Stephen Burks | In Conversation with Est

Stephen Burks: I’ve always been interested in things. Things, not objects, have a soul and are embedded with the experiences of our lives. They help define us, our ways of life, and our histories.

Stephen Burks: I’ve always believed everyone is capable of design. The studio and our workshop-based practice are collaborative by nature. In a conscious effort to eschew the 20th-century notion of the designer as auteur, we focus on our relationships with the communities of artisans we work with to develop the work. If industrial design is defined as design for industry, then my education taught me what to resist in a sense. Industrial design lacks humanity to me. I’m interested in how industry can also be crafty to create objects that say more than the industry can say alone.

Stephen Burks: The principles of technique, materiality, and culture define what design is for me. Outside of the Western notions of what design is, the rest of the world is more in touch with the connections between communities and what they produce. There is legibility of culture that fascinates me. The way a thing can tell you how it was made and by whom.

Stephen Burks: The body is probably the most overlooked aspect of a new product. Design is often made without considering its interaction with the body or the activities of the body. I try to remind myself to start with the body rather than with a material or material innovation. It’s the body and the hand that we attempt to express and that we hope to communicate.

Stephen Burks: Just after opening my solo exhibition Stephen Burks: Man Made at the Studio Museum in Harlem, I was at Salone del Mobile in Milan and shared my catalogue with DEDON’s art director. It was clear that there was a connection between DEDON’s “Tour de Monde” and my early Senegalese basket weaving.

Stephen Burks: DEDON has been instrumental in allowing me to develop and express my philosophy of design. DEDON was the first brand to invite me into the factory to collaborate directly with the research and development team and consequently, the master weavers. As a result, our DEDON collections have been developed collaboratively in Cebu and the Philippines – directly with the artisans there. Ahnda, Dala, Kida and The Others all began with just a sketch and came to life during hands-on workshops in the factory.

Stephen Burk: Kida was initially intended to be completely woven, and it just didn’t work. The prototypes were just too dense. I wanted them to be lighter, so the master weavers and I cut away the weaving and began to resolve the idea of only wrapping them. We worked very closely over the course of the week to resolve all of the colours, details and intersections until it was beautiful. As with my first collection, Dala, the breakthrough was only possible in collaboration with the master weavers.