Talk to anyone about design and the furniture industry in the UK and you’ll quickly come to realise that while the British Isles may be home to an enviable wealth of design talent. It ain’t home to that many producers of quality, contemporary furniture. Or at least anymore.

Whereas, for example, the early years of “British Design 1948-2012. Innovation in the Modern Age” at the V&A feature regular examples of British produced furniture, the later years are all but bereft of such.

Britain being, as Edward Barber so neatly put it, a post-industrial nation of estate agents and bankers.

There are however a few brave foot soldiers still fighting the good fight, such as London based SCP.

Founded in 1985 by Sheridan Coakley, SCP were the first company to commercially produce Japser Morrison’s work, and also gave a young Royal College of Art graduate who was working in Morrison’s London studio at that time his first contract. Konstantin Grcic.

In the course of the past quarter century SCP have not only gone on to co-operate with British design luminaries such as Tom Dixon or James Irvine, but have also built-up an impressive roster of young designers including Gareth Neal, Donna Wilson or Peter Marigold.

With their focus on what one could call “traditional crafts”, SCP are never going to be a company that push the limits of innovation. But much like Rui Alves, that’s not really their goal. Their goal is, as they themselves say,  “… [to] create functional and beautiful products that are built to last”

And that they do very well.

Consequently, as part of our small if wholly unscientific exploration of the current state of the British design, and for all British furniture design, industry we caught up with Sheridan Coakley at MOST Salone in Milan to hear his take on the current and future potential for contemporary furniture production in the UK.

(smow)blog: Walking round “British Design” at the V&A one finds very little furniture produced in the UK after the mid-1960s. Are you a dying breed?

Sheridan Coakley: We are breed that died! Furniture production in the UK died after the war and never really recovered. The industry was decimated by the war and those companies who survived did so because, like a lot of British industry, they thought the only way to compete is to produce things cheaply. Which is of course a fatal mistake, trying to compete with cheaper, Eastern producers. By the time people realised that was the wrong way to go, the only option left was to go niche. And so the survivors are those who have specialised. There’s still a few companies involved, for example, in contract office furniture, but in general I think furniture production in the UK has gone. Which is a real shame.

(smow)blog: You established SCP in 1985. Looking back over the years would you say it is getting easier or harder as a UK producer?

Sheridan Coakley: For us it’s getting easier, but that’s largely because of our experience. But also contemporary furniture is more the norm now in the UK, which certainly wasn’t the case when I started. Back then it was all sofas with pelmets and reproduction antiques; the professional classes bought antiques because they liked the idea of almost pretending they had inherited the furniture. It was the days warm beer and cricket. But it’s radically changed since then and nowadays contemporary furniture is much more widely accepted and bought.

(smow)blog: And looking forward….?

Sheridan Coakley: The design industry is very strong, always has been, and certainly as long as I’ve been involved it’s been British designers who’ve been at the forefront, so Jasper Morrison, Tom Dixon, Barber Osgerby, et al. But importantly there is, at last, an understanding in the Government that manufacturing is good. 10 years ago manufacturing was bad and we should all do something else. Now manufacturing is good. So maybe long term there is a glimmer of hope of it all picking up again. Look at Formula One, for example, which is totally dominated by British engineering and specialist manufacturing.

(smow)blog: And does that mean that you yourselves have no problems finding partners in the UK to produce your products. Or is that a problem?

Sheridan Coakley: We have our own upholstery business which when we took over had four employees and now has twenty. Getting wooden furniture made economically in the UK is quite difficult and and will remain so unless companies invest massively in new machinery. But generally in terms of other partners you’ve just got to go and look for it, we, for example we do a lot of textiles which are woven in Wales, our ceramics are made in Stoke-on-Trent. The companies with whom we work with are in a way the end of their industries; but a lot are also becoming powerful small business again. Largely because there is so little real competition.

There are certain things we will never be able to do; but where modern technology, specialist engineering or traditional crafts are involved, I see no major problems.

