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Ignorance is Bliss rug collection 'Lutetia' and 'Juno' are displayed at contemporary design exhibition Personal Scale in Vartai gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania.

The second exhibition of the cycle, Personal Scale, features design projects by up to twenty individual and collaborative authors from different countries. A wide range of design perspectives and practices demonstrates the possibility of discussing sustainability differently, without objective truths or rules. The exhibition blurs the line between whether an object is handmade or industrially produced, regardless of whether it is made of new or recycled material, whether it is natural or synthetic, unique or intentionally mass-produced. Sustainability unfolds here not only in the material or in the way it is made, but also in the possession of a personal relationship that allows us to get to know the objects around us better and to question the established relationship with them.

Participants: Agnė Kučerenkaitė (LT), Charlotte Jonckheer (BE), Corradino Garofalo (IT), Destroyers and Builders (BE), Joan Vellvé Rafecas (SP), Kiki & Joost (NL), Kotryna Butautytė (LT), Kodai Iwamoto (JP), Lennart Lauren (NL), Martynas Kazimierėnas (LT), Messgewand (NL/FR), Olivier van Herpt & Sander Wassink (NL), Oskar Zięta (PL), Pepe Heykoop (NL), Pierre Castignola (FR), Plasticiet (NL), Sarmite Polakova (LV), Sho Ota (JP).

Curators: Marija Puipaitė and Vytautas Gečas

In October of each year, Dutch Design Week (DDW) takes place in Eindhoven. The biggest design event in Northern Europe presents work and ideas of more than 2600 designers to more than 350,000 visitors from home and abroad. In more than 110 locations across the city, DDW organizes and facilitates exhibitions, lectures, prize ceremonies, networking events, debates, and festivities.

Crafts Council Nederland (founded in 2012) contributes to the development of crafts and the creative crafts culture. Crafts Council Nederland presents HOW&WOW Linen during Dutch Design Week 2020. The exhibition showcases the process from flax to linen alongside the unlimited applications and present-day potential of this age-old fibre. The video series HOW starts with the seed that transforms into delicate blue flowers blooming on a bleak polder and follows the process in which terms such as rippling, dew retting, scutching, and hackling tow at once take on meaning. WOW presents the future materialised by fifteen makers; in this aesthetic exhibition, they interpret the versatility and relevance of the process and the product. The process of Ignorance is Bliss Rug Collection is showcased at this exhibition.

Participants: Pauline Esparon, Maaike Gottschal, Eva Klee, Agne Kucerenkaite, Christien Meindertsma, Anita Michaluszko, Ruben van der Scheer, Saar Scheerlings, Studio Plastique, Lee Sun, the Linen Project Stewards, Babs van den Thillart, Weefnetwerk, Mark de Weijer and Anna Wetzel. With cooperation of Karlijn Bokhorst and Heleen Lorijn.

A Labour of Love is a 448-page publication by design curators and authors Lidewij Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano. The book’s title refers to craftsmanship as an alternative form of pride and fulfilment. It comes at a unique time in history when principles are evolving and a more mindful, altruistic approach is needed in design and manufacturing.

Divided into 12 themes that reflect current materials and techniques, this bold book introduces the new makers in contemporary design, previewing a future of responsible production, circular thinking, ethical practice and organic aesthetics. It offers insight into how designers are giving shape to materials and process, from reviving the loom and recycling waste to social inclusion and growing matter. Their conscious philosophies will change our world with careful and considered choices that can ultimately reconnect us to nature and guide us towards a better tomorrow.

As Edelkoort observes “People know they need to slow down the pace of overconsumption and overproduction; otherwise our planet will be lost. The creative world gains insight and invents systems where values shift and design plays an activist role, developing ideas about sharing between designer and the worker, designer and the underprivileged, designer and the amateur, designer and the designer… This new era gives hope for other ways of perceiving what is considered success, renown and profit. Here, capital is strictly human.”

Crafts magazine is the leading international authority on contemporary craft. For nearly 50 years it has championed the finest makers, artists and designers in the UK and across the world.

For its September/October 2020 issue, Crafts magazine has been refreshed and re-energised for a new era. To mark its transformation, it is celebrating those it calls ‘change makers’: the artists, designers, thinkers, and organisations using craft skills and processes to make a positive impact, whether socially, ecologically, or politically.

Ceramics are all too often ecologically unsustainable and toxic, but designers are exploring new materials and scientific techniques to find a more viable approach. Isabella Smith reports on clay with a conscience.

The Red Dot Award is an international design competition for product design, communication design, and design concepts. Ignorance is Bliss ceramic tiles received the highest prize of the Red Dot Design Award 2020, Best of the Best Product Design.

