Sydney-based industrial designer Tom Fereday discusses notions of permanence and the importance of reflection amid increasingly fast-paced production cycles.
—Interview by Zachary Calleja
How was your latest visit to Milan, exhibiting new work at Alcova for Salone del Mobile
[Presenting] my Mazer collection as an independent exhibition in the iconic Villa Borsani was a major highlight. One of the things that makes Milan Design Week so special is the access to these incredible locations and buildings. While a typical exhibit would involve setting up in a commercial space or at a trade show, we were quietly installing in a landmark 1930s villa alongside 12 or so other designers. The process of putting it all together and the sense of ‘calm before the storm’ was an amazing experience. Trying to create sympathetic work for these spaces is a nice challenge.
What would you say is the value of physical presentations in a world where almost everything is virtually accessible?
Whether it is a positive or negative response, when you encounter works in real life it is just such a different experience, so I don’t think the impact of physical exhibitions will ever go away. For me, the best part of Milan Design Week or any design fair is not only having a clear deadline and target to launch new work, but ultimately having this moment of reflection to see how your work sits among the best in the world. Everything culminates at that point of reflection.
Your work is often described as ‘honest’ in how it showcases raw material identity while embracing craft and innovation. How do you define honest design?
Trying to celebrate the material you work with, or to show a level respect to it, is very important to me, so it has always made complete sense to have that as a cornerstone. You don’t want a form you’re working on to take away from the material, and vice versa. So while I start with an idea or a problem to be solved, I always try to work with aesthetic and functional longevity in mind; it is honouring the material and the process without too much interference. When you’re working with natural materials, they are often the most elegant or beautiful to age; they inherently possess real value and character and are usually the pieces I still enjoy the most, even after many years.
Do you have a current material obsession?
Because I’m not a traditional maker, in that I don’t specialise in one material, I get to explore the potential of different materials within each brief. Over the past couple of years I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation with cast glass and that’s a really fascinating material and process, [while] the theme for my show with Oigåll Projects at Melbourne Design Week [was] cast aluminium. As some of these processes haven’t changed in hundreds of years, it becomes a challenge to find new ways of innovating with our current knowledge.
Who or what have been your greatest influences?
Even though I ended up dropping out of art college, I’d say it was still probably the most valuable thing I did because I got to experience what it would be like to do sculpture, or graphic design, or fine art. In many ways, there are many overlaps between someone who is a product designer, someone who is an artist and someone who is an engineer. Starting in the arts [enabled] me to feel less constrained, slowly becoming more functional as I learnt about industrial design. That grounding in how to justify even quite abstract work, and how to analyse it conceptually, has been really useful and is arguably under-utilised in industrial design.
What is something that isn’t discussed enough in design?
Something I appreciated about Oigåll Projects is that they encourage designers to both create new work and be emboldened to show previous works. There is always an urgency and pressure to show new work in the design industry, and I think there’s a growing fear of it moving toward a fashion model. Maybe what isn’t discussed enough is celebrating and showcasing existing work, and considering how we reflect on the work we’ve produced. If work doesn’t have longevity, I don’t really want to do it, and that also means I like to show it multiple times and revisit it in different contexts.
What excites you most about the future?
There are so many gaps that I am curious to explore. The future feels quite limitless, which is a good feeling.