Billal Taright
My family always supported my projects. Mum never minded when I covered the kitchen in PVA glue, Dad would go into his office on the occasional Saturday and print my homemade magazine, and Grandparents helped me build cardboard models of bridges with turrets and drawbridges. When I turned 18, I moved from my hometown to London. I interned at magazines and with fashion designers and ended up studying menswear at Central Saint Martins. Every day, I drew lost-looking boys wearing clothes I’d designed and made - tartan coats with blousy roses in their lapels, dip-dyed shirts, and handwoven jumpers with swans on. I dreamed of setting up my own studio, even though I didn’t know exactly what it was that I wanted to make or do. After leaving university, I started working for an architecture and interior design company, which I loved and which provided me with an inspiring foundation to build upon. I didn’t come from an interior design background, which meant I was learning new things every single day (and no doubt making many a mistake). I slowly started exploring my own ideas after work and at weekends, beginning with designs for fabrics, then ceramics. I began working with a ceramicist, whom I still work with to this day. Each piece we make has been thrown on a wheel or produced in a mould and then painted by me, a process that results in odd sizes, wobbly edges, and wonky lines. Over the past few years, I’ve been lucky to work with many brilliant people and institutions. I enjoy the idea of combining my drawings and vision with another brand’s expertise for manufacturing an exquisite product.
Rebecca Reid
“My work is about escaping the everyday, the grim, the grey and the ordinary. I’m constantly in search of a place or a feeling that is more beautiful, more unusual, more intense, and more alive”
Luke Edward Hall’s Hallway (left) and Living Room (right)
I’ve always been interested in the idea of blurring the boundaries between art and design. My hand-painted tablecloths, for example, were designed to be used for raucous dinner parties, but also to be hung on walls like giant tapestries might be. And why not? I love interiors that transport you, but also make you feel completely welcome and comfortable - a bar, say, that you can’t drag yourself away from because it makes you believe you’re lounging around in Palm Beach in the 1950s, when actually you’re in a wet corner of London on a grey day in 2019.
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