Jay Osgerby’s industrial design career has been defined by a deep-seated appetite for experimentation, beginning with his childhood years building fireworks in the shed of his family’s countryside home. After graduating with his Master’s degree in architecture from the Royal College of Art in 1996, he and fellow student Edward Barber founded their own studio for innovative design and architecture called Barber Osgerby. Giulio Cappelini discovered them and the rest is history.
Since forging the Barber and Osgerby partnership, the London-based duo has cultivated an exploratory attitude to materiality, developing inventive designs like the Tip Top chair for Vitra and their 2012 London Olympic torch. The studio has done work for leading brands and clients like Cappelini, Venini, and Swarovski, and their designs are held in permanent collections around the world including the V&A, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and London’s Design Museum.
We spoke to Jay in his studio in London, which takes up nearly a block of Shoreditch and employs over 80 people. I was curious where his name came from.
Osgerby:
I recently did one of those DNA tests, and sent it off and it came back. I was nothing particularly exotic, I was really disappointed. It looks like my genome is a mixture of Scandinavian, French, Swiss, Irish, and English. So over the millennia, since humanity began, my family haven’t really been that adventurous by the look of it, unfortunately.
Arkitektura:
Well, consistent.
Osgerby:
Consistent. Well, what’s worse than that though I think is that, my surname Osgerby is really, really unusual in the UK. Yet, there is a record of an Osgerby in the Doomsday Book. So in whatever that is, the 12th century or the 11th century, whatever it was. And I suppose what for me that underlines is, that how hugely unsuccessful we’ve been as a family in procreating, in a thousand years, there are only 50 of us or something in the whole country. As well as not traveling very much, our ability to get on with opposite sex has been absolutely appalling.
Arkitektura:
Can you say that yourself?
Osgerby:
No, I can’t say that for myself. I mean, I’m fortunate to have three lovely kids, so I’m doing my bit for the surname. But it hasn’t been a bed of roses, I can tell you.
Arkitektura:
I’m sure not. But with how busy you are, that’s probably not easy. And how about brothers and sisters?
Osgerby:
I’ve got, well, two brothers. I’m the oldest of three boys and I have two half sisters.
Arkitektura:
Oh, so that’s good, that’s a pretty big family. So you-
Osgerby:
Yeah.
Arkitektura:
… you were born in Oxford.
Osgerby:
I was born in Oxford in 1969 in a hospital called the Churchill Hospital named after the famous Winston Churchill. Yeah, I don’t remember much about being born, but pretty soon after it starts to piece together.
Arkitektura:
And how soon after does it piece together?
Osgerby:
I don’t know about you, but don’t you find it difficult to separate memories from photos?
Arkitektura:
Absolutely. And stories that you’ve been told as well.
Osgerby:
Yeah. We didn’t have a camera in our family. So my memories of, rather like the lack of photos we have jump from one year to the next, without anything really in-between. Now, I think I remember being sort of two or three, again, my memories of that period are quite black and white, and I guess that must be the photos, mixed in with some orange and brown of the ’70s.
Arkitektura:
No, but that’s fascinating. I mean, to what extent do you see your life in black and white and when does it suddenly change into color? I mean, filmmakers have played with this idea too.
Osgerby:
Yeah. No, I know and I love that conversation because I feel that, especially with photography. I like very saturated color photos or just black and white because. I think color photography when it’s that saturated and brilliant, it takes you to a different place, right? And black and white clearly does because you have to fill in the gaps in black and white, like you do in the memory. So it’s a similar thing.
And for me, I think it’s interesting that you talk about photography I think, because I’m really interested in history and classically, it’s not exactly very rock and roll to love history, is it? I mean, it’s generally seen, I think a little bit boring, a lot of people think. But for me, I think history tells us so much about us as people and where we are now. And photography for me I think is that, it’s encapsulation of history more than anything else. Probably more than the beauty of the image itself. It’s the fact that it’s a moment that’s held forever, and I love that.
Arkitektura:
I think about that often. I mean, it’s true that history somehow doesn’t have the sexy appeal, which is so unfair because it so informs. I mean, often people say, if you want to know where you’re going to be going, look at what you’re doing right now, or look at what came before you obviously, I mean. And I also think about history in the sense of your own personal familial history. Let’s say if I look at my great, great grandparents and what they were doing, there’s a very clear through line to what I’m doing now.
Osgerby:
You asked me if I was Greek, are you Greek?
Arkitektura:
I’m Armenian. My mom was born in Lebanon, my dad was born in Syria.
Osgerby:
So you’ve got really exciting background.
Arkitektura:
I mean, well, yeah, actually, it is exciting. But I mean, it’s not any less exciting than the British Empire.
