Bonus Episode, Live with Ceramicist, Designer, and Curator - Peter Ting

0:09Claire:Welcome to this bonus episode of My Life in Design, recorded live at the New Designers Festival in London. I met up with ceramicist designer and curator Peter Ting. Just so you know, the next series of My Life in Design, Series 8, starts again in September. See you there. this week i'm recording live from the new designers festival in london i'm joined by ceramic artist designer curator and creative director peter ting over the years peter shaped the direction of british craft and design from creating iconic tableware for thomas good and asprey to co-founding the gallery ting ying which champions emerging and established talent His work is held in the permanent collection of the V &A, M Plus in Hong Kong, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, and many more.

1:00Claire:Today we'll explore the journey behind his extraordinary career, which I believe started at New Designers. It did. Peter, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much. Can we start maybe right at the beginning, assuming your childhood? heard of when when did you realize that when did you realize that this was a thing that you could actually form a career around and that kind of thing well it's very interesting we were talking about this um earlier with somebody and it's i looked back and thought about the the moment that i thought i should be doing ceramics and now understanding more words i was actually attracted to curation and not really ceramics but I loved ceramics as well so that was you know the two melded together what age was this what sort of I don't know 10 wow really so there's one thing I'm really proud of is that from that moment I have never ever veered from that focus interesting so you wanted to create but you always wanted to curate yeah it was yeah I wanted to create curate and yeah I could tell you the moment that this happened yes and was I I was born in Hong Kong I lived in Hong Kong till I was 16 and then I we would visit friends of my parents And this gentleman lived in a beautiful old colonial style house.

2:35And he had a what the Chinese call zhio gungge, which is a way of displaying an asymmetric shelf of displaying collections.

2:47Claire:OK. And what I remember was that in the spring and summer, he would always have blue and white. and autumn and winter he would change to sang de birth which is oxblood red ceramics wow and i always remember that wow this is really wonderful and i thought it was the ceramics that was wonderful which it was but the thing was the changing the recuration the relooking of things wow so that must have been when you got into your sort of teenage years and you suddenly realized Yeah, I came to, you know, I wasn't a good academic student. Were you not, did you, the traditional academic subjects? No, hopeless.

3:33Yeah, absolutely hopeless. I failed my geography O level. I mean, can you actually, you know, imagine that?

3:41Claire:But you obviously knew that the creative side was very valuable and something you could do very well. Absolutely. So I came to the UK. I decided to go to art school. There was still the older system, a foundation, three years of BA, two years of MA, and I did it that way. What colleges did you go to? I did my, I went to school in Taunton, so I did my foundation in Taunton. And then I thought I wanted to do fashion and textiles. So I applied to Farnham to do fashion and textiles. And then at the interview they said maybe you should be going to ceramics next door and i said why i said you bought nothing but ceramics for your interview so yeah so that's yeah good point so but i still well or everything that's handmade is wonderful i just love that yeah absolutely so what was next Did you realize that ceramics was the right choice and that was a focus?

4:47Yeah, I had a great affinity with it. And then what was really interesting was that I had this moment where, so if I kind of go back a little bit, I had a great ceramics teacher when I was in sixth form at my school. And at that time, I met the great Takashi Yasuda, who was an amazing ceramics, Japanese ceramics. artist and he had just moved to the UK and this was in Somerset. It was a kind of slightly hippie situation so I went and when I first met him going down the driveway he was in white muslin hanging up little white muslin bags for cheese to drain and I thought that's it that's what I want to do for the rest of my life and then I realized oh there's very little money involved and I do like my champagne so I kind of thought well what else can I do and so at the same time when I went to Farnham I discovered mold making plaster work and making multiples of things So then I went to Stock on Trent and I just fell in love with the whole industry.

6:13Claire:So Stock on Trent's at the centre of ceramics. The centre of ceramics, yeah. It was then, but sadly not now. Yes. Yeah, I just loved it. So it was good. And then what was the transition from... So assume the new designers then have come around this time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So that was, yeah, around that time. and it was Peter Levi who was organizing a group of young designers. I was invited and it was the year that Lady Di came to visit. Wow, okay. So, and that was great. And you asked me a question about how young graduates could stand out. Absolutely. And, you know, and I'll tell this story.

7:02And I think it's not necessarily the story. The thing is about you have to be completely fearless and absolutely take hold of the situation. I knew then that we knew she was coming. So I asked a friend to be there and I bought her a disposable camera. And I said, just keep taking photographs. And then she luckily stopped on my booth and we had the photographs developed and it was in the picture frame on the booth.

