Inspired

What inspires me? It’s seeing and appreciating the perfect solution to a problem.

Growing up in Cornwall, Cornish pasties were a regular treat, and, at the time, I didn’t really see them as much more than that, until I learnt that they did, of course, originate as the answer to the problem of providing tin miners with a nutritious meal to last them throughout the day.

It’s true they were small, portable, very filling, and could stay warm for eight to ten hours, meat in one end and a sweet course at the other which contained fruit, jam or treacle. It was the ultimate meal for one, where everything was considered. The pasties’ thick, wide pastry edges were there for dirty fingers to grip on to, and subsequently thrown away to avoid being poisoned by tin or copper dust from the miners’ hands.

It was a great design solution to a very real problem. I try to approach every project with the bigger picture in mind, and a true measure of its success is when it fulfils its role in the hands of the consumer.

So, whenever I’m in need of some inspiration, I reach for a large ‘traditional’.