Osgerby:
Well, I don’t know. I mean, anyway, for me history is really important and it tells us a lot I think there’s a relevance to the objects that have been used historically too. And I think a lot of the time when we’re working, we have referred to things that we’ve found or things that we’ve seen. And I say we, because obviously I’m one half of a design partnership and so speaking on behalf of Ed as well today.
But whenever we travel around the world we’ll often seek out flea markets and to try and, I don’t know, you can tell so much about society by looking at the things it discards, and also the objects that it’s used or developed over time to solve particular problems. Even if it’s sort of how to consume a soup. The spoons that people use through generations are different. And also as you travel around the world, you can sort of see how different societies have appropriated different materials through necessity to do similar jobs. So we take a lot from that, and I think probably most designers do. But we really do embrace that and also the historical side of it. I’m really avid collector of really bizarre implements, and instruments, and bits and bobs. I’m really lucky from really near here near, really near the studio is Spitalfields Market. And every Thursday morning, really early as the sun comes up, you have these crazy market traders putting out all these incredible artifacts from prehistory to industrial revolution, to the ’60s, broken things but interesting things, and perfect things. And there’s always a story.
And there’s this incredible guy there called Bill, I just know him as Bill. So on a Thursday morning, I’ll go and have a chat with Bill and I’ll stand there having my coffee, talking to him, and he’s sort of showing me these various things. And half of my house is full of the stuff that Bill has told me a story about, and I love that. I absolutely love it. The stories with objects and having the feeling that you’re holding something that’s been held by many thousands of people or loved by a few.
Arkitektura:
Absolutely. y mom, she collects antiques. And that’s what she loves about it. That each of these objects carry such a long history and story with them.
And so she’ll go to an antique fair and meet someone and they’ll be able to tell them. She’ll meet a Bill, if she’s lucky she’ll meet a Bill, and be able to hear about the provenance of this piece and how it was made and why, and the hands that it might have gone through, and where it came from. You start imagining if you have this sort of 18th century piece in your house let’s say, you imagine that it’s lived in a home from that time in an era that was so radically different from where we’re living now. It’s an incredible connection that you have to something through an object. You can connect to a time that you can’t connect in any other way.
Osgerby:
I think that’s an interesting point and it’s quite a challenge, I guess, what we love. I guess, the meaning that we find within objects, and you and I, our shared love of history, is a challenge as a designer today. Because we produce objects which really, I suppose at the beginning are a clean sheet of paper. They’ve never been owned. They’ve been considered and beautifully made, but they haven’t really developed much of a story other than the concept behind the design say.
I think one of the things that is really important to us now is to make sure that we make stuff that lasts, that we make things which can be given to your kids or your grandchildren. Or that can be sold and still be useful. So that over time the things that we work on, pick up that meaning through use, and the dents, and the bash, and the scratches, and the kids crayon on the tabletop, and I don’t know, the red wine stains or whatever it is. [00:10:30] They build up a pattern of life and they become a receptacle for memories and for meaning.
Arkitektura:
Absolutely. Absolutely, and as a designer you’re at the very beginning stage of it. I mean, you are the jumping off point for that. You’re the invitation.
Osgerby:
Yeah. Well, I suppose so. I mean, the other thing we have to do of course, I think for our us as designers is to somehow bring together other meaning to objects other than that. As well as the fact that the object gets older, doesn’t break, and becomes this container we talked about. Part of our job of course, is to bring meaning to the object in the first place. And for an object to justify its existence, and well, a lot of the time actually, we look back for the starting point, for a reference. Whether it’s something like a material that has been overlooked for a number of years, that we can reinvent or experiment with. Or whether it’s something that’s more subtle like a line at the back of a chair, which is overlaid in people’s memory as something else or something that’s familiar. But find a way of updating it whilst at the same time, not alienating the user, the person who wants to live with it.
Arkitektura:
Well, I love that line to justify its existence. And I think there, if you’re thinking about your work in general regardless of the field that you’re in, you think to yourself, why should this exist? Why should this radio piece exist? Even maybe a lawyer, why should this case exist? I mean, it’s such a hard thing to figure out, so when you think about justifying its existence, what are some of the questions you have to try and answer?
Osgerby:
Well, I guess one of the things that we often talk about is at the beginning of something, we always say that if it’s not possible… So for example, when an idea is in sketchbook form, or even when it’s just in a card model, there’s enough there then to be able to stand back and ask yourself the question, is there enough in this object to be able to stand up in a room of students [00:13:00] and explain the project in more than one sentence? And if you can’t really hit that criteria, then I don’t think the object has justified itself. I don’t think.
Arkitektura:
And why students? Why is students the… What makes [crosstalk 00:13:20].