SCP at MOST Salone Milan 2012

Part of the new 2012 Donna Wilson collection for SCP an MOST Salone Milan

The Josiah pendant lights collection by Terence Woodgate for SCP at MOST Salone Milan 2012

During MOST Salone SCP presented a live upholstery display by their in-house upholstery team

As reported elsewhere in these pages, there is a great deal of hope in the UK that the 2012 Summer Olympics will provide fresh impulse for the UK design industry.

Something we doubt.

But then, what do we know. No honestly. What do we know?

And so we’ve taken the opportunity in recent weeks to talk to some people who are much better placed than us to asses the situation, not just in terms of the opportunities presented by the Olympics, but more generally about the state of the UK design industry in 2012.

Following on from our discussion with Gareth Williams, we caught up with Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby in Milan where, in addition to our standard question about the sense of launching new products in Milan, we discussed their views on the current state of UK design… and why their Olympic Torch isn’t included in the exhibition British Design 1948-2012 at the V&A. Something that’s been bugging us greatly since late March.

(smow)blog: One of the hopes in the UK is that the Olympics will have a positive effect on the UK design industry. Do you expect the Olympics to bring anything positive for UK designers?

Edward Barber: I don’t really think there is any need for a huge revolution in UK design, because it’s already very strong. There is a brilliant design industry in the UK with British designers working behind every important company in the world, and so if anything happens it will more about adding impetus to that movement. But I don’t think it’s that we need to start anything, its already there.

Jay Osgerby: There’s a lot of invention in the UK and Britain is at the forefront of, for example, Formula One or aeronautical engineering. But in terms of production, it is way behind just about everyone else. And that is a shame.

(smow)blog: Which leads nicely to the next question. The majority of the manufacturers with whom you co-operate are based overseas. As UK based designers do you have to look overseas for producers, would you rather there were more UK producers, or is it irrelevant….?

Jay Osgerby: About 90% of the time we have to look overseas for a partner. And of course it would be great if there were more manufacturers here doing contemporary design, but there are only a very few and none who can compete on the scale of the German, Swiss or Italian manufacturers.

Edward Barber: Britain is a post-industrial country, there is no industry left; we’re a nation of estate agents and bankers. There is a great deal of excellent small niche producers in the UK; at one end of the spectrum nanotechnology and specialist engineering and at the other end potters, weavers and other crafts. But the middle is simply no longer there. And so we have to go overseas, which is a great shame.

(smow)blog: One has the impression that at least in terms of furniture design, such isn’t really taken seriously in the UK and that every time, for example, some government institution spends money on designer furniture the press reaction is one of appalled indignation. Is furniture design taken seriously in the UK? Do you yourselves feel that you are taken seriously?

Jay Osgerby: Definitely. And there is great tradition in the UK of government and institutions sponsoring arts and design to create long lasting projects that become important to the nation. Where there is maybe a problem today is that because of all the home makeover shows on TV a lot of people think you can “do” design for tuppence. And so not everyone understands the difference between real design and what they perceive as being design. And so in that respect nipping down to IKEA to get a couple of benches for a government minister is perhaps not really the most helpful way to go.

(smow)blog: And so despite the lack of manufacturers you’re not planning leaving London and setting up a studio overseas.

Edward Barber: Definitely not! I’d rather work in London than anywhere else!

(smow)blog: Turning briefly to Milan, we’ve not seen any lists and so how many new works are you launching here?

Jay Osgerby: Not much really, we’re saving most of our new projects for the London Design Festival….

(smow)blog: Good, so we can skip neatly to the more important question! Is it still worth launching projects in Milan, or is it all just too big?

Edward Barber: It depends on the company, but generally yes. Milan however has become so huge and there is so much noise that you have to have an incredible voice, or a real PR grabbing product, to be heard. As a consequence a lot of designers are now starting to launch products in Cologne, London or Paris, where you can generate a lot more interest.

(smow)blog: Which means your decision for London was then deliberate, or were the products just not ready to be presented?

Jay Osgerby: We thought with the Olympics it would be a good opportunity to launch products in London this year….

Edward Barber: … also London is becoming more important as a design location. The Design Festival in September is very well established and 100% Design are making changes for 2012, and so I think London is becoming a much more interesting place to show.

