Jon Goulder - Milan Design Week & The Settlers Chair V2

Feature Interview

Adelaide, SA, Australia

Steering away from the ubiquity of globalised design, Jon Goulder is instead taking notes from Colonial Australia to cut out an aesthetic that translates the Australian experience to an audience both at home and abroad.

A fourth generation designer/maker, Jon appropriates the mature old-world craftsmanship of his elders to construct pieces that stretch up and into the contemporary setting. Upon graduating from the Canberra School of Art, Jon founded his own practice in 1996 that he runs concurrently to his role as Creative Director for JamFactory – a not-for-profit organisation guiding emerging artists and designers.

Jon will be presenting his Settlers Chair as part of the Local Milan exhibit during Milan Design Week 2017. The exhibition is curated by Emma Elizabeth of Local Design and features pieces from 11 of Australia’s most daring and imaginative designers. The Settlers chair sees Jon turn away from the omnipresent influence of European design to etch out a narrative drawing from his own heritage and that of wider Australia.

We spoke to Jon as he headed off to Milan to learn more about the inspiration underpinning his Settlers chair and the importance of embedding identity into his work in an overwhelming design landscape.

Tell us about your studio and your practice.

I am actively running my practice from the JamFactory studio whilst directing. I have three first-year and three second-year associates / interns – four Aussies, one from Iran and one from the USA. They are some of the best grads from industrial design, art school and design school internationally. We are a melting pot of different skills and different ambitions; craft-based, design-based and art-based, similar to my practice.

Tell us about the Settlers Chair; what was the influence/ brief and how did you incorporate materials into the design?

I am an ambassador for Tasmanian Blackwood, so you will see me using this material a lot. The [Settlers chair; Milan Edition] is basically the final piece – the first prototype (collected by the National Gallery of Victoria) is where I developed the technology and the Milan edition is where I refined the process.

What were you trying to elicit or highlight in this piece?

The Settlers Chair is the result of an investigation into materials – how they can be manipulated and formed in new and innovative ways- resulting in a unique object that has not previously been seen anywhere else in the world.

When I was designing this piece I was thinking about the ingenuity of the Australian settlers and their resourceful use of the materials that were available to them. Leather was an important material in early Australian furniture and emerged as a creative opportunity for my own research.

I wanted to make a pure structure, one that is not reliant on other materials such as an internal fibreglass shell. This led me to develop a new process of forming large pieces of leather which enclose structural wooden components in layers to achieve the large forms required for this chair.

I researched some of the earliest furniture in Australia, in particular the Hamilton Inn sofa (Hobart, 1825). The asymmetric form is a reference to a chaise lounge and also a more modern time – the age we live in.

This piece represents a turning point for my practice, away from interests in European mid-century aesthetics, to narrative-based sources of inspiration from my memories of the family furniture making business and from Australian history.

What’s your favourite aspect of your practice?

My favourite aspect is that I am pushing my abilities as a maker whilst designing original high quality design pieces that can’t be copied.

How important to you is the relationship between furniture and interactivity? Do our surroundings influence how we live, work or play?

Absolutely, I think it’s about appreciation of the things we collect throughout a lifetime or a place or a memory. These things help keep us grounded, they are nostalgic and comforting.

How does manufacturing locally affect your design process and final product?

I am engaged in local manufacture with the JamFactory collection everyday and it is amazing to work with local manufacturers, especially in Adelaide where industry is looking to diversify. I think the test of a true designer is being able to deliver a manufacturable design with artistic integrity.

How do you see the furniture design industry right now, are there any shifts or changes that you’ve noticed?

I think the huge consumption of images, trends and marketing collateral pushes me to find a voice in a world where many things seem the same, generic. I hope my work now, and in the future, demonstrates this. I want to put physical objects on the floor that are original to me – influenced by my memories.