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Designs for the engaged economy

From the Nylex swing-top tidy bin to the Kambrook power board, Australia has what it takes to reboot its manufacturing sector.

The Grant & Mary Featherston Sound Chair at the Australia Pavilion, World Expo, Montréal 1967. Picture: Supplied
The Grant & Mary Featherston Sound Chair at the Australia Pavilion, World Expo, Montréal 1967. Picture: Supplied

Ian Wong’s love of Australian design firmed into a form of advocacy when he attended the funerals of influential industrial designers Lionel Suttie and Barry Hudson in the late noughties. Suttie designed the swing-top tidy bin made by Nylex, while Hudson created the General Electric all-plastic KE 12 kettle: both classics of 1970s Australian design often manufactured in that decade’s ubiquitous burnt orange.

“I came to the realisation that not even the friends and family of these two were aware of the significance of their careers,” recalls Wong, senior lecturer in industrial design at Monash University and curator of an online exhibition at Design Tasmania featuring more than 100 Australian-designed products. “They just saw them as humble people who went to work each day. But Barry’s kettle won the Prince Philip prize, and Lionel’s swing-top bin, well, you can still buy it. The achievements of a local footy coach or sports star are celebrated in this country, but we also have world-class innovators.”

General Electric’s all plastic KE12 kettle. Picture: Supplied
General Electric’s all plastic KE12 kettle. Picture: Supplied

Wong couldn’t have foreseen when he started collecting Australian design objects more than a decade ago — at last count he had assembled more than 1600 pieces — that they would answer an urgent question: does Australia have what it takes to stand on its own feet in a global innovation culture and reboot its manufacturing sector? The answer, for him, is a resounding yes.

“Across the country our design profession is already working closely with industry,” he says. “The pandemic is a global health crisis and our products will be in great demand the world over.”

The “war effort” against COVID-19, as he sees it, is re-engaging the design community and the economy, and the results are dramatic. South Australia’s Detmold food packaging company is now the country’s largest manufacture of face masks. Orbitkey has developed a new wearable hand sanitiser holder. Ned’s Head face shields are protecting workers in essential ser­vices. The latter is designed by Lee Gray of South Australia’s Kyron Audio and Andrew Rogers, inventor-designer of the Clipsal range of power points and switches.

“In 1984 while completing his industrial design studies at UniSA Andrew Rogers, like most students, had a part-time job,” says Wong, who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of design objects and the designers.

Many iconic, Australian-designed products will feature in the exhibition. Supplied
Many iconic, Australian-designed products will feature in the exhibition. Supplied

“His job was in the family business assisting his electrician father on building sites. He completed his degree and was working for Shell in Adelaide when he was approached by Clipsal with a contract design project. Andrew’s experience working in the building industry was to be key. On the kitchen table of his rented flat he not only produced an innovation that would be patented but he also secured a full-time industrial design job. The Clipsal 2000 series reduced significantly the complexity of electrical installation in this country. Millions and millions have been manufactured and we use them at work or at home almost every day.”

Design Institute of Australia chief executive Jo-Ann Kellock sees the ICONIC Australian Design exhibition as more than a celebration of talent. “It is also a dem­o­nstration of why, now more than ever, Australian designers play a critical leadership role in adding value to Australia’s economy.”

The exhibition augments Wong’s collection with a few classics of Tasmanian design, such as Anita Dineen’s Antechinus cheese knife, which was licensed to Italian design house Alessi. It includes the Blundstone boot, the Wiltshire staysharp knife, the Decor wine cooler, the Nylex Esky, the Rosebank Stack Hat, the Britax baby capsule, the Grant and Mary Featherston Sound Chair, the Kambrook power board, which had its origins in the need of caravan owners to run a kettle and a toaster at the same time, and the Oates all-plastic mop bucket.

One of the designers of the mop bucket, Phillip Slattery, worked on the project out of the Little Oxford Street studios of DesignLab in 1986, when polished floorboards were in fashion and metal mop buckets were prone to damage them.

Slattery, director of Melbourne design studio S2A, also designed the baby capsule in 1984; a time when, as he puts it, “people used to carry their babies in cane baskets and they’d jump into the front seat of their cars, buckle up, with their pride and joy in the back seat waiting to be thrown into the front window in an accident.”

Both the mop bucket and the baby capsule adhere to Slattery’s credo of “function first, the form will generally follow”. And both feature in the ICONIC exhibition.

“It is also a dem­o­nstration of why, now more than ever, Australian designers play a critical leadership role in adding value to Australia’s economy.” Picture: Supplied
“It is also a dem­o­nstration of why, now more than ever, Australian designers play a critical leadership role in adding value to Australia’s economy.” Picture: Supplied

Wong looks back to the late 70s and 80s as the golden age of Australian industrial design. “In the 1980s the notion of being protected changed, and tariffs came down. Designers were emerging, and we had a manufacturing industry ready to employ them.

“In the 80s in particular our manufacturing with the car companies got to a level of capacity where it was possible for us to do things that were world class and innovative and capable of being adopted around the world. In Europe and America car designers were pigeonholed into particular skill sets — they could design a door or a seat — but our automotive designers were a little like talented athletes, they could do anything. And they did.”

University of South Australia senior lecturer in industrial design Peter Schumacher says the pandemic has thrown into high relief issues with the globalisation of manufacturing. “In some cases, it has also shown that local production is cost effective, pushing back against the assumption that manufacturing locally is not viable,” he says.

The exhibition demonstrates the depth of Australia’s design talent and its capacity to contribute to the economy and society, says Schumacher.

“We still have great potential, smart people and great ideas. We bat well above our weight. While we don’t have the scale of studios and projects we see overseas, we do possess global-level talent. Let’s see if the future will deliver us the opportunity.”

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/designs-for-the-engaged-economy/news-story/67a4d7b733e2bd787655d32fde690946