Steve Watson is an Australian born designer working and living in Sweden. After graduating in Industrial Design from the University of Queensland in 1997, he worked as an in-house designer for Fibre Light Systems before setting up his own design practice in 2000. Since then he has divided his time taking on commercial design commissions for interior projects and designing and producing items for his own home range. His designs include sofas, chairs, stools, lights and tableware.
His debut solo exhibition entitled ‘Need is not the reason’ was held in Melbourne, Australia in 2002. It featured six very different designs, a sofa, light, chair, table and salt and pepper pots.
After coming to Britain in 2003, he has gone on to exhibit new work at 100% East 2006 and Designersblock during the London Design Festival 2007 & 2008 and at Designersblock 2007 and the SaloneSatellite in Milan 2008 & 2009. At each of these exhibitions Steve has shown new pieces designed as one off prototypes, with everyone of them sold to private collectors or galleries. Some of the designs have gone on to production in limited editions with almost all selling out immediately. In each of the designs exhibited Steve has continued to challenge the perceptions of what furniture and home wares should be. The striking forms, materials and clever juxtapositions in his work raise the objects from ‘just a table or lamp’ to functional thing of beauty, providing form and function.
Steve has been nominated for various awards including the Homes and Gardens 2008 Furniture Design Award for his Cassiopeia Table and Elle Decoration’s Best British Design 2009 for his Prop Table Lamp. Steve’s Skase Tea Cup set was also Nominated for Pulchra.org ‘100 Most Beautiful Objects in the World 2010′ . His work has been published worldwide in various print and online media, including Interni, Elle Decoration, Icon, Abitare and Financial Times to name but a few.
Steve Watson can be viewed as a designer equipped with artistic conceptualisation, there is a notable relaxed sensibility in his designs, a freedom of expression, a sense of humour. He works comfortably across a variety of materials, from glass, wood, concrete, metals to plastics, blending them together as effortlessly as he blends ideas. Continuing themes of symbiosis and juxtaposition run through his work as they are continuing themes in his life. A belief in engaging the user of his designs in a conscious way forms the basis of every product/project he approaches. This engagement is evident as humour, hidden forms, perspectives and double meanings that pervade the relationship created between the design via the product and the user.
Steve is available for commissions of products, spaces and other things as both one-offs and designs for mass production, also freelance projects.