Having followed modern and contemporary design for years I was excited to see Anne, by Gareth Neal (2009) and immediately wanted to find out more. This table conveys its process and concept openly and reveals a sense of humour. What I admire in design is the investigation into materials and techniques, especially when this results in objects that show their development in their final state. The understanding of where this table has come from and the processes it has gone through create a connection with the viewer. The obvious relationship between the digital and the hand work beautifully. My grandfather was a cabinet-maker, my other worked for the Forestry Commission and if I downed tools to change career I would leap into furniture design without a second glance. ” ...more
" The colour is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide - plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions. "
" There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down."
" I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, un-blinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where the two breadths didn’t match and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other. "
" Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes - a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens - go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity. "
" Sometimes there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. "
" It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. "
" Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! "
