Invented for cooks with a passion for exploration, we captured an East meets West design philosophy that blends traditional and modern forms by combining circular and elliptical lines to create a uniquely elegant and practical silhouette that pours from either side.

Ali’s vibrant Bauhaus colour palette delivers a perfect complement to the ergonomic shapes and hints at a new language in cuisine – it’s no longer the casserole or the braiser or the saucepan or the roaster, it’s simply the Red, Blue or Yellow pan…childs play!

Oh, and in the studio we also invented a new word ‘Versatiron’ to celebrate the versatility of cast iron and give us an original, meaningful and impactful brand identity!

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In some ways this was my introduction to ‘Mercuryglass’ which followed sometime later.

The Thermos jugs were a rather challenging project that incorporated classic Thermos vacuum liners made from blown glass with a ‘silver lining’.

They were wickedly expensive to make so you might say not for the fainthearted but they were a joy to use and have graced many a boardroom table including a couple of investment banks where happily money seemed never to be the object!

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Following my success with Mercuryglass I became intrigued with mirrors in general and their place in history from the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles to the funfair House of Mirrors.

It struck me that mirrors have a unique power to transform the perception of light and space in a room so I wanted to explore the possibilities.

The key was really to see them as wall-art rather than ‘looking glasses’ and my various designs from Hide&Seek to Twister introduced me to a Wonderland of design opportunity…

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So…way back when, my bestest friend Tiina Carr asked me to design something to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her brilliant Sheffield design agency The Workshop. I did a mini quiz with her team and a bright young chap named Sean popped up with the suggestion that we should make a jelly mould and throw a 10th Birthday Party with jelly&ice cream …so that’s what we did and it was a BLAST!

Then… a bit later, I was chatting with my other bestest friend Natasha Kraal about collaborating with her stellar, stylish Harpers Bazaar Magazine and we came up with the idea of using the jelly mould idea to raise breast cancer awareness in Malaysia (with a bit of a nod to Madonna, Jean Paul Gaultier and Live Aid 1985)!?

The rest turned into a little piece of design history, with support from my friends at Royal Selangor and a cast of international celebrity chefs who all got the joke and contributed their exquisite recipes for our fundraising story. The jelly moulds were made as a limited edition and all got snapped up very quickly but the jelly recipes are published again here so why not give one a whirl … or a ‘wobble’?

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Glassblowing as an art form and an amazingly choreographed ‘dance’ is a wonderful thing to watch. I have spent many hours in glass workshops in Stourbridge, Broxbourne, Torrington, Ulverston, Dungannon, Waterford, Krakow, Budapest, Bucharest…and Prague!

My time visiting Prague has been a joy and on one such visit I discovered the magical ‘Mercury Glass’ that is a traditional technique going back to the early days of Murano.

I loved the intensively reflective quality that is achieved and how this electrified different colours such as cobalt blue, so I decided to create a collection that teamed simple modernist shapes with the energy of the technique to produce a series of show-stopping bowls and vases.

We had a real commercial hit on our hands once they were launched and to top it off the collection made it into The Sheffield Millennium Gallery and the V&A Museum…

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I love the 1930s period of English ceramics when factories such as Poole Pottery achieved a perfection in their colour palette and a poise in their shapes that in my opinion has never been bettered.

When John Lewis asked me to design ceramics for them I therefore drew on those roots and presented them with the concept of a celebration of a distinctly English style which we made in the thinnest, lightest porcelain just like in days of old.

My wife Ali created the colourways so 2 Tone (with a nod to the music of my youth) was a true marriage of shape and colour.

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Grey is glamour!

Glass is glamour!

Liquor is glamour!

So why not put them all together in a chic collection of bar-ware with a dash of Art Deco decadence?

Cue ‘Smoke’ and many shaken, stirred or otherwise concocted cocktails by talented mixologists.

Here’s hoping we brought some memorable pleasures and hedonistic indulgences to lots of glamorous people…

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Simplicity is a challenging friend to keep but a perfect companion when you can find it!

For me, visiting Stoke on Trent for the first time in the early 1990s was to be assailed by a great sea of pottery that mostly I found hard to make friends with – forms and patterns that I couldn’t connect with let alone understand the people who could?

I therefore found myself on a personal mission to find a way of communicating my own style that would contrast with what I saw around me and maybe if I was lucky connect with a customer that felt that same.

It was a tricky process and I needed to learn how to get the precise details that I designed to be moulded not to be erased in the traditional sponging process, or how to apply black glaze so that it was flawlessly smooth (and didn’t contaminate the whole factory which would have put me in the nearest Stoke jail!)?

Basalt was the result of these early trials and errors with some indulgence of my whims by the skill and support of local ‘heroes’ such as Malcolm Burden. It was truly perplexing at first but eventually it came good and in its own way turned into quite the market leader.

In fact, it was the key that unlocked a much bigger door than I could imagine because it brought me to the attention of Wedgwood and all that followed …so it became known as ‘Basalt’ in honour of someone I then learned about properly – Old Josiah himself.

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When I first visited London as a teenager to stay with my charming Auntie Linda, she would whisk us around on a Routemaster bus and point out all the famous landmarks in a running commentary from the top deck to rival any tour guide.

I have since visited many cities all over the world and enjoyed fabulous times, japes and scrapes in them all but London remains my favourite and is more or less my second home.

But on those first visits with Auntie Linda I noticed and liked the original Routemaster window winders which were a small but substantial metal casting that you turned on a spindle to raise or lower the top windows.

I used to turn them up and down just to feel the motion which probably raised an eyebrow or two with the other passengers but I was curious that they all seemed so well maintained and would glide easily up and down with a simple turn.

So, some years later when experimenting in Sheffield with new designs for a Peppermill I recalled that charming Routemaster detail and somehow translated that into the design that became my bestselling Spheres mills – an award winner that I have since sold all over the world to pretty much all of the places I have ever visited and many more besides.

A little piece of London, by way of a workshop in Sheffield…

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At school, I was never much of a musician but I always loved music and had a guide in my elder brother Rich who would be the first of anyone with the coolest, latest albums from Bowie to the Sex Pistols to Springsteen to Joy Division to Dexys and Van Morrison …so I had a brilliant (and loud) education!

Later on, when studying design at The Royal College of Art, I started to discover the London club scene at the Wag on Wardour Street or the Fridge in Brixton, eventually finding my way to Ronnie Scotts where I picked up on the jazz/soul grooves of Miles Davis, Gill Scott Heron and so many more.

I was alive to all of the music but meanwhile becoming a real admirer of all the instruments with such flowing forms, precise details and wondrous materials. I would pick them up to feel their balance and touch the fine detailing – such skilled craftsmanship the instruments felt ‘alive’!

So Trombone was my own personal translation of what I heard, saw and felt at Ronnie Scott’s and I like to think it defined a level of quality that has become intrinsic to all my designs…

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