'The Joy of Living'

 

ART Inspiration

 

'Graphology' takes its form from a recent chair design by its a anonymous creator

By Malaika Byng 

Author and design commentator Max Fraser has reached into his bulging contacts book for a good cause, charging the likes of Tom Dixon, Barber Osgerby and Max Lamb to create a work of art that expresses the 'Joy of Living' in aid of Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres. From a donut-like sculpture inspired by a chair design to a hand-stitched piece based on the Ishihara Plate test for colour-blindness, the resulting designs - which all started with a simple piece of graph paper - are now on sale at London's Somerset House.




See more of the 'Joy of Living' artworks
Each signed artwork is priced at $500 but the name of the designer is not revealed until the item is purchased. Other contributing designers include Martino Gamper, Troika, Tomoko Azumi and John Pawson.

Fraser, who was introduced to Maggie's soon after his mother died from the disease, chose the graph paper because it 'seems to trigger a certain nostalgia for designers, reminding them of the early days of drafting before computers took over.' The brief to the designers came from the mantra of Maggie’s co-founder Maggie Keswick Jencks, who said that what matters above all, when facing cancer, is to ‘not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying’.