Heath Nash Notes & Questions

 




http://elledecoration.co.za/2010/07/from-the-team/

Below are excerpts from various articles on Heath Nash:
   

Named as the 2006 Elle Decoration South Africa Designer of the Year for his treasures from trash, Heath has also just been appointed the SA creative entrepreneur of the year - a British council initiative. Before he will be visiting London for the 100% Design show in late September PingMag wanted to know how he actually manages to recycle empty bottles to perfectly crisp precious objects, what difficulties he occurs when creating handmade products and where his small business is heading.  Written by Uleshka

http://pingmag.jp/2006/09/08/waste-neednt-be-wasted-designs-by-heath-nash/

Heath, creating lifestyle objects from other people’s rubbish doesn’t sound too sexy at first, but when looking at your objects all possible doubts are immediately blown away.

People are generally quite shocked that those things are made from rubbish, which I find really pleasing. (laughs) That shows that I’m obviously doing it right and that’s exactly the point I am trying to make! It is possible to re-use this kind of plastic straight away and take it to a sophisticated level

    
Plastic Proteas - experiments with flat sheet materials.  greeting card.  one of Heath’s beautifully folded lamp shade objects.  The Whorl - lampshade

How did you end up mixing your crisp designs with a “handmade touch” of local crafters in South Africa using empty bottles and plastic waste?
In the beginning all my work had been based on sheets of paper and plastic folded to objects: lampshades, greeting cards and that kind of stuff. I had a bit of an origami meets Swedish feel to it, but nothing really showed that it was made in Africa. Consciously, I kept looking for some way to express what Africa is and then suddenly met Richard Mondongwe at a crafts market making these plastic flowers. That was when I thought that by using the right materials and knowledge - wire and plastic combined with skills of traditional crafters and a contemporary design - a new aesthetic could be created which really suits the country.

We South Africans basically brand ourselves in crafts and design right now, creating a new look and feel for our country - and that’s quite exciting! Heath Nash

That all sounds as if you see yourself as a designer with an educational mission. A bit like what the CCDI in Cape Town are trying to achieve by teaching the crafters to take their traditional products to the next level…
In a way, yes. I really like to discover skills and people and combine them to creating products with a more contemporary sensibility, making things that are able to compete on the world market. Relevant objects rather than old school, standard local souvenirs.
Now Richard is my factory supervisor and leading craftsmen. He is very good at wirework and his wife now works with me, too. It is a nice passing on of knowledge and combining forces, besides giving work to those who need it.
I’d like to know a little bit more of the process of making your objects: from the milk bottle to the final sculpture - how does that work?
First it is trying to get the plastic, which unfortunately is much harder than you might imagine. I finally located some nice collection points, a couple of different recycling centers. The bottles we get are all dirty, so we take them to our studio, rinse, clean and wash them and then hang them up until they are dry and clean.

     
wireworks and flowers attached to a Full Colour Drum. white and colorful bottles gathered from recycling centers or simply picked up from the streets .Richard preparing the wire frames. Juliet creasing each flower by hand

Then you cut the handle and the bottom off, so they transform to a plastic sheet. We punch leaves out with a hammer and a blade attached to a piece of wood.  Each leaf has little crease lines on it and each leaf has then to be creased by hand, basically creating little veins. While that is happening, Richard creates the wire frames for various products. Then the leaves get strapped onto the wires. That is how you get your units, your modular base pieces. From those you either built a wall or a screen or a cylinder…

You just wrote a little manifesto for the Design Indaba Magazine about recycling. What is your most important point here?
I demonstrate that recycling has to happen here in South Africa (and everywhere else in the world). No-one here recycles! There is no infrastructure for it, so it is basically down to each individual to separate things - but no-one is really is doing that! When I discovered this material that looked so beautiful, I just thought is was a great opportunity to raise some consciousness and awareness, that these things are too precious to be wasted!

You won a couple of great prizes recently, have the great opportunity to be invited not only to 100% Design in London, but also to other entrepreneur programs by the British Council, a meeting with Sir Terence Conran… Apart from your plans to expand your business and delegating work to find more time for actual designing - what would you like to focus on in the future once you established that freedom?
Being a sculptor originally, I love playing with space and it would be beautiful to make things for larger areas, panels, screens and objects that really communicate in a big room… but all that is a slow process. For now I just want to contribute positively to the world, rather than just contributing arbitrarily.
Heath, thank you so much! Very much looking forward to the reactions in London and checking out what new products you introduce at next year’s Design Indaba!
          

“This world isn’t ours- we’re just borrowing it from our children”- unknown source