Norman Potter
Norman Potter | |
---|---|
Born | London, England | 17 April 1923
Died | 22 November 1995 Falmouth, Cornwall, England | (aged 72)
Occupation | Cabinetmaker, writer, educator |
Notable work | What is a Designer? (1969) |
Norman Potter (17 April 1923 – 22 November 1995) was a cabinetmaker, political dissident, poet and author of What is a Designer?[1][2]
Life[]
By trade, Potter was a cabinetmaker and designer, a minimalist decades before the term became fashionable. He was a Christian anarchist and was imprisoned several times for his political actions.[1] In 1949, he set up a workshop at Corsham in Wiltshire that produced modern furniture. In the late 1950s, Potter attained a full-time position teaching design at the Royal College of Art. In 1964, Potter, along with several colleagues, established a Construction School at the in Bristol. Potter sustained his political activism through this period, joining the student revolts of 1968. It was also in 1968 that Potter wrote What is a designer. A little over twenty years later, he followed up with Models & Constructs in 1990. Potter died of a heart attack in 1995 while bicycling in Falmouth.[3]
Books by Potter[]
"The first thing to learn about the deep structure of modern design is that it is relation-seeking and pleasurably so."
— Norman Potter, What is a designer, p.9
- What is a designer: things, places, messages. London: Hyphen Press, 2002. (ISBN 978-0-907259-16-9)
- Models & Constructs: margin notes to a design culture. London: Hyphen Press, 1990. (ISBN 978-0-907259-04-6)
In the late 1960s Potter taught at Chesterfield College of Art and Design and had a great effect on their Environmental Design where he showed that the ability to write reports and be creative with a typewriter was just as important as drawing and design.
Notes[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b Harrod, Tanya (16 December 1995). "Norman Potter obituary". The Independent. London.
- ^ Rawsthorn, Alice (16 June 2013). "Remembering a Heroic Rogue". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
- ^ "Norman Potter, 1923-1995." Robin Kinross. Unjustified Texts: Perspectives on Typography. London: Hyphen Press, 2002. pp. 68-71.
- 1923 births
- 1995 deaths
- British designers
- Christian anarchists
- British Christians
- British anarchists