Osgerby: Well, students are the hardest audience, aren’t they? Because they’re intrinsically cynical and they know that they know better than you.
Arkitektura:
Was that the kind of student you were?
Osgerby:
Probably, yeah. I think me and Ed both were actually, we were both a bit cynical. I think that’s what I love about youth though. I mean, I think you have to have that feeling that, I guess, contradicting what we said about history. I think, when you are in your early twenties or your teens, you do feel like you are the generation that has the knowledge, and everything that’s happened before you, they just didn’t have a clue.
And it’s interesting for me now, because I’ve got teenage kids. My oldest daughter is 19 and she’s just started studying at Camberwell College, she’s doing a foundation course. And I can see already with her and her year, they have that amazing feeling that they can start from scratch again. I think they give you that feeling that they have that, the clean piece of paper, the fresh sketchbook view and nothing matters that’s been before. And I like that. I like the arrogance of youth, I love it really.
Arkitektura:
I mean, that’s an incredible feeling. And I do remember it very well from when I went to college and just feeling like I’m writing my life, my future, my myself. I mean, it’s a blessing, it’s a privilege to be able to do that.
Osgerby:
It is. I think the other thing is that you have to remember that feeling that goes with you. If you’re studying or if you’re a practitioner in creative arts or any form of creativity, there is the counterbalance to that arrogance, which is of course the immense self-doubt. And I think that goes in waves, doesn’t it? And I think it does even in professional practice where you have good days and you think, yeah, I really think I know what I’m doing, followed by other days where you think actually you feel really insecure, shit, rubbish, what we did.
You have to just remember when you’re in the low points, actually you just have to keep going [00:16:30] one step in front of the other. Not that it happens a lot and it’s probably really healthy, but I think as a creative, you have to take the highs and the lows, don’t you?
Arkitektura:
Oh, you absolutely have to. And you have to push through it, you have to understand that it’s all part of it. And that in some way it’s informing you and you can use history as a metaphor. The highs brought us to where we are today. In your home, when you were growing up and I guess, for how long were you in Oxford?
I was only in Oxford just to be born because we lived just outside Oxford. I went in to Oxford to be born and then we actually lived about 12 miles away, sort of in the countryside, towards the Cotswolds really, in a small town called Witney. As a child, yeah, I lived in this town until I was 18 and it was a small town, we lived right on the edge of it. So I spent my days in fields really, and playing, and running around, and just messing around really.
My mum would just kick us out in the morning, from the back of our garden, we could just go out into fields. We’d go out in the morning and then she’d just shout for lunch. We’d come back in for lunch and then we’d be out again and then we’d be called back in for dinner. So it really was quite idyllic as a child grow up that way. And then as a teenager got progressively more challenging because all I really wanted to do was go where the action was, which was London. I spent my life just trying to figure out how to escape actually, which sounds terrible, but it’s the small town scenario that crushes your soul after a while. And everybody knows everybody else’s business, yeah, and the pubs close at a certain time.
There’s not a hell of a lot to do, there’s no creative input. In a way I was lucky because my mom… Well, I was lucky actually. My mom had always been interested in creative art. So whether it was going to a gallery, or going to a museum, or going to the ballet, that’s what we did all the time, I mean really regularly. And I guess I pushed against it really at the beginning, especially as a sort of early teenager, because I think you’d really want to be told what to consume, do you? I mean, in terms of cultural inputs, it was kind of, you push against it. But in retrospect it was the most important thing because so much of my cultural understanding and my references come from those early visits to museums and galleries and dance, I think. So I was lucky there, but I did have to get out.
Arkitektura:
Yeah, how wonderful. I mean, I think that’s such a wonderful balance. Recently, I was interviewing Hella Jongerius.
Osgerby:
Oh yeah. Yeah, I know. Oh, yeah.
Arkitektura:
And she also grew up in the countryside. And what happens when you have your days unstructured by… It’s not structured by the city, or by the noises of the city, or certainly by any of the devices that we have now. The allowance of the ways in which your brain works because of that.
Osgerby:
It’s so important. I think boredom is one of the most important triggers of a creative mind. And yeah, I don’t know about you, but I mean, I’m probably worse than my kids in terms of being distracted by my phone. And it absolutely kills boredom, so in a way it’s fantastic. You’re never going to get bored with a phone, because there’s always something to research or you can look up, especially if you like history. I mean you’re away, aren’t you? You could spend forever on the phone. But it stops the coincidental and incidental moments of, I don’t know, of opportunity to pick something up and hit it with a hammer. Or to understand how the world responds to your action, because it doesn’t on the phone.
