The Guardian  - homespace - 2 July 2005

Now that high design has reached every corner of the high street (you can buy Orla Kiely in Sainsbury's these days), where do you go to find something truly special? Straight to the maker of course. Open studio events, craft fairs and selling exhibitions are the new boutiques, and one of the best is the annual One Year On show. More than 50 designers are taking part this year, all of them selected by the Crafts Council, and what makes this show so exciting for consumers is that, because their businesses are already up and running, all the work is ready to buy. The exhibition opens next week, but if you can't get there, don't despair - we've picked a selection of the hottest designers at teh show, all of whom can be contacted direct.

BEST IN SHOW

Gini Coates, 25, has a first-class degree in textiles, but that doesn't mean her work is all about fabric. In fact, her main interest is surface decoration (she's obsessed with circles and dots), which she puts on reclaimed objects and pieces of discarded furniture to give them a new lease of life. "I use the furniture to animate my illustrations and designs" says Coates (pictured right). "I apply a range of playful multimedia processes such as screen printing, upholstery, sand-blasting, embroidery, wallpapering and applique, and use pretty much any materials I can get my hands on. The idea is to subvert the original function of the objects and make my audience smile."

Her work at One Year On is the result of a six-month screen-print residency at the London Printworks Trust (home to many of the UK's leading print designers, including Eley Kishimoto) and was inspired by 1950s furniture, 80s angular prints and military colours. The pieces ride a line between beauty and urban roughness (there is a graffiti-like feel to some of them) and fit with the trend for pattern and vintage finds.

Coates has achieved a lot in the year since she graduated, beating off still competition to land the residency and winning valuable sponsorship from the Architectural Forum, but she's determined to make next year even better. "I want to collaborate with other artists, designers and architects to produce work on a much larger scale and in materials we can only dream about."