Chris Eckersley

Furniture

Chris Eckersley had had a long career dating back to the 1970s and covering sculpture, drawing, design, and furniture-making. During the late '90s and early 2000s he was based in Back Road West, St Ives. In the early days he designed and made everything himself, by hand, and then as things developed he began getting others involved in the making and gradually shifted from being a 'designer-maker' to a designer for manufacture. These days he is back in the workshop making pieces again by hand in Birmingham's historic Jewellery Quarter, once the home of jewellery but now a thriving area of makers in all trades.

Chris was trained in Design at Central Saint Martins College, where later he was a visiting tutor for many years. He has worked with the Crafts Council as a mentor on their Hothouse programme, and with Contemporary Applied Arts as a maker-trustee. Chris is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and in 2002 was awarded The Prince's Medal at the V&A Design Awards.

"My motivation has always been to produce work that is well-crafted, affordable (inasmuch as anything that's hand-made can be affordable), and desirable - people must want to buy your work if you are going to survive. I can see now that the time I spent designing for manufacture helped bring all this into focus; why add what is unnecessary? So my aim always is to find an elegant and simple solution - and not to complicate things with over-elaboration. I think this is important; I don't like waste, I'm concerned about the best use of resources, and I like to know where the timber has come from."