Rebecca de Quin

Rebecca de Quin designs and makes modern containers and tableware. Her aim is to encourage the use and enjoyment of precious and non-precious metals, to question common perceptions of silver as a contemporary material and the vessel as an evolving form. 

She is inspired by practical modernist precedents and motivated by the challenge to maintain this tradition, whilst addressing the need for new objects that blend traditional formality with the informalities of post noughties living. Metal affords De Quin the possibility of sculptural expression, allowing her to achieve a scale appropriate to the wider interior space, as well as the more intimate social landscape of the table. As a result, her pieces range from one-off wall panels to repeat production cups and spoons.   

De Quin considers geometry, abstraction, function, surface finish, and spatial contribution in every piece. She economically contrasts base metals with silver, to highlight its preciousness and makes use of constructs like replication, inversion, positioning and scale for further emphasis. De Quin introduces colour and texture using patination, (techniques that initiate chemical change to metal surfaces resulting in altered colouration or tactile qualities) or plating, to add vibrancy and depth to surfaces. She develops geometric patterns according to the three-dimensional nature of particular forms, applying them using hand-punching techniques.  

De Quin works to commission and supplies pieces to a small number of craft shops and galleries. She also creates pieces speculatively for exhibition and is a regular exhibitor at the Goldsmiths’ Fair. She has been a member of the academic staff at the Royal College of Art, teaching and researching since 2002, enjoying combining her own making with teaching. In her own practice she makes objects that blur traditional and historic boundaries between art and craft and produces unique outcomes that exist as attractive, engaging and covetable, complimentary additions to contemporary living.

At Future Heritage

For Future Heritage De Quin made three wall mounted panels, including two of coloured sheet brass with fixed and detachable elements arranged in abstracted geometric compositions. The candleholders in steel and silver could be removed for use on the table along with a shallow silver dish for fruit or bread. She also showed a selection of grouped vessels.   

Current work

Over the last year De Quin has worked on several projects; in May 2019 her work was exhibited with fellow ‘Metal Project’ makers at Gallery Montan, Copenhagen. Towards the end of the year, she fulfilled a collaboration with Sounai Contemporary to design Mezuzzah for batch production manufacture. In 2020, De Quin has been in involved in a craft exhibition, despite being faced by some postponements due to the coronavirus pandemic, at Mayfair Gallery London for London Craft Week curated by Cura. Next year she is due to participate in What Colour is Metal, National Design and Craft Gallery, Kilkenny and Mastery: Women in Silver (postponed to 2021) exhibition at Ruthin Crafts Centre celebrating women makers. Here she will be showing ‘Blue Panel’ and her new work.