7:39Claire:So you'd had it developed that day and got it onto the booth within. That's right. That's pretty, for what, this is like the late 80s. Yeah. That's pretty impressive. Well, it's kind of, well, what do you do? You don't do it. Yeah. And then you just say, oh, I met Lady Di and it was great. and images and all of that. What is it? And then it became a story and that could be, I mean, I chose not to release it as a story, but... It could have, yeah, interesting. So you kind of used the media attention on that, but then didn't feel that comfortable. Yeah, and you have to remain constantly in control of the situation.

8:25and I think this is quite an important thing.

8:30Claire:Yeah. And it's not about control. It's about understanding where things can go and should go. Yeah, absolutely. I can see that. So did you get much attention from the new designer show? Did it? Yeah, I got some attention from it and I can't remember whether I had my first job then or not, But I had my first job, which, again, I remember very, very well because of the painfulness of it. It was a wonderful job. Tell me about it. What happened? Where was it? Most people would know about, I knew I would forget the name of him, Hornsey Pottery. Yes. And Hornsey Pottery. So one of the brothers couldn't get on with the family.

9:15So he left and opened a pottery called Park Rose in Bridlington, of all places. And I remember that for two, and it's Noel and Jeannie Rawson who ran it. And they're wonderful, wonderful people. And I remember the first day I went and I was in a room with, I don't know, 200, 300, I think they were rabbit tortoise planters for Marks and Spencers and my job was to select good and bad so of course my good pile was here and that by a pile filled the room and then very quickly I learned that okay that's not the way to do it your standards might be a high we have to do all these things so then we do something else yes so how long were you doing

10:08Claire:that for? About a year and a half. So I still lived in Cheshire at the time. So I had to drive there on a Sunday and come back on a Friday evening. Wow. Yeah, it was kind of, yeah, I was, you know, I was younger then. So it was easier. It's a decent journey. Yeah, it is a decent journey. And I remember I lodged at this farm and it was very kind of original in its state. And the couple had a son who was slightly older than me at that time. And he would feed the dogs and then he would go to the abattoir and bring back buckets of insides of animals. And it was just like, so you'd be sitting having your beautifully cooked, whatever it was, and look out.

10:57and there were all these blood carters and dogs. And I thought, wow, okay. It's a different side of life. I understand that, yes.

11:10Claire:So what was next? What did you do after that? Oh, I have no idea. I did all kinds of things. And then I had my own company for a while. And I was very lucky that I sold to Liberties, to Neiman Marcus to all kinds of department stores. So tell me about setting up your own company. What can people learn from that? What was the purpose of it? What was it to do? What can people learn from that? Have lots of woolly underwear. Because, you know, you have no money, so you can't have the heating on. So you'll be constantly working. I remember breaking ice on buckets of water. Wow, really? Yeah, I mean, it was, I kind of can't even really think about that time.

12:01I can remember it. Yes, okay. And then you had very little money to live on because everything went back into the business.

12:11Claire:Yes, but then you obviously sold it. I sold it to Thomas Good and they bought a factory. And this is where I met Belinda, who is now doing great things in PR. So, yeah, we just kind of did kind of things. And I ran the factory. They bought a factory and still contract for me to run. And that was tough. People started at 7 a.m. Wow. And so I had to unlock at half past six. So I lived about half an hour's drive away. That's an early start. Yeah, it was a very early start. Yeah, long days. And so you sold it to Thomas Good and then did a sort of earn out type thing. Yeah, that's right. Yes, exactly.

12:55Yeah. So and then I kind of left Thomas Good, went back again, left and went back. And now it's no more, as you know.

13:04Claire:Absolutely. Yeah. What was it after that? Did you go more into your own practice of producing? Yes, kind of after that, I did designing four companies and did a bit of production for myself, but nothing much. And I met this family in Hong Kong who bought a factory. They had a 50 % share of a company in Limoges called Leg Porcelain. and there were father and three sons and they all ran a section of manufacturing which is really clever so i was very friendly with desmond who is the marketing person and he had a dream and he wanted to make a that was fifth 10 15 years ago a definitive contemporary asian banqueting service she was very specific yeah and i thought yeah i could do that easily no no problem so and we got on very well so i helped him create the lake brand in asia and and in france you know we did lots of things together you know we did photo shoots for the new lake catalog and etc etc that's it to tell me about where did you create the work that got into the permanent collection of the vna oh that was in 2004 so you might see the slides and there's a there may be a term called itch i don't know whether so i creating ceramics tableware is always for somebody else is never for yourself yes so hence the design rather than just pure that's right yes which is And then sometimes you have an itch and you have an idea in your head and it just kind of keeps going.