Sending an email is not the same as hitting a wall with a hammer. I know that’s very dramatic, but there’s no impression. You don’t make a physical impression on it. Whereas when you’re bored and I was lucky as well, because we had a really big shed in the garden with lots of stuff in. I was able to go and make things, not good things or accomplish things, but I was able to make a few things I made really rudimentary furniture, even when I was a kid. As well as fixing my bike and I don’t know, making a bow and arrow and all of the stuff that you could make and then go and play with in the fields. Yeah, to your point, I think those days, those quiet days where nothing really happened and you had to make your own entertainment were really incredibly important. And I suppose I do worry a little bit about that for my kids generation. I mean, I was so bored, I used to make fireworks and explosives in the shed.
Arkitektura:
That’s fantastic.
Osgerby:
And I remember my mom, when I was about 16, I think I was, my mum found a box of matches in my jacket pocket or my trouser’s pocket. And she just gave me that look of, I know what you’re doing, you’re smoking. I was like, “I do not smoke, I absolutely do not smoke.” But I didn’t tell her I’m actually using this to light a fuse because I’d made a bomb in the garden.
Arkitektura:
Did she ever find out?
Osgerby:
She did, yeah. Because really annoyingly, I was trying to get… So when you make gun powder, it’s really complicated. Unless you’ve got digital scales and I didn’t, I mean, I had nothing like that. I had a pestle and a mortar and some really old scales, the ones that you had to put weights on, which was completely hopeless for getting the proportions right for making gun powder. So for gun powder you need carbon, which I used to use soot from the chimney. Sulfur, which I used to buy in the chemists, and they used to say, oh, it’s for my sister, she’s got acne, so I need the sulfur, so they sold that to me. And then potassium nitrate, I used to have to get the bus to Oxford and go to an old chemist there called Boswells, and I used to buy potassium nitrate. And they’d say, why do you need this son? The pharmacist would come over and say, “Why do you need it?” And I’d say, “Oh, my grandfather uses it for drying out rabbit skins.”
Arkitektura:
Oh my God.
Osgerby:
And they sold it to me, so then I’d get the bus home, go out to the shed and then roughly weigh this stuff up and then grind it up. And the way to test it is when you feel like you’ve got the proportion about right, you can make a little pile, like a tiny little pyramid on the table and light it. And when the ratio is not right, it sort of fizzes and spits like… And when it’s right, you light it and of course it just goes [inaudible] straight away. But getting the [inaudible] moment is incredibly challenging, it takes all day.
Anyway, one time I had a pot about the size of a really big mug. Like a big cup on the table in the kitchen downstairs, my mom was upstairs. I think she was in the bath actually. And I don’t know, I had the doors open into the garden and the table was really near the window. So it was like the fumes were going out, it was fine. I lit this little pyramid of stuff which I thought was just going to go be a [inaudible]. Anyway, it was a bit spitty, so I lit it and it was like psst, and these little bits were coming up in air like a little volcano.
One of the little bits that went up in the air came down in the cup of all the powder that I was mixing. And there was enough there, if that had been gun powder, it would’ve blown, I don’t know what would’ve happened actually. It definitely would’ve destroyed the table completely. It would’ve blown out the back doors and probably killed me. Luckily it wasn’t completely perfect, it was still spitty. Anyway, this whole thing started flipping exploding in the kitchen table and it was like, imagine a miniature volcano where you have the lava coming out into the air and then dropping back down and burning.
So our wooden kitchen table was destroyed really by these burning points all over it. And I don’t know how but I managed to get the pot outside. So then it carried on exploding in the patio. Meanwhile, this accurate stench of black smoke was finding its way upstairs to the bathroom. And my mom found out and that was not a good day. I don’t think I’ve ever been so told off in my entire life, that was bad. Anyway, I’d like to say that was the end of my pyrotechnic career, but it absolutely wasn’t. I love it and I went on to make very good fireworks, I have to say.
Arkitektura:
Yeah and do you still have that fascination to this day.
Osgerby:
To be honest with you, in my shed now as an adult, as a 52 year old man, I have got potassium nitrate, sulfur, and carbon in the shed. I’m just waiting for the right moment for my wife to go away for a long weekend so I can start messing around with it again. But yeah, it’s fun, I love that. So you find ways of spicing things up, don’t you? When it’s raining in the countryside.
Arkitektura:
Absolutely. It’s a fantastic story. It sounds like I’m going to be doing a little bit of a stretch here. What extent would you say that also is a metaphor for the design process. Because you’re having to pull from different places, ideas, inspirations, materials.
