Royal Selangor

Royal Selangor

My pewter days in Sheffield were you might say ‘formative’ and I had learned a lot about life in the factory, the challenges of maintaining quality and the costs of investing in innovative new solutions so I was pretty well versed in the material by the time I was approached by the great Royal Selangor.

I was very aware of the brand and its premier position as the world’s largest and most successful pewter company, not to mention the fact that most of the metal used in pewter actually comes from Malaysia – Pewter is 95% tin and there is a large slug of this lovely metal located in that region. So when the invitation came to fly down to Kuala Lumpur to collaborate with Royal Selangor on a new collection I was ready.

This was in-fact my first visit to the Far East and my first direct exposure to Oriental business, culture, cuisine and the delightful Malaysian people. I recall feeling at home immediately and being super impressed with the precision, detail and quality of the RS production which so suited my design style.

I spent some happy weeks in KL and then explored the country to find inspiration in notable places such as Penang and over to Singapore where I arrived at the idea of creating very elemental, crisp and flowing shapes across a collection of home & office accessories inspired amongst other things by the ancient forms of the Chinese Song Dynasty – modernism before there was Modernism!

The results I hope speak for themselves and have been in continuous production ever since with sales across SEAsia and into Australia, Japan, China and all the way back home to the UK.

Several projects emerged from this first foray including the Ark series of Christening gifts and a super collaboration with my friend Natasha Kraal, editor of Harpers Bazaar who backed my idea for a jelly mould to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness in Malaysia.

All in all a great story of East meets West which sparked my enduring love of all things Oriental.