15:01And you think, OK, I have to make this. And so every five or seven years, I go and do something. And this is why this slide is perfect. This is why I went to De Hoa, which is the home of Blanc de Chine porcelain, which I absolutely adore. Yeah. And so I did that and I made now quite a famous cup and saucer. There's the Buddha hand with the saucers are all little Buddha hands.

15:30Claire:Yes, it's beautiful. And very much in the kind of Mert Oppenheimer style of the fur cup and saucer for those who don't know it. And in that so realistic manner. So, you know, it is about East, West, different ideas coming together. and then so did you produce it and how did it get into the vna what's the my friend who was producing it for me at the time she donated it to the vna and then people start seeing it and they have gone into you know is it the m plus yeah lots of other museums around the world have them so that's i do think that'd be interesting for people that are starting out of that how it seems like an aspiration that's kind of up there doesn't it about how do you even do that yeah I mean it's is it an aspiration I mean I never thought of it at the time yeah you didn't create it with that in mind no no and and I think if you ask a lot of people ask me you know your career is very how did you move up the ladder and across to so many sectors yeah absolutely and it was never ever planned nobody believed me but it's true and what was planned was I'd always said yes and no I always made a decision that that's not the thing for me or that's the thing for me and they could be wrong but at least I've made a decision I didn't kind of like say oh no maybe oh I'll wait and I always took the opportunity or gave up the opportunity and I think making a decision is the best thing to do because once you've decided you just keep going yeah it's really easy to stay on the fence isn't it and think I'll get to that at some point maybe I'm not good enough for that now maybe I'll do it later yep and then he coasts along so yeah and but at a restaurant oh should I have this should I have that and I still do that

17:36and always say oh yes i have the wine first yeah always

17:42Claire:so do you have ways of inspiring yourself as if you're moving for every five to seven years for two different routes what inspires you to do that so i'm really good at understanding another person's brief yes okay and i very rarely say oh this can't be done i'd always understand what this person wants and deliver it with sparkles so that's how you work the situation and i can't really explain that you know it's not about inspiration it's about it's about having knowledge you know see exhibitions be curious about life and you know I still remember to this day I went to a museum somewhere and there were balconies and they were doing construction work so you could look down and on the ground floor they were doing construction work and this worker just half filled a cardboard box and kind of chopped it in the middle and made a chair from it and I just thought wow that was so clever you know and it's you just I just notice things all the time yeah just little ideas that you can take and recreate that like today I changed this chair because I knew that's too low for me so I had to change but you don't think you just see it yes absolutely but it's all about really understanding the brief and then not necessarily delivering in the steps the brief asks you to, but delighting the person that's asked you to do it at the end.

19:25Yeah, absolutely. And I always give people three options. And I always know my clients well enough to know when to slot in my option that I wanted, whether it's one, two, or three.

19:41Claire:Does it normally go that way? No, it doesn't. It kind of happens. Oh, this is interesting. This is what I do now. So this is my partner, Brian, and I. So we've both retired and we have an enormous amount of things in our home. Some are totally valueless, but mean a huge amount. And some are important that we knew were important, but they were kind of relatively affordable at the time so we would buy them so this is hepworth oh blonde machine sorry that's hepworth and i've got the thing wrong uh my fault um and we supported them uh for this exhibition there's a very small amount of money and yes and this is another project that we're doing now So we keep thinking, oh, we could do this, we could do that.

20:39And it's kind of very freeing, actually.

20:44Claire:Yeah, absolutely. So how do you do that nowadays? So you've got the gallery. It's an online gallery now. No, the gallery sadly doesn't exist anymore. So I had a spinal operation three years ago, and I couldn't really lift things. Oh, fair enough. And my gallery partner happily has become a father. Oh, fair. And so he moved back to China. And so it's hard to do that. So it came to a natural end. But the high point, the last exhibition we did, we had an artist who we sold a piece of work to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Wow, did you? That was like so exciting. Yeah, absolutely. It's dreamers.

21:24And it's the first time they have bought a piece of contemporary craft for the Chinese department.

21:29Claire:Wow, really? So it's a lot of firsts. Yeah, absolutely. that's exciting stuff so today what you're what you do is you get involved in the sort of projects that take your eye basically and today i could tell you exactly what i'm going to do today i'm going to go home and brian's having lunch with his niece he'll come home and we'll sit down on our laptops and cross-reference things because the 30th was the last day for the call for we selected 15 museums around the UK that we're going to donate our work to so we did a spreadsheet of literally everything wow okay yeah and we gave the spreadsheet to all the museums and they've all come in the requests have come in which have surprised us and moved us to tears wow and it It was just a life-enhancing experience.

