Kevin McCloud
Kevin McCloud writes and presents the British TV series Grand Designs and has spent his adult life designing furniture and lighting for our homes. He has designed lighting for some of the finest buildings in Europe and many great houses – Ely Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, two European palaces, The Savoy and Dorchester hotels in London.
“Samuel Heath is one of the best firms in Britain to be working with. For a start, they’re still manufacturing their ranges in their own factory in Birmingham, England and employing local craftsmen. Their brassware is beautifully made, polished by hand to perfection and plated on the premises. And their manufacturing is sustainable too: they buy in the highest quality brass which is in part produced using recycled material from other industries in the area, they take water conservation seriously, they produce a minimum of waste and their products are nearly completely recyclable themselves. Not that you’d get around to recycling their products because they’ll probably outlive you.
“Samuel Heath understands design. They’ve got a skilled in-house engineering design and prototyping facility, a group of people who have been an utter joy to work with. It’s been a true collaboration too, with drawings, sketches and CAD images flitting backwards and forwards between my studio and theirs.
“Right from the outset I wanted a bathroom range which didn’t look as though it was assembled from a kit of engineering parts. I didn’t want a ‘masculine’ range. I wanted the pieces to be softer and fluid as though extruded from one piece of metal or teased out of some weird kind of elastic chrome. I wanted to work with Samuel Heath because I felt only they could do this. Only they could produce joints of hairline widths in complex forms and chrome polishing which appears to have the depth of glass.
“I also wanted the range to feel like jewellery for bathrooms in the way that traditional chandeliers are jewellery for living rooms. No other bathroom range – no other toilet roll holder for example – has gone in this direction. ‘Feminising’ the range meant I had to design and detail the pieces like a polished silver pendant or earring. That’s why we replaced the traditional ‘hot and cold’ indices with small circles of mother-of-pearl, an exquisite, glamorous detail that feels good when touched.
“I couldn’t be more delighted with the outcome. It’s been a year’s work with much more in the pipeline. And it’s been a really enjoyable working relationship.”
Click here to see the range.
