Claudy Jongstra is a Dutch artist and designer who has become globally renowned for her, often monumental, textile installations and tapestries made from wool.

After establishing her studio in Friesland in the Dutch countryside during 2001, she started an ecological venture, which involved maintaining a herd of indigenous sheep and creating a biodynamic farm near her studio to grow plants used for natural dyes – effectively combining her art with ecological stewardship.

Her work is in the permanent collections of a number of museums such the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt in New York and the V&A in London. And she has won a slew of awards, including the 2022 Interior Design Hall of Fame Award.

Not only that, she designed costumes for the Star Wars movies.

In this episode she discusses: the ‘intelligence’ of wool; leaving her job and taking two years to understand the material; setting up her own farm; the organic nature of her career path; being an activist; the process behind her extraordinary pieces; the special qualities of the Drenthe Heath sheep; why we burn so much wool; the secrets of Burgundian Black; making really big pieces; her love of cooking; issues with the vintage clothing industry; working with her son; oh and creating costumes for the Jedi…

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Tim Minshall is an expert in manufacturing and innovation. He is the inaugural Dr John C Taylor professor of innovation at the University of Cambridge, the head of the Engineering Department’s Institute for Manufacturing and a fellow of Churchill College.

Importantly too, he has published a new book. Your Life is Manufactured: How we make things, why it matters and how we can do it better does exactly what it says on the front cover, working as a primer for our complex global manufacturing system and illustrating how we make, move, and consume the materials we extract, grow, or create.

In this episode we discuss: different nations' attitude to manufacturing; Covid’s effect on global supply chains; how he treated a hospital like a factory during the pandemic; tariffs; lettuces; why reducing waste has led to fragility in our global system; manufacturing and trade-offs; the effect war has on innovation; not being a fan of GDP; the history of the shipping container; material change and the kettle; silicon and the digital revolution; creating too much data and AI; making things more sustainably; green hushing; and saving the planet through manufacturing.

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Seetal Solanki describes herself as a materials translator and has been in the vanguard of material thinking since she launched her practice, Ma-tt-er, in 2015.

Three years later she produced the hugely influential book, Why Materials Matter, and she has gone on to work with a variety of brands, including Nike, Selfridges and Potato Head in Bali, as well as teaching at institutions such as Central Saint Martins (where, incidentally, she graduated from the Textile Futures MA) and the Royal College of Art.

Her latest project saw her joining forces with designer Jorge Penades in Madrid for Uprooted, an exhibition that explored Spain’s olive oil industry.

In this episode, we talk about: helping people build a relationship with materials; why she’s working with olive tree roots; interviewing materials; her fascination with cookery (and her love of a cheese soufflé); growing up in Leicester and feeling rejected from her home city; the spiritual side of materials; being ‘broken’ by Central Saint Martins as a student; material discrimination; how her practice was built on frustration; and why she’s in a hopeful place.

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