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Humphrey Ikin
2003 Laureate
Furniture Maker
Humphrey Ikin was born in Lower Hutt in 1957.
He completed a degree in Business Studies at Massey University before
turning to architecture.
Finding that he was focusing more
on the furniture for buildings than the structure itself he became
a self-taught furniture designer and maker. Based in Auckland,
he has now been working as a freelance furniture designer for over
25 years.
Humphrey has been at the forefront of New Zealand's
design renaissance since the early 1980s. Dubbed a pioneer of the new
Pacific design, he creates pieces that represent a successful blending
of South Pacific symbolism and splendour with the functionalism of
European modernism. In 1998 New York's I.D. Magazine listed him
as one of the top forty designers in the world and featured his piece
Red Stave Chair alongside work by Philippe Starck, Jasper Morrison
and Antonio Citterio. In 2001 he won the prestigious John Britten Design
Award, presented annually by the Designers' Institute of New Zealand.
What has set Humphrey's work apart is his ongoing
interest in the broader context of furniture, its history, its rituals
and its future possibilities - expressed eloquently in the series
of solo exhibitions he has held over two decades, most notably Room
at the Dowse Art Museum (1994) and Facing North at the Wellington City
Gallery (1997) and the Auckland Museum (1998). Facing North has been
described as a seminal piece of work which gives proof to the assertion
that the domestic object deserves critical attention to no lesser degree
than the fine arts.
Humphrey's work is held in both public and private
collections in New Zealand and throughout the world. He teaches part-time at UNITEC
in Auckland where, in 2002 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Furniture
Design at the School of Design. In 2005 he completed, at the University of Auckland, the Architecture degree left unfinished at the outset of his career. |
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