it’s interesting that it’s seen as radical. Within the Cass there are certain skills and processes which seem to have remained and survived a lot of the turbulence that has affected those processes elsewhere. We’re like a unique rainforest where there is still strange wildlife. RM Can you give us a sense of what we’ll be discussing at this point next year – what you are aiming for? MF This point next year I hope we’ll be discussing a massive show, because I’d like to put on a show next year that starts before and complements the Summer Show. Last year, we had the Aston Martin catwalk show. This year, we’ll have the City Hall event which is going to be a massive event that includes lots of schoolchildren, so there’ll be lots of events happening during the day including a very nice collaboration with Alex Sarafian, an ex-Architecture student, and we’ll be doing a casting on the Thames and we’ll be going down to the foreshore and pouring hot metal into the sand to do some stone setting. RM The other thing that’s very new within Cass 3D of course, is Fashion? MF Although Fashion is young here, you won’t help but notice it in the Yearbook because the imagery that they use is very powerful and is really vibrant. The Fashion area is definitely growing at quite a pace. I can see that it’s going to rival some of the more well-known fashion courses. It’s already pushing the boundaries in terms of how it mixes with some of our other courses. For example, one of the Fashion students wants to start weaving in metal
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and including that in panels in their clothes. Next year, collaboration is planned with Jewellery and Textiles. RM You’re an active practitioner in your field; how does your practice inform your teaching and now your leadership of Cass 3D? MF As you know, I make timepieces. Whether that’s something personal that you wear like a wristwatch or whether it’s something that you use as you rush out of the house in the morning or you drive under it as you’re going to work, whatever way that you do that, and also we’re using them as way markers, life markers and personal focus for body parts. How does that relate to my being here? I don’t see them as separate. When I’m talking to students I’m talking to them about my practice, and I talk to them about how their practice could develop. I see the value of my own experience – as a practitioner and working for companies – as being extremely broad, so that I can help students to see their way forward in terms of how they might live their lives, rather than just making a living. RM When you were a student, what advice did you receive that you still live by? MF There was a technician at the Royal College of Art, so-called ‘Thumbs’ Bartholomew, described as such because this thumbs had grown big over the years with silversmithing because you have to squeeze the metal so hard and hold things, so his thumbs had spread. His real name was John Bartholomew and he was a brilliant technician. One day I was sitting beside him, he was helping me with some-
The Cass Session 2014–15
thing and I was slightly embarrassed, so I just said something rather inane like, ‘I wish I knew as much as you did,’ and he said, ‘No, I’m just starting,’ and he was only a few years away from retirement. When he said that, it was like a light switch going on because I felt that is what you do: you learn from life, and you’re always learning, and if you stop learning, you’ve stopped living and you may as well just go and work somewhere else and do something completely different. RM In terms of heroes in your particular field, who are your maker heroes? MF Michael Rowe, he is still a tutor at the Royal College of Art, for his sense of scale and surface. I’ve never seen anyone who can make a piece of metal look like it’s sweating in the way that he can, and it just sits there poised, looking beautiful but sweating. It’s just about surface and colour and poise, and the way an object can have a presence even though it’s quite small. RM One of the really interesting things for me about the 3D area is how there is a very particularly diverse set of students, some students who have found their voice in making in a way that was not possible in other forms of education. We’re very proud of that. How do you see that strength developing and being enhanced under your leadership? MF I would like to say that one of my heroes is actually one of my students, oddly enough. She’s had a very, very hard life; she’s been here for seven years now and struggling through with very different home circumstances, but she’s made this place her home, and it’s sort of a home from home. She’s been through every single possible route of being here, from short courses all the way through to the degree part time, and she’s going to graduate next year. From the background that she’s had, I think that’s absolutely admirable, and we’ve had several students like that over the years. I think that’s one of our strengths. We can help people to transform their lives. RM You mentioned short courses? MF Short courses are a great vehicle for introducing people to different ideas, different ways of doing things, and I think that’s a key area that we could develop further. People come in as a way of passing the time, but then they see how good it is and then they change their careers and lives! RM Thank you, Marianne.