Het Huis Stoclet in Brussel - Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten Aalst

handle maker; Cappellini, the Italian furniture manufacturer; and Vitra, the Swiss furniture
company whose chairman, Rolf Fehlbaum, contacted Morrison after seeing a slide
presentation of A World Without Words.
In 1988, Morrison designed a room set for the Berlin Design Werkstadt exhibition.
Entitled Some New Items For The House, it consisted of chairs, tables, a chaise longue,
four walls and a door - all made from plywood. At first glance, the objects looked banal
with their simple lines and familiar forms, but closer inspection revealed the quiet
intelligence with which Morrison had refined them. The critic, Charles Arthur Boyer, later
described Some New Items as aving "crystallised" his design ethos: "to produce everyday
objects for everyone's use, make things lighter not heavier, softer not harder, inclusive
rather than exclusive, generate energy light and space".
Jasper Morrison has pursued those goals ever since. Still working for Vitra and
Cappellini, he has now nurtured a strong rapport with other clients including Flos, the
Italian lighting company; Magis, the Italian plastic manufacturer; Rosenthal, the German
porcelain producer; and Alessi, the Italian metal maker. The perfectly plain 1998 Tin
Family steel kitchen tins he produced for Alessi and 1997 Moon tableware for Rosenthal
echo the apparent simplicity and underlying subtlety of his New Items and the "archetypal
objects" that Morrison searches for constantly. "If I watch a film, I often spend more time
looking at the details of objects in the background than keeping up with the plot," he
admitted.
Always keen to collaborate with fellow designers - such as James Irvine, a friend
from the Royal College of Art, and Andreas Brandolini, with whom he formed the Utilism
collective in the mid-1980s, Morrison has commissioned products from them and other
designers. He and Irvine worked together to compile Cappellini's 1992 Progetto Oggetto
range of household objects.
Critically, Morrison's clients have also allowed him to experiment with new materials
and technologies. The results include his 1999 Low Pad Chair for Cappellini, which was
inspired by one of Morrison's favourite mid-20th century chairs - the Danish designer, Poul
Kjaerholm's 1956 steel and leather Chair, but used a new method of condensed upholstery
to create a comfortable, but durable padded leather seat. Another technical coup is his
1999 Air Chair, an elegant, relatively inexpensive moulded dining chair made from a single
piece of plastic using Magis's new gas injection technology.
Morrison has tackled more complex commissions: notably by designing a tram
system for the city of Hanover in what he described as "an exhausting, but not
unenjoyable" two year project. He also collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss
architects of London's Tate Modern museum, to furnish its public spaces with his Low Pad
Chairs and 1998 Op-lá tray table for Alessi.
In 2000, Jasper Morrison departed from his self-imposed rule of concentrating on
industrial production by accepting a commission from a museum in the Provençal village of
Vallauris to produce a limited edition of ceramics made by local artisans. The result, as
Morrison himself admits, shares the sleekness and formal clarity of his industrial designs.
Rather than being flattered by his interest, the European craft community was outraged.
"Why work with the ancient skills of the Vallauris potters," railed an editorial in one craft
magazine, "to make something that looks as if it came from a factory?"
In the early 2000s Morrison set up a new studio in Paris and proceeded to divide his
working life between there and London. He acquired new clients such as Rowenta, the
French household appliances manufacturer for which he is developing a new range of
kitchen products including kettles, irons and coffee machines. Morrison also sustained his
relationship with established clients by designing new projects for Cappellini, Magis and
Vitra.