(smow)blog: And to finish. The V&A exhibition, effectively, ends with the 2012 Olympics, but your torch isn’t in it…

Edward Barber: I know. They didn’t want it…

Jay Osgerby: …said it was too obvious.

Now we know.

And OK it is obvious, very obvious. But would still have been nice.

Or maybe the V&A are saving it and the other Barber & Osgerby works from their permanent collection that aren’t in the exhibition for a special retrospective…. Who knows.

Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby with their, now award winning, Olympic Torch. Looking positively to the future. Like all good Olympians...

The V&A Museum London exhibition “British Design 1948-2012” pretty much does what it says on the tin. It reviews British Design from 1948 to 2012.

But how does the future look ? Where is British design going ? What issues are important? Where do the coming generation of designers see their futures ?

Answers to these and similar questions can be found in the newly published “21 Designers for twenty-first century Britain” by Gareth Williams.

Profiling designers and design studios such as Raw Edges, Doshi Levien, Peter Marigold or Martino Gamper, “21 Designers for twenty-first century Britain” not only presents a snapshot of the current UK product and furniture design scene but also explores the motivations and ambitions of the protagonists in the context of design’s economic, social and political role in 21st century Britain.

Something Gareth Williams is eminently qualified to do.

In addition to being Senior Tutor for the Design Products Programme at the Royal College of Art London – an institution to which most of the featured designers have some connection – Gareth Williams spent 18 years as curator in the furniture department of the V&A Museum where he organised numerous exhibitions including in 2000 “Ron Arad, Before and After Now”, the first major UK exhibition dedicated to Ron Arad and in 2009 “Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design” which looked at one-off and limited edition author design. He has also served on the selection panels for 100% Design London and Salone Satellite Milan.

We recently caught up with Gareth Williams to discuss the book and the issues raised, but started by asking how the book came about….

Gareth Williams: The V&A came to me because they wanted to expand their publication range around the British Design exhibition and specifically they wanted something on 21st century designers….

(smow)blog:….”21st century designers” is a fairly wide field. How did you narrow things down?

Gareth Williams: My specialism is product and furniture design and so I decided to concentrate on designers in those fields, and focus on those designers who have risen to prominence and who have really built up a critical head of steam in Britain since the millennium.

(smow)blog: And did you start out with a specific aim, or……?

Gareth Williams: I’m really interested in how designers and design is used and represented in Britain, especially design as cultural diplomacy. Since the mid-90s or so contemporary design and designers has and have been adopted by policy makers to represent new, creative, open, liberal Britain. If you think back to how Britain was represented in the 1980s it was much more the House of Windsor, National Trust and “Heritage Britain”. Then somewhere in the mid-90s you get “Cool Britannia” and design gets sort of co-opted in as a political tool. And around about this time the British Council and other British Institutions start using design to promote the image of Britain overseas. And now we have the Olympics which also involves a lot of designers and contemporary design, again all to promote this image of Britain as a thoroughly modern, creative state. So that’s the bigger context that I’m wanting to explore with this book.

(smow)blog: Which we presume means you’re confident British design and British designers are taken seriously, and being given a fair chance and aren’t just being exploited by the system?

Gareth Williams: Some of them are taken very seriously, and there are some designers who have profited immensely from major institutional projects. And while, yes, some designers may see what they are doing as being public relations, I think those designers I speak to in the book are not straight forward industrial designers in the old model who are trying to find producers to make their lights, furniture, radios or whatever, but are rather trying to carve out a new autonomous role for designers as producers of cultural works. Which makes them much more similar to artists in that sense.

(smow)blog: Some 80% of the designers featured in the book come from out with the UK, but are based in the UK. The V&A exhibition features numerous works from designers and architects also from out-with the shores of Blighty. Can one truly speak of “British design”?

Gareth Williams: I think one can. I think you can speak of a spirit in British Design which is to do with a certain amount of iconoclasm and non-conformity: if you like a respect for the history and tradition, but a desire to subvert it. And that combined with a strong individualistic streak. It’s perhaps not so obvious with product designers, but someone like Vivienne Westwood is a wonderful example of someone who mines British tradition but twists it to make it more modern and individual. This free thinking, and Britain likes to think of itself as a fair play, free thinking, liberal democracy, I think that’s the thread that connects British design….

