As admirers of your work, we were thrilled to invite you to be part of Dancer Editions. What appealed to you about the collaboration, and what aspects of the project resonated with you?
We were genuinely thrilled to be invited to collaborate and be a part of the process with Coco Flip. Some of the team was familiar with Oskar Schlemmer’s work from design research at university, so it was a thoughtful process to revisit from the lens of product design alongside Belinda Wiltshire’s work. The strong focus on geometries and working with a new material gave us the chance to experiment and explore ideas in new ways.
We loved seeing your interpretation take shape. How did you approach tackling this brief and reimagining the Dancer collection, balancing its existing visual language with your own creative voice? Did you have a clear direction from the beginning, or did the idea evolve along the way?
The idea definitely evolved as we went. We started by looking back at Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus movement letting those early ideas of geometry, movement, and performance shape our initial thoughts. Then we took a close look at Coco Flip’s range and really dug into Belinda Wiltshire’s work to get a feel for the visual language already established.
That gave us a strong base to imagine how our piece could fit into someone’s space - something tactile, resonant, and layered. We distilled a set of key words that kept echoing for us, almost like a design compass, and from there the process was iterative, but one that helped us balance our own creative voice with the spirit of the original collection.
This collaboration invited a shift in material thinking. How did you find the experience of designing in a different medium, specifically ceramics, compared to your usual practice?
It was a fun shift for us - we’re usually working with robust materials like brick or timber, which have their own boundaries. They are grounded, weighty, and come with an architectural logic that we respect, but they do place limits on what feels right in form. When a material does something it’s not meant to it can feel like you’ve entered uncanny valley - it loses its integrity.
Ceramics, on the other hand, invited a different kind of play. We could explore subtler, more sculptural gestures that still felt honest to the material. The smaller scale of the project was also a refreshing shift - moving from the macro world of buildings and furniture to something intimate and handheld pushed us to think with a different lens and pay attention to a different kind of detail.
We see this collection as a celebration of creative voices. What does your design represent for you and your practice? Was there a particular story, feeling or idea you set out to explore?
For us, the piece was a way to imagine what someone might want to live with, not just as a design object, but as something integrated into their everyday space. With the limitations of material and a restricted colour palette, we leaned into the subtleties of light and shadow.
Even though it’s a light fixture, we found ourselves more interested in what happens in the in-between; the soft play of patterns and the quiet complexity that emerges in contrast.
We were reminded of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, and his idea that beauty often lies not in the object itself, but in the shifting relationship between light and dark. That nuance kept coming back in our design discussions.
Thank you again for working with us on Dancer Editions. At Coco Flip, we're fascinated by the different ways designers approach process and creativity. Could you tell us a bit about how your studio practice informed your response to the brief?
Our approach to this project mirrored the way we typically work in the studio via a collaborative process of design reviews where we come together to unpack ideas and solve design problems.
To set the scene we established some key themes and carried out research into Oskar Schlemmer and the movement behind the original Coco Flip collection. That gave us a strong conceptual framework to work within, a set of creative ‘guard rails’ if you will, that helped keep the direction focused.
From there, we moved into a series of esquisses - quick, intuitive sketches that gave us space to explore form freely and let the more instinctive side of the process unfold.
You're such a valued part of the local design community. What’s been inspiring you lately, any people, places or ideas influencing your practice? And looking ahead, are there any upcoming projects or directions you're excited to explore?
Thank you! We feel the same way about CocoFlip. Your output is always so considered and refined and we love how they complement the spaces we design.
From a design perspective, our practice is tracing a few pathways. On one hand, we’re continuing to explore how robust materials like brick can be celebrated in fresh and exciting ways, while still staying true to their inherent nature.
At the same time, we’re also thinking more critically about simplicity in design, particularly in response to the rising costs in the construction industry. We’re really focused on finding ways to balance beautiful, thoughtful moves with responsible material choices and budgets. It’s a challenge, but an important one. We believe good design should be accessible, not just tied to costly materials.
A lot of our thinking now centres around how materials come together. In practice this might look like how materials meet (or don’t meet) and how those details impact complexity and ultimately, cost.
Learn more about Dancer Editions
View the Dancer Editions Auction
View the Dancer Collection
Learn more about Placement
Product Images by Matthew McQuiggan
