Scotland’s top designers are set to be celebrated

A new exhibition to raise the visibility of outstanding design in Scotland is set to take place.

Design Exhibition Scotland is a pioneering project driven by a desire to support and champion design excellence.

It will celebrate exceptional objects for the everyday and showcase the work of over 20 contemporary designers and artists working in a range of materials and styles to create indispensable objects, such as tables, chairs, bookcases, flooring and lights.

The designers all explore pertinent issues surrounding function, materials, sourcing and sustainability.

Design Exhibition Scotland will exhibit new site-specific commissions. They include a linen tie-dyed wall-hanging by the Glasgow-based Rachel Adams and an installation by Andrew Miller, who frequently uses discarded materials to construct functional objects.

Other new works include birch-ply stackable chairs designed and fabricated by Alice Jacobs, a chair made of Scottish sandstone by Nick Ross, a graduate of Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, who is now based in Stockholm and lights which explore the ‘user’ as a component in design by Katherine Snow, a recent graduate of Edinburgh College of Art and now artist in residence at ECA’s Design Informatics.

Andrew Miller’s Refraction was a 2014 installation at Talbot Rice

Vitally Design Exhibition Scotland will encourage conversation. DES Debates on Monday, 14 May, will bring together key national and international designers and thinkers to exchange ideas with a wide public audience.

Led by Professor Christopher Breward, speakers include celebrated London-based designers, Ineke Hans and Max Lamb; Annemartine van Kesteren, curator at Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam and designer and artist, Geoffrey Mann.

Design Exhibition Scotland takes place at Lyon & Turnbull 33 Broughton Place, Edinburgh, is free and open to all.

It will be open from Saturday 12–Tuesday 15 May daily, from 11am–6pm, except Monday, 14 May, from 11am – 7.30pm.

The DES Debates take place from 5–7.30pm. These are free and open to all, and ticketed via Eventbrite.