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'Three Decades of Design'
I started designing and making printed textiles in the late eighties in a pre-digital era when the artisan maker was valued and supported in the UK by a variety of institutions including the Crafts Council, with selling events such as the New York Gift Fair and Chelsea Crafts Fair as well as the British Craft Department of Liberty London. This was a time when you could build a business as a designer and maker, producing work in the UK was affordable, and there was a thriving market and a network of outlets for the individual designer.
I worked hard and within a few years I had established a successful small design practice with a loyal customer base who appreciated and collected my work. I enjoyed designing and making my work from my studio in Kent with my wife and small team of assistants. Blessed with relentless energy and a little good luck my passion for printed textiles drove me on to create work for some of the most exciting and influential shops, galleries and institutes around the world.
Through the rise of the super models and big designer labels, who heralded the start of a new millennium and dominated our department stores and retail spaces, I astutely diversified my practice and worked with galleries, interior designers as well as designing bespoke ranges for a number of key international museums and galleries.
I worked hard and within a few years I had established a successful small design practice with a loyal customer base who appreciated and collected my work. I enjoyed designing and making my work from my studio in Kent with my wife and small team of assistants. Blessed with relentless energy and a little good luck my passion for printed textiles drove me on to create work for some of the most exciting and influential shops, galleries and institutes around the world.
Through the rise of the super models and big designer labels, who heralded the start of a new millennium and dominated our department stores and retail spaces, I astutely diversified my practice and worked with galleries, interior designers as well as designing bespoke ranges for a number of key international museums and galleries.
Neil Bottle is, at heart, an alchemist, experimenting and mixing paint, print and dyes transforming the two dimensional into a world of pattern, texture and colour. This is no illusion created with smoke and mirrors – Bottle’s constant quest for perfection demands both discipline and a rigorous knowledge of his materials”.
Susan Prichard, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts at Royal Museums Greenwich, London
The digital revolution has transformed printed textiles beyond recognition and it is a privilege to be part of this incredible change to the way in which we can print onto fabric. With half of my working life in both the pre and post digital environments I bring a unique perspective to this new hybrid of creative and technical methodologies.
The words digital and craft and don’t often sit together. We have been making crafted objects a lot longer than we have been making digital ones, so we have an established vocabulary for craft. But we need to start rethinking our words to reflect new craft practices that use computers as their main tool.
Neil Bottle’s work has been liberated by his adoption of digital as his main medium. He is using computers to produce one-off textiles that have been worked in to: both by hand and on the computer. Neil is creating histories within histories in his textiles. He manipulates digital and analogue family photographs to represent the patchwork of memories (real and fabricated) that he recalls of his life”.
Jane Audas, freelance digital producer, writer and curator, 2019,
At the start of the new millennium I began teaching at University for the Creative Arts, where I now work as the Programme Director of Fashion Textiles at the Rochester Campus combining academic life with my research practice in textiles.
I’m lucky to have worked with so many wonderful creative people over the years and in particular I have had the privilege of working with the Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery in London and The Ruthin Craft Centre in Denbighshire, who have generously supported me for many years and continue to do so with my new body of research project “All That Remains”. As I write this text, I’m preparing for two consecutive solo shows at both venues. I’m just as excited now, by prospect of making and showing new work, as when I graduated in 1989, perhaps even more so given the importance that this opportunity represents.
My research has continued to be an ongoing part of my practice over thirty years, as a BA student at Middlesex University, an MA student at UCA, an active researcher at UCA and within my own studio. I have used a wide range of hand and digital design and production techniques to make many different collections and countless textile pieces over the years.
Thank you very much to all those who have supported, collected and exhibited my work.
I’m lucky to have worked with so many wonderful creative people over the years and in particular I have had the privilege of working with the Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery in London and The Ruthin Craft Centre in Denbighshire, who have generously supported me for many years and continue to do so with my new body of research project “All That Remains”. As I write this text, I’m preparing for two consecutive solo shows at both venues. I’m just as excited now, by prospect of making and showing new work, as when I graduated in 1989, perhaps even more so given the importance that this opportunity represents.
My research has continued to be an ongoing part of my practice over thirty years, as a BA student at Middlesex University, an MA student at UCA, an active researcher at UCA and within my own studio. I have used a wide range of hand and digital design and production techniques to make many different collections and countless textile pieces over the years.
Thank you very much to all those who have supported, collected and exhibited my work.