Osgerby:
It’s completely that. I mean, everything that we’ve spoken about so far on this call, I think the key theme, so history, culture, experimentation, and then the materials, the tinkering, I think it’s all part of what we do. It’s all part of it. And that’s the thing that makes it exciting, I think, yeah. I mean, I know we’re not specifically talking about projects, but we are just, this week, putting together a show in London of art pieces for Galerie Kreo. And the reason I just wanted to mention that, that sprung to mind was, we’ve been working with Venini the glass company in Murano, and we’ve been working with them for years, actually about 20 years.
And what is wonderful about them and that process is this incredible mixture of those things that we just talked of. When you’re at Venini, you’re in an amazing workshop that’s been there for hundreds of years. You feel the history when you’re in there. It’s so medieval. In the summer or in the early summer, because it closes at summer, so late spring, they have the windows open to the lagoon outside. And the windows are really low set, so the lagoon is literally lapping at the outside of the workshop. You can sense it, you can see it. And then of course, you’ve got these massive furnaces with fire and energy being consumed, and noise, and then this sort of liquid glass, which when it’s liquid it all looks the same. It’s just glowing bright, bright orange.
And then this sort of artistry of movement, this sort of choreography of movement of these really quite barely maestros, Italian guys whose families have been making glass for hundreds of years too often. And I think it’s that the mixture of those, sort of the fire, the water, and then this incredible beauty of the object as it coalesces, as it cools. And the absolute beauty of it is something very, very special. And I don’t know whether it’s the alchemy of it that I love, or it’s maybe even the mixture of chemistry and history that you can actually… I don’t know. I love it because it’s unpredictable. The reds that we’ve used in the show, it’s called, we call on corale, I guess, in Italian.
And the red changes color depending on the weather. So when you look at the pieces, you can tell what the weather was like on that day that it was made. And I just feel like I love that, I don’t know, serendipity again, I guess, or I love the chance, the making, but you never really know what you’re going to get. It’s a bit like fishing.
Arkitektura:
Well, that’s so beautiful, because it’s like a photograph in a way because you’re capturing a moment in time on that day. If you were to look at the color as a reflection of what you could have seen outside, because it’s about the weather. You could see that on that day, it was this stunning day and you can create this image of what that day might have been like. It’s a capturing a moment in time essentially, is what it is.
Osgerby:
Yeah, that’s really interesting, I hadn’t thought about it like that. You’re absolutely right, it is. It’s like the rings on the tree when you can see that it was a hot summer 300 years ago.
Arkitektura:
Yes.
Osgerby:
Those kind of things, the markers of time.
Arkitektura:
Yeah. Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Sidney Poitier, who-
Osgerby:
Amazing.
Arkitektura:
… Yeah, really amazing. And you should hear his history and I mean, the whole way he grew up and it’s fascinating, truly fascinating. And at one point the interviewer, her name is Terry Gross, she’s famous here, asked him, you’re 73 years old and I haven’t seen you in a film recently. And he said, what many people say when they’ve gotten successful is that, what I value most now is time. And it’s all these ways in which time either captured, or accumulated, or highlighted, or distilled is everything to us,
Osgerby:
it’s all we have ultimately. You have an A and you have a start point and an end point. And all that we do is about… I mean, well actually, all we do is we consume the time, we use it, we live in it, it’s what you do within that. And I suppose especially when you get to 50, you start thinking both ways, don’t you? You start thinking forward as well as back, or back as well as forward. And it’s interesting, if you could do a drawing to explain the way that you see time, that would be a really interesting drawing. How from a child, and how long the summer holidays were as a child, they just were epic periods of time. Because there were huge proportion of the amount of time that you’d lived.
And then how much you look forward and look back and when you’re 10, all you want to do is stay up all night and you say to your parents, I just want to be growing up so I can go to bed when I want. And then you go to a certain point and you’re thinking, Jesus, all I want to do is get into bed, I’m knackered. And it’s like how perception of time is so distorted at different points in our lives. I mean, of course it’s all abstract anyway, but I’d like to see that drawing.
Arkitektura:
Yeah, me too. Well, there’s that telescope that’s just gone up into NASA, The John Webb, \ It’s going to be looking at what was there… I mean, it’s literally going to be looking back in time. I mean, it’s sort of mind-blowing when you start thinking about it. But anyways, we don’t need to think about that. What we do need to think about is, I’m curious about your childhood home. So in your childhood home which you almost blew up and destroyed.
Osgerby:
Well, it was my childhood home which I really did nearlydestroy. It was actually two cottages that my parents put together and I think they were over 350 years old, they were really, really old. Probably workers cottages actually from the blanket mills. And they were probably classic Cotswold type of buildings, which were very low and they had beams on the ceiling and a giant fireplace.
