Toronto’s design community kicks into overdrive this week with the inaugural Toronto International Design Festival or TIDF. Longstanding January events like the Interior Design Show (since 2001), the Gladstone Hotel’s Come Up To My Room (since 2004) and MADE’s Radiant Dark (since 2008) have been joined under the TIDF umbrella by a much larger roster of events at Harbourfront, OCAD, the AGO, Design Exchange and the Ontario Crafts Council Gallery, among others.
On Friday, I stopped in at the Gardiner Museum to meet two-thirds of Toronto-based design team Motherbrand, specifically designers Todd Falkowsky (above left) and Michael Erdmann (right) who talked me through their exhibit, Copy, which will be joined this week by companion show Cut/Paste across the street at the ROM (January 20 – 31).
The Motherbrand shows celebrate “sampling and remix culture” and examine how Canadian designers, like their creative counterparts in virtually every other country, spent much of the 20th century borrowing, reinventing and repurposing existing objects. The full title of the Gardiner show is Copy: The Fine Tradition of Imitation in Canadian Ceramics, with an unstated emphasis on the word fine.
“The idea of copying is often viewed as disparaging,” says Falkowsky, “and with this show we’re trying to demonstrate the positive aspects of imitation and the wide-ranging impact it has had on Canadian design.”
“Sustainability and renewability are big buzz words today,” he adds, “but Canadians have been doing this for years. During the 1940s when the war effort imposed rationing on resources, designers were forced to invent with less. Fred Moffat’s iconic K42 Kettle (left) was fashioned from an existing mold/die originally created to manufacture a pre-war car headlight. Moffat took something that already existed and repurposed it. The kettle is a Candian design classic.”
When he’s not leading clients through marketing and branding initiatives, Falkowsky is a serious collector of Canadian ceramics and it was this expertise that helped shape the Gardiner exhibit (free until February 5).
In just a handful of spare display cases Motherbrand demonstrates the influences of cultural mosaic, indigenous design, popular form and style, nature, mashups and outright copying. The examples, while few, are revelatory. Ontario’s Blue Mountain pottery is often seen as a kitsch throwback but Copy connects it to a much more ancient tradition with a small vessel (below left) marked in a chevron pattern borrowed from indigenous artifacts found near the studio in the Collingwood area.
One of my favorite pieces is artist/designer Cynthia Hathaway’s brilliant commentary on global warming using a 1970s souvenir piece, a Huronia Eskimo (above right). Motherbrand brings Hathaway to the Gardiner Sunday, January 24 for a free lecture at 4 pm and to Harbourfront’s Brigantine Room for a talk with Tobias Wong, January 23, 1 – 4 pm (all part of TIDF).
Erdmann notes that both he and Falkowsky studied in Europe and upon returning to Canada, they were struck by the dearth of attention being given to homegrown design. “There was a kind of appreciation vacuum that we’ve set about trying to fill in our own small way, or at least make a contribution to the discussion.” Motherbrand has subsequently created a traveling exhibition about Canadian design (Cabin/Cabane), in addition to pouring its collective knowledge and research into the online Canadian Design Resource.
“Canada isn’t known for design the way Scandinavia or Italy are, but we’ve got lots to be proud of,” says Falkowsky, “there’s lots to celebrate.”
In addition to the launch of Cut/Copy/Paste on Wednesday, the ROM is currently presenting Fakes & Forgeries, Yesterday and Today, an entertaining and interactive show that examines copying from another angle altogether.
Photos by Christopher Jones, except the Moffat kettle by Graham Powell, courtesy Canadian Design Resource
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I haven’t seen the TIDF show but I’m familiar with the Canadian Design Resource. These guys should be commended for putting their time and money where their mouths are.