Image: Versailles light by Frank Photo: Iain Dickens

 

Frank is a design partnership consisting of Pam West and Matt Edmonds, who met whilst studying product design at Buckinghamshire University. It took until last year for them to launch themselves officially as Frank, but they started receiving attention five years ago, when they burst straight out of college and onto the international design stage, exhibiting with Tom Dixon at Milan 1998. Whilst there, the Map drawer unit caught the eye of Cappellini.

This new range of interior products demonstrates Frank turning their attention from furniture to a smaller scale and fine-tuning details perfectly. The Versailles light is an unusually beautiful creation from white polypropylene, which appears as though it is folded delicately from paper. The classical shape sets it streets ahead of its polypropylene lighting contemporaries, as does a minimalist absence of fixtures and fittings.

Frank approach design with restraint, preferring to emphasise a sophisticated manufacturing technique than to overdose on detail. Many of their designs appear to be manipulations of a single sheet or volume, such as the Primate low table or the Tuber vases, factoring simplicity into 3D products. “Finding new materials and the people to use them is the best way to progress,” says Pam. “Being a partnership affords us the discipline that we cannot be too precious about our ideas. We approach things from different angles, and that way, we hopefully find better solutions.” Rather than develop one trademark look, Frank have continued to explore several style concepts.

In 2002, Frank’s Primate low table was shortlisted at the Oxo Peugeot Design Awards. The Mercury CD Shelf, launched at Milan 2002 was included in a round-up of the best designs of the fair alongside designs by the Bouroullecs, Ron Arad, Fernando & Humberto Campana and Gaetano Pesce.

Eclectic design commissions include the catwalk for Markus Lupfer’s S/S 2002 collection which was staged at the Royal Opera House during London Fashion Week 2001. This year they have created the stand for the Hidden Art showcase at 100% Design.

Frank’s home/studio is full of their own furniture, demonstrating their instinct for making things that they like, and know they can live with. Their newest launch, What’s Your Poison, is a set of drinks coasters, inexpensive and disposable like beer mats, combining wit with an unstuffy attitude to design. Whether on a small or grand scale, Frank’s furniture, interiors and products are refreshingly sleek, stylish and eminently covetable.

 

September 2003