(smow)blog:….and so does this thread then continue through the design studios featured in the book?

Gareth Williams: I think so. I think they are people who are very driven, very self-motivated and who each have a very clear singular voice. And so yes this free thinking nature is definitely represented.

(smow)blog: Briefly to end, you previously wrote a book called “Furniture since 1990″, now you’re on 21st century designers. You’re challenging us to ask: What’s going to characterise furniture in the 21st century. Where is furniture design going?

Gareth Williams: Several factors will be important. Firstly having to face up to the crises that face us, be they economic or environmental. So sustainability in all in its guises is going to be the abrupt stop to a lot of what goes on. And that is the biggest challenge for all designers; facing up to all that – while remaining a designer. Because one answer is obviously to stop designing, but that can’t be a solution because then economies collapse. And so there are various responses, and one is through materials and technology and that will be a great driver as we research longer lasting, more sustainable material. And I think designers have an important role: they can’t invent the materials but they can find very creative ways of using them.
Many of the designers who are featured in the book and who have a more art background and approach are sidestepping such issues by only producing small scale series.
And then there is a lot of interest in new economies and new social systems. They’re not a radical lot, it’s not 1968, but many designers are very aware of the social and cultural context of what they do and I think designers have an important role to play in redefining how we live in the 21st century.

21 Designers for twenty-first century Britain by Gareth Williams is published by V&A Publishing and available from all reputable booksellers.

Styrene Light by Paul Cocksedge. The lamp can be viewed as part of "British Design 1948-2012" at the V&A Museum London. Paul Cocksedge is one of the featured designers in "21 Designers for twenty-first century Britain"

At the end of March the V&A Museum London opened the exhibition “British Design 1948-2012. Innovation in the Modern Age”, their major summer exhibition and a central pillar of their celebration of all things British throughout 2012.

Documenting the story of design in the UK since the last London Olympics, “British Design 1948-2012″ begins in an era when Britain as a nation was recovering from the trauma of the Second World War, yet understood that in the rubble of the war lay the chance to renew its society and economy and so build for a brave new future.

And walking round “British Design 1948-2012″ one is confronted by the inescapable truth that it was this process of renewal that was to lay the foundations for the story of modern British design.

For through the social re-organsiation, massed immigration, youth unemployment, et al the first youth sub-cultures emerged and as the exhibition makes very clear it is culture, specifically youth culture, that has been the biggest definer in the story of British design since the war.

A few years ago John Major famously spoke of Britain being about long shadows on cricket grounds and warm beer. There is no reference to such aspects of the British psyche in “British Design”, save a fleeting if heartfelt appeal from Laura Ashley and a few contemporaries who were obviously struggling to come to terms with the decline of the empire, erosion of social boundaries and uncouth brutalist architecture sweeping the nation.

Their flirtation with a historical revival however is nothing more than an interesting blip on an otherwise uninterrupted trajectory. As Leith’s leading cultural commentator would no doubt put it.

We’re not saying that all British design episodes have had their origins in youth culture.

Nor are we saying that Britain’s best designers were even influenced by the island’s youth. Jasper Morrison, for example, became the designer he is because he visited a Memphis Group exhibition in Milan and then spent time in Berlin with Andreas Brandolini, Axel Kufus and other members of the “Neues deutsches Design” movement.

However what is unmistakable is the thread of youth culture that runs through the story of British design right up to the present day.

Well, no that’s not entirely true.

Somewhere in the late 1990s the thread vanishes, but we’ll come to that….

A section from "The Englishman's Home" by John Piper greets visitors to "British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age" @ the V&A Museum London

Taking a very wide definition of “design” and then squeezing as much as they can out of the sub-categories “British Design 1948 -2012″ is reminiscent of an Essex Plaice – much wider than it is deep.

A fact that doesn’t necessarily harm the exhibition or the visitor experience. It is after all a special thematic exhibition.

In a soon to be published interview, the director of a major European design museum tells us that, in effect, the role of museums is to use their collections to tell stories; they just need to decide which stories they want to tell. The V&A has decided to delve into the depths of its British collection to place post-war British design in its social, cultural and historical context

And has done that very well.