But I guess it was really interesting as a child, because from a very early age I could see that it’s possible to change the space. You didn’t just have to accept that the room was the room, and that my parents sort of were able to connect these spaces and I don’t know. They always seemed pretty busy making stuff and doing things, and so I guess that rubbed off on us. They were very, yeah, they were… I remember our childhood days being full, everyone seemed busy, no one was really sitting around. I mean maybe everyone got bored and then we were all in the shed, I can’t really remember. But it was a busy house, my dad was a chef.
Arkitektura:
Oh, is that [inaudible] profession?
Osgerby:
Yeah, that was his job or his profession. He trained to be a chef and was a chef for most of my childhood actually. Which meant that he was obviously working lunch times and dinner times. So we didn’t see a hell of a lot of him. And it was always busy in that sense, people were shifting around. And then when I was about, I guess I was, I can’t remember, maybe eight, 1978, my mum persuaded him to give it up because the hours were so antisocial. And they started a shop, a health food store, yeah. Which was pretty pioneering really in that part of England at that period of time, yeah. So yeah, that was interesting,
Arkitektura:
Very much pioneering. I know because Philip is from Dorchester in Dorset, and became vegetarian when he was 16, and so that was sometime in the early ’80s. And it was very hard to find a health food store or…
Osgerby:
Yeah. Well that’s exactly what happened. My mom tells a story that apparently I had a plate that had a lamb on it, a kid’s plate. And then I think I was eating lamb, and I just connected the two. And then I decided I wasn’t going to eat them anymore. She says, anyway, I don’t remember this. And because I decided I wasn’t going to eat meat aged six, it got her into… Ironically her parents were butchers, well, my grandfather was a butcher. So she’d grown up around a butcher shop and then I turned out to be the vegetarian. She couldn’t obviously find any alternatives to meet, so she started researching it and got into it. And that’s how the whole health food store thing happened really.
Anyway, yeah. So on my mum’s side, I come from a long line of shopkeepers of one sort or another. So commerce has always been pretty close to me from cashing up at the end of the day, literally counting the coins and putting them into bags to going into Oxford on the bus as a 10 year old and putting the takings over the counter, giving it to the bank. And so right from the earliest memories I’ve had, there’s of contrasting inputs, I suppose of commerce and creativity.
Arkitektura: I mean,it’s incredible how these things over generations live within you. And how history shapes us without us even realizing in some ways. Our own personal histories and our social histories, and yeah, that’s so I also really like the fact that your mom didn’t just… First of all, there’s a great Simpsons episode where [inaudible] become a vegetarian.
Osgerby:
Oh really? I haven’t seen that one.
Arkitektura:
And it’s the best, and my daughter and I talk about it all the time. And it’s because of the piece of lamb, they had gone to a petting zoo, they saw a lamb.
Osgerby:
Oh my.
Arkitektura:
[crosstalk] excellent.
Osgerby:
I could have sold them the line, that’s the thing. I could have got a royalty on that episode.
Arkitektura:
Absolutely. You could have gotten the royalties, it’s so good. So many great moments. But yeah, that your mom respected you enough to not toss it out as like, oh, that’s silly, he’s six years old, he’ll change his mind. But actually do some research on it and try and…
Osgerby:
Actually I think I was a really bad eater. I think it was more than a dislike of certain things. I had a real issue eating certain things, I just couldn’t do it. And so more than being a finicky eater, it was almost like a pathological thing, I literally couldn’t do it. So my diet was already pretty restricted, I think. And I think partly it was more in desperation as much as anything, rather than necessarily… I mean, I like what you’re saying, maybe I’ll ask her later actually, whether she respected my decision, whether it was more utter frustration than needing to feed me something, but anyway.
Yeah, we got there and it was, I don’t know. I was really proud of them for having their own business. As a child, when you see your parents start something from nothing and it becomes a thing, you do think, wow, actually, it’s another really a good example of changing your world, isn’t it? A bit like changing your house. Actually creating something from nothing, successful or not is still admirable. And I think it’s a really wonderful thing, a really great thing to be exposed to as a kid.
Arkitektura:
Absolutely, I feel the same. I saw my mom build her business from going to becoming a lawyer to… I saw her in school as I was growing up to starting her business and being incredibly successful. And it’s profoundly inspiring.
Osgerby:
[crosstalk] a lot to live up to.
Arkitektura:
It’s a lot to live up to, but you know Armenians.
Osgerby:
Yeah, yeah you.
Arkitektura:
So there’s a couple of pretty strong influences there. The fact that your mom took you to all these creative things or cultural events, I should say. And then the fact that they were always making things and that you-
Osgerby:
Yeah, my mom was always cooking. I mean, even in our shop, she’d make food sell in the shop, she’d make bread, even in our crappy oven at home, she often used to do that. My dad would was more on the DIY scale, I think. But I do remember him making things like tables, and beds, and bookshelves and that kind of thing, and I loved that, I loved that. I loved the smell of the saw dust and hearing the… I don’t know, that’s probably what got me into do what I do really. It’s just, again, that thing of single handedly changing your environment?
