Royal College of Art degree show highlights: from 3D printed ceramics to experimental food storage, here's what to look out for at this year's RCA show

Inspiring young RCA graduates from across the globe are exhibiting at the London degree show.
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Corinne Julius27 June 2019

The Royal College of Art is regularly rated as the world’s top design school, though it’s fair to say Central Saint Martins is never far behind, so London is lucky to have some of the world’s most imaginative graduating designers in its midst.

Over the last 20 years RCA students have come from around the world, initially mostly from Europe, then Japan and South Korea and now increasingly from China, especially so since Brexit, with European students deterred.

Many of the most talented students like to continue their careers in London but with visas hard to come by, that is proving increasingly difficult. So it’s worth catching them in this year’s graduate show before they jet home. Much of the work is for sale or commission.

Hao Ma, who hopes to have his beautiful bone china lighting commercially produced, has created six basic elements that can be assembled to produce 700 possible variations of lights, allowing the buyer to customise at will.

The bright yellow interior is so intense it makes a miserable day seem like summer.

Glass is strong in this year’s show, with two stand-out graduates who tweak and develop traditional techniques.

Ji Huang makes intensely coloured glass vessels decorated using a technique that mimics traditional xipi lacquering, giving a translucent and transparent mottled effect. Each piece takes at least two weeks to complete.

Josh Kerley has adapted pâte de verre, grinding up glass into a powder to re-form it, to make lighting pendants in subtly graduated colours.

This slightly granular effect is echoed in Hojung Kim’s very reasonably priced, practical range of bowls and vases that look like terrazzo.

Experimenting with techniques and materials is key to design inventiveness and Nico Conti subverts 3D printed ceramics to make delicate, almost crochet-like platters and vessels.

Jeweller Shiqi Li has produced wallpaper printed with abstracted plant designs, on to which she attaches wall jewellery modelled from real plants. The detachable elements can be worn on the body as well as the wall.

Jeweller and silversmith Joy Bonfield Colombara makes bronze combs that celebrate world approaches to hair combing, along with silver salt cellars.

Chifen Cheng is working with textile firm Kvadrat on a range of flat-pack furniture suitable for all ages. Affordable and scalable, it is due in production soon.

Meanwhile, Xinran Huang has created a virtual reality stick that helps prevent motion sickness in VR users.

Tomi Laukkanen came up with Worthy, a range of redesigned electrical products including toothbrushes and hair trimmers, with the same easy-fix basic innards that exchange between items.

Riku Toivonen has an adventurous Bear Grylls approach — you have to make a flint spark to turn his elegant lights off and on, so increasing awareness of electricity consumption.

Jihue Moon’s contribution to environmental issues is a range of soaps that indicate daily the level of pollution in the air. She also offers an open source pack of fan and filter to minimise inhalation of polluted air.

Textile graduates take an interest in environmental issues, too. Ellen Williams produces delicate printed textiles inspired by the Oxfordshire countryside, coloured with natural dyes made of food waste such as avocado and onion skins.

Sooyang Park is another who takes a natural approach with her Modern Pantry, based on her grandparents’ larder. She weaves baskets and knits vegetable socks to keep produce fresh without refrigeration.

Keen on employing non-traditional materials, Jingxue Zhang mixes acrylic rods, crystals and knitting to produce Mondrianesque screens, while Chia-Hsin Yu experiments with pearls in mesh, polycarbonates and laser-cut leather.

But traditional techniques are still to be found, often combined with the new.

Ruth Blanke creates hand-printed digitally embroidered textiles, inspired by 14th-century tapestries but featuring modern allegories about female empowerment, while Yu Yang’s exquisite one-off art tapestries are of multicoloured buildings and plants.

  • The Royal College of Art graduate exhibition runs from Saturday until July 7, noon-6pm daily (closed July 3) over two campuses: Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, SW7, in the Darwin and Stevens Buildings, and at Royal College of Art Battersea, Hester Road, SW11, in the Dyson, Sackler and Woo Buildings.