MA Design (Furniture)

MA Design (Furniture) will develop your creative abilities, imagination and expertise. It offers three pathways: Ceramics, Furniture and Jewellery. These disciplines all have a rich tradition in material-led creativity. Framed within one course, we explore the evolving boundaries of these disciplines, embracing ideas of practice beyond traditional definitions. This allows a range of hybrid practices to emerge, disrupting assumptions around design, craft and manufacture.

The course focuses on design as a process and as a practice. We look at design as modes of thinking, as ways of communicating to audiences and systems of engagement with the materiality of the world. These factors will impact the way your ceramics, furniture or jewellery design work will be realised. It will influence how you design it, talk about it, debate it and how you write about it. We are interested in all forms of manufacturing – from master craftsmanship, artisan work and the hand-made to factory production and emerging technologies. Our students are interested in single artefacts, mass-market delivery and all stages in-between.

Many MA Design: Ceramics, Furniture or Jewellery graduates move speedily into self-employment, developing businesses at the highest levels finding opportunities to progress their independent practice at both a national and international level. These includes students showing work at the Victoria Miro Gallery and Sotheby’s and collection designs for Swarovksi, MADE, Top shop and the House of Fraser. Other MA Design: Ceramics, Furniture or Jewellery graduates work for design teams in Europe and Internationally either in their country of origin or increasingly in a country of their choice. A significant minority enter educational work at master’s level.