I think in a way, as a diagram, if you imagine your home and then your workplace, and then the route to it, that whole thing is a space. And some people are challenging that by obviously not going to the other place and staying more at home, and others are sort of challenging it by turning the workplace much more into a home place. And it’s like we’re in this really interesting moment of massive social change, and the pandemic has opened people’s eyes to the potential of all sorts of different ways of living, I’m not just talking about working from home.
I mean, I’m maybe even challenging the notion of work altogether. And I think, there’re some complete horrors obviously that COVID has brought to the world, but I think we have to look at the positives. And I think one of the big positives is the fact that it’s made people understand that we don’t have to be happy with the status quo, how things were. And actually we can challenge them and think differently about things, about the world, our work and our family life, and what’s important to us.
Arkitektura:
That has been a fundamental shift for sure. And I don’t know if you know, in America there’s been huge amounts of people quitting their jobs and there’s a lot of discussion around the human relationships that we have and which ones we’ve come to value more, and how we deepen those and all of that. If you do look at the positives, there’s a tremendous amount to learn and I’m very hungry to find out, because I think this is just such a profound thing that we’re going through. Such an extraordinary thing that we’re going through, and what are going to be the true lessons from all of this.
Osgerby:
I mean, I genuinely hope we do get to see the lessons, right. Because it would be really depressing if life just went straight back to normal. I mean, there’s going to be a little bit of that I think, but I think, if life is like an elastic band, we’ve been pulled right down and of course it’s and want to pull back up again. But it will never get to the same point it was before, there’ll always be a delta of change.
Arkitektura:
You were speaking about when you make the little pile of-
Osgerby:
Oh yeah. Yeah, my pyrotechnics.
Arkitektura:
… and it fizzles and it just [inaudible], but then sometimes its explodes. And I’m sure that moment when you have that explosion as well, professionally, regularly, what does it feel like now as an adult, when that explosion happens? And how can someone else that’s aspiring, who’s seeking that out can recognize it too?
Osgerby:
Well, I mean, drawing the parallel between, I guess pyrotechnics and the successful thing, I would say that sometimes the things we’ve done that we love the most, they’ve been really successful personally or a real achievement personally. But they haven’t necessarily been financially successful or even had huge acclaim, but the explosion has happened, the joy of the creation of something has happened, but without it necessarily having to be commercially successful, I think. And I think that’s in a way why we both feel a desire to do more, to work more on smaller scale at the moment, at smaller scale things. The show for Krue is a really good example of installations that we’ve done over the years at the V&A for example, or for the London Design Biennale.
Where you can really put your energy into one thing, and very often that thing doesn’t need to have an appeal to more than a handful of people. It can be more indulgent maybe that’s what it is, or it certainly feels more like a personal research project rather than something about creating an interesting form that functions really well. Which in a way I feel that us staging that in our careers is done, we can do that and everybody knows we can do it. But I think now it’s time to do some work which is deeper in a way and experimental, and maybe much more of an expression of our beliefs and desires rather than something that’s for everybody to have.
Arkitektura:
Well, I think that’s what happens when you become successful, I mean, ideally. as you’re building your business, your creative business, and maybe any business. You do the things that will make great money and will be successful, and will get you on the map in really powerful ways.. But then there are these other projects that you know they might resonate in a different way for you. They might be more meaningful for you, more personal, more aligned with your inclinations, your aspirations. And they’re not going to necessarily be the things that are massively successful in that regard.
But as you get more successful professionally, that balance shifts and you can do now. there are certain things that make you very, very successful, but they’re not the things that you feel are the ones that resonate most deeply with you. when you think about the turning points that brought you to where you are now, Giulio Cappellini, seeing your table was I would imagine the first one.
Osgerby:
Yeah. He probably was actually. Well actually, probably making the decision to start working with Ed, that’s probably the most important one really. Because, I don’t think either of us would’ve done it alone, we knew nothing. But when you know nothing and there’s somebody else with you who also knows nothing, at least you’ve got someone to talk to about it. And I think our collaboration was like a second master’s degree for us. It was like where we really learned stuff. So that was, I think the turning… I mean, before college, there’s a lot of turning points. Definitely since college, that relationship was the first turning point. Because at least it set sail in a direction.