From the brutalism of the 1950s over the swinging sixties onto seventies punk, eighties rave, nineties Cool Britannia, and beyond the exhibition presents over 350 exhibits that wonderfully explain the development of design in the UK.

And ultimately poses one very obvious question. The 1948 Olympics and subsequent Festival of Britain kick-started the post-war British economy. What will the 2012 Games bring?

There is a great deal of expectation on the British Isles that the 2012 Olympic Games will also herald a brave new age.

They wont.

All the objects in the early decades of the exhibition were produced in the UK. We suspect largely out of necessity; there was no alternative. Today goods can be produced abroad. And the creations of the leading contemporary designers largely are.

Barber Osgerby currently work with Vitra, Magis, ClassiCon, flos. Benjamin Hubert with De Vorm, De La Espada, &Tradition. Doshi Levien with Moroso, Cappellini, Richard Lampert.

We approve. That’s good. And is a situation that, if we’re all honest, is unlikely to change. But does mean that regardless how successful British designers become, their contribution to the UK’s GDP will remain negligible.

Then there is the nature of British design, for as the exhibition beautifully illustrates, Britain’s “contemporary design tradition” is largely based on creating iconic, stylish and attractive objects. “British Design 1948-2012″ doesn’t feature any objects that one could say are truly innovative or started any particular global design movement.

“What about Concorde?” We hear the Daily Mail readers at the front of the class cry.

“Co-developed with the French and while unquestionably an iconic symbol of luxury air travel, what did Concorde actually contribute to modern aviation?” We reply.

And Jonathan Ives may have been knighted for his services to design: but he of course doesn’t create what happens inside apple products. Just ensures that they look good. Or, put another way, creates iconic, stylish objects in the finest British design tradition.

As we’ve often stated, in the decades after the war increasing disposable incomes and social security created a market for consumer goods of the sort the likes of Mary Quant or Terence Conran were producing.

And the British youth with their unfaltering ability to transform harsh social reality into creative energy provided the musical backdrop. British design became part of a British style that was the envy of the world.

First punk and later rave may have superficially torn up the rule book; were in reality still based on standardised iconic symbolism underscored by new genres of music and literature.

Which means that to remain truly distinctive and desirable British design needs its yoof.

Oh, hang on…..

As we said, sometime in the mid 1990s one loses track of the youth culture thread. And while we’d love nothing more than to blame Damien Hirst and his YBA cronies. We can’t

The problem is the internet, a medium that by its very nature snubs out youth cultures before they have a chance to establish themselves. The increased pace of our digital world meaning a mass movement like rave, arguably the last great youth culture and one which catapulted designers such as Tom Dixon into the limelight, will probably never again be possible.

And without the youth sub-cultures….

The “British Design 1948-2012″ exhibition design was created by Ben Kelly. Who designed Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood’s Kings Road boutique SEX. And the interior of the Hacienda.

We can’t think of a more appropriate example for the importance of youth sub-cultures in guiding the fortunes of British designers.

Part of the Hacienda interior as created Ben Kelly. And as displayed at British Design 1948-2012 Innovation in the Modern Age. Exhibition design by .... Ben Kelly.

We’re not saying the situation is hopeless. British designers will undoubtedly remain very much in demand. But their careers will become increasingly dependent on foreign producers, producers whose commissioning decisions are based on global marketing and sales strategies rather than the organic, grassroots movements that established British design’s reputation. As such the “British” in “British Design” will become increasingly difficult to define. But that is a question of national pride. Not design theory.

Consequently, “British Design 1948-2012. Innovation in the Modern Age” can either be viewed as the documentation of the past sixty years of British design combined with an attempt to place British design in a global context as the curators intended. Or as the first major retrospective of the Golden Age of British Design.

Either way it is an important exhibition and definitely worth viewing.

British Design 1948-2012. Innovation in the Modern Age runs at the V&A Museum London until August 12th 2012.

Getting ready to sail off into the sunset? A scale model of Concorde at British Design 1948-2012 Innovation in the Modern Age