22:30Absolutely.

22:32Claire:Can I ask you what sort of museums and galleries you are? Or is it too early stage? Yeah, yeah. So the larger ones, the VNA, Scotland, Northern Ireland. Brilliant. Smaller ones, RAM, Royal Albert Memorial Museum. Yeah, okay. Swindon. Do people know that Swindon, there's a museum in Swindon? Yeah. And a very good one at that. I've never been over. I don't know that. So and we have. Yeah. You know, things that I wanted to place that I didn't think people would want. And I think is all gone. which is great. Wow, that's fantastic. I have a very, very, very dear friend called Morgan Hall who died very young in her 40s.

23:19And she produced some incredible ceramics and some in the V &A. But she was her worst enemy. She would say, oh, no, no, that's not perfect enough.

23:30Claire:Yeah, common. And of course it is. It was. And so there was not a lot of her work. So I've been actively buying when they come up. at auction. That's great. And so they're all hopefully going to, not hopefully, I know a lot of them are going to museums. All of them are actually. That's brilliant. So that's what we're doing now. And then keep on supporting exhibitions. And so we give a grant for curation to the museums they apply. Oh, do you? How does that work? Tell me about that. How does that work? We do not want to make an opened application. We don't want to be like saying. Because you'll get thousands of applications and that's yeah a lot so we work with somebody called alexa gray who is a consultant and she together with us picked 15 museums around the uk large and small we wanted it to be regional and small museums and so that's what we did and we're just so hepworth was a support so the next grant goes to the national museum of scotland who's doing an exhibition about contemporary celtic design in response to their historic collection yeah of course so that would travel to northern ireland and so it was great to work with two museums and after that it's going to ram who would have absolutely no money to put on the show if this didn't go to them and they had a really great idea so that's wonderful they focus on west country artists right okay and ram is in exeter i think and then the last one goes to mima who is talk somebody is looking at queer craft and i thought there's something that we're very passionate about yeah and so that's going to them and then our next three years are sorted that's fantastic It's such a good thing to do, enabling stuff to happen.

25:35So that's what, you know, that's about giving back, really.

25:41Claire:Can I ask you a final question of, you've had so many tips already for new designers and people wanting to get into this kind of area, but what would be your sort of top recommendations of how to stand out beyond the core skills of being a designer artist? I think there isn't a tip as such, but I always, you see, when you first start out, whether you're a younger person or an older graduate, you're still new. So you keep thinking, oh, God, I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to get into this company and all of this. And you send out lots of emails with PDF and all of that. Yeah. And then you, but you, how often do you actually think that you go through your emails and delete, delete, delete, delete?

26:36Claire:Yeah. So you never think about the person who's receiving these messages. and so I think there is a way of devising and I think the best thing now in a digital era is to write a letter. Absolutely, do something different, get attention. And that entails another craft, calligraphy and handwriting. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a very different thing. Do you write in a ballpoint pencil, fountain pen? What paper do you use? All this kind of geeky stuff would let you stand out. But, yeah, being able to stand out. I always think that standing out and personalising it as well to make sure you know the company you're applying to and you're trying to get the attention.

27:30Claire:Hopefully the person, yeah. Yeah, knowing the person, giving some personal details at the top and a reason that there's a connection between you. Yeah, yeah. And just to finish telling you this, you just reminded me of something. I was talking about decisions. I was at Thomas Good and I was headhunted to head up the homeware department in Asprey. And it involved a decision to leave, which I made. And it also involved a great salary jump. So I thought, great, I could do this. And then my second interview with the HR department, they said, the owner wants to meet you. So I thought, okay, I know who he is.

28:22I know he's a billionaire and this while ago. and I know he would have the attention span of a gnat. So then I thought, okay, what can I do? So I made a little art book.

28:39Claire:I love this. With 12 pages of images of what Asprey could be in all different areas. Yeah. So I showed it to him exactly as I expected. to yeah yeah yeah i've got to leave now what have you got showed him that love it go to hr and my salary doubled that was not what i was expecting yes but trying to put yourself in the mind of someone else and thinking they're going to have no time and how do i get attention quickly and yeah absolutely thank you so much we've got i think we've got about 12 minutes left for 13 minutes left for some audience questions you spoke a lot about being decisive in your decision making and you know either saying yes or saying no and i can imagine if you make a choice and something works you can you can feel that you know you win an award you get a doubling in salary or something like that but sometimes it can be harder to work out when something isn't working because sometimes things take time, but sometimes they just aren't working.