Meeting Giulio that day was completely pivotal because for the first time I think, gave us a feeling that we could actually be really good, I think probably. It showed that there was hope and actually suddenly it felt like you had a foot almost in a parallel world. Suddenly we were in Milan at the Furniture Fair. And that was an amazing thing. So that was like an Alice in Wonderland moment. And then over the following years we got into that world, we left the other world behind. And so yeah, that was incredibly pivotal.
Creatively, our relationship probably with Vitra was the next step and coming across or developing the idea for the Tip Ton chair, which I think that was a pivotal moment. Because again, it was like having the endorsement of Rolf Fehlbaum and the whole culture that is Vitra, was incredibly meaningful for us. And again, I guess partly confidence, partly exposure, really also the first time that we got to be able to develop something which was really complicated to make, and needed the deep pockets of a big company to facilitate. And that’s been transformative. And that chair, which when we launched, nobody really knew whether it would work or not. I think we all had doubts that people would learn how to sit differently, has continued to be successful and it seems to be more successful every year really, which is amazing. So that was pivotal.
I guess the next big one probably was winning the Olympic Torch for the London games. And well, it was amazing to have that. I mean, it’s funny, isn’t it? How it’s such a long time ago, it’s 10 years ago now. But it was at the time for us, we were really young to get that project. It was a real risk that they took to give it to us to make that work. And again, having been able to deliver something which did work and did sort of mean something to a lot of people at the time, the whole nation really, means a lot even now. That was pivotal. So we’ve had lots of pivots, definitely.
Arkitektura:
Yeah, I know. I was thinking about the torch and I wasn’t going to mention it because it seems so obvious. And I think that resonates over time doesn’t sort of fade. I mean, particularly because, we’re now thinking about your DNA test and thinking about the fact that if you look back generations and generations and generations, that this is your land and created something for your country, and the country of your grandparents, and your great grandparents, and your great, great grandparents. It’s such a powerful thing.
Osgerby:
it’s funny that we were talking about family before, because actually there was a family story about my great uncle, my grandmother’s brother. Who cycled behind the torch lay in 1948 and almost cycled into Wembley Stadium, wherever it was. I guess it was Wembley Stadium in those days, I don’t know.
But yeah, he basically followed the torch relay on his bike as an 11 year old or 12 year old, and pretty much ended up in the opening ceremony by accident. And so that story has always been told in our family. And I think then to be able to add a footnote to the family story is quite nice. But yeah, it was good. I mean, no complaints here. I mean, I reckon even now we’ve got the best job in the world, certainly in design. This is the most amazing place to be, very fortunate.
Arkitektura:
Yeah. I mean, I think very fortunate, you worked hard for it and you found the right partner. I mean that’s just all of those kind of the alchemy of all that. You’re talking about alchemy and elements coming together to create an explosion. The explosion can’t work without all three of those.
Osgerby:
Yeah, you’re right it can’t. It’ll just fizz, and if you’re really lucky you’ll set fire to your table.
Arkitektura:
And get you in trouble, possibly get you arrested.
Osgerby:
Yeah, probably now, yeah. I mean, shortly after I was making my fireworks and explosives, which would’ve been something like 1980… I don’t know, four or five, I guess. They stopped selling potassium nitrate, because the IRA were getting pretty busy with it in London. And so they stopped selling it. Despite the fact that I was sort of using all these made up stories to get my stuff, I couldn’t get it.
Arkitektura:
Well, you made explosions in other ways.
Osgerby:
Exactly.
Osgerby:
But what’s interesting though is that, especially I can’t speak from experience obviously, Because we Ed and I started straight away out of school. But I think people often in employment are worried that it’s risky being freelance or setting up your own thing, but the reality is you are always at risk. It’s just that when you’re running your own business or you are running your own studio, at least you can see the horizon, you can see where the troubles are going to be or issues that are coming towards you.
Whereas when you’re in work, you can’t see anything until you’re told. And I just couldn’t do that because I don’t know, maybe I’m too controlling. But I like to see the future, I like to see what’s coming, or at least I like to feel like I do. When people say, should I do my own thing? I just think, Christ, yeah, just do it. Do it, you’ve got nothing to lose.
That was designer Jay Osgerby of Barber and Osgerby. Their work can be seen at barberosgerby.com
Design in Mind is a podcast series from Arkitektura. Based in San Francisco, Arkitektura curates the best design from around the world and makes it accessible through its retail spaces, live events, and this very podcast. Design in Mind is Arkitektura’s way of honoring the life and work of some of the best designers today and celebrating the magic and beauty of design and design thinking. Design in Mind is produced for Arkitektura by Sound Made Public. I’m your host, Arkitektura. To hear more, please visit arksf.com or go to iTunes and subscribe to Design in Mind, rate the show, tell us what you think. Thank you so much for listening.
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