Statement by the jury:
'These tiles acquire their special quality through the use of metal waste for their glaze. Following an innovative process, previously non-recyclable metal residues are thus given a new life. As part of the Ignorance Is Bliss project, the tiles truly exemplify environmental sustainability. Each of the tiles is unique thanks to the special raw material, which lends the surfaces their vivid appearance and special feel.'

Interview with Agne Kucerenkaite about Ignorance is Bliss project for printed Lithuanian magazine Namas ir Aš, 2019 December/2020 January issue.

In October of each year, Dutch Design Week (DDW) takes place in Eindhoven. The biggest design event in Northern Europe presents work and ideas of more than 2600 designers to more than 350,000 visitors from home and abroad. In more than 110 locations across the city, DDW organizes and facilitates exhibitions, lectures, prize ceremonies, networking events, debates, and festivities.

The multi-annual program Embracing Exchange aims to connect designers, makers, and institutions across national borders. The program focuses on design hotspots Eindhoven, Cologne, and Maastricht and exhibits contemporary design from the cross-border region between rivers Meuse and Rhine. Embracing Exchange is organized by Dutch Design Exchange (DDX). This initiative was set up in order to help Dutch businesses within the Creative Industry work across the national borders in Europe. Under the title Refine, the latest projects in the field circular design from this region are being shown at Yksi Expo during Dutch Design Week 2019 from 19 to 27 October. Ignorance is Bliss ceramic tiles are among the other selected fourteen design projects.

Agne Kucerenkaite (Studio Agne) is longlisted for the Dezeen Awards 2019 Emerging Designer of the Year category. 25 studios were selected for this category. Dezeen Awards received more than 4500 entries from 87 countries.

Dezeen Awards is an annual awards programme. It identifies the world's best architecture, interiors, and design, as well as the studios and the individual architects and designers producing the most outstanding work. Organised by Dezeen, the world's most popular and influential architecture and design website, Dezeen Awards is the benchmark for international design excellence and the ultimate accolade for architects and designers everywhere.

Ignorance is Bliss project is a nominee of the New Material Award 2018. The works of all the finalists are on display at Vitra Schaudepot from 10 May until 12 October.

The New Material Award focuses on innovative material research at the interface of science, design, art, and technology. Across the boundaries of their own field of expertise, nominated visual artists, designers and architects contribute to the development of new materials. Ceramics, building materials, metals, and textiles are developed based on existing and unusual raw materials such as cow's blood, algae, waste metal, and borrowed material.

With its public presentations, the New Material Award offers a platform to a generation of designers who dare to ask fundamental questions about industrial production processes and natural growth, waste flows, and residual materials.

Designers: Agne Kucerenkaite with Ignorance is Bliss, Alexander Marinus with Hey Jute, Basse Stittgen with Blood Related, Daria Biryukova with Forz Glaze, Envisions with Wood in Progress, Inge Sluijs with Plasma Rock, Iris de Kievith & Annemarie Piscaer with SerVies, Ekatarina Semenova with Care for Milk, Studio Klarenbeek & Dros and Atelier Luma with Algae Lab LUMA, Overtreders W & bureau SLA with People's Pavilion: 100% geleend, Sanne Visser with The New Age of Trichology, Shahar Livne with Lithoplast, Studio Chris Kabel with Recomposed Bamboo, Telesilla Bristogianni & Faidra Oikonomopoulou with Re3-Glass en Xandra van der Eijk with Future Remnants.

Effort is one of our most powerful catalysts for change. The Hope exhibition suggests that tackling small problems can lead to systemic change. Each of the exhibited projects – created by Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) students, past and present – is hopeful. In some cases, the hope they offer arises from tackling specific aspects of local and perhaps personal concern within small steps. In others, hope comes from proof that a good idea can infect a system at an industrial, and even global scale. Importantly, the projects did not set out to change the world top down. They started with ideas and effort to address issues immediately at hand. They offer glimmers of inspired thinking about how we might look at ourselves, our lives and our practices through a different lens, in a different light. Showing how small changes can make big differences.

Ignorance is Bliss process collection among other designers is displayed from April till September at Kazerne Eindhoven.

Participants: Alissa + Nienke, Clémence Althabegoïty, Atelier NL, Émilie Bordes x Yoon Seok-hyeon x Chae Soowon, Simón Ballen Botero, Buro Belén, Nicolette Bodewes, Aurore Brard, Mirjam de Bruijn, Nacho Carbonell, Brigitte Coremans, Teresa van Dongen, Envisions, Pauline Esparon, Formafantasma, Dave Hakkens, Nienke Helder, Olivier van Herpt, Mirl van Hoek, Studio Mieke Meijer, Studio Joachim Morineau, Bas Kamp, Amenda Kelders, Agne Kucerenkaite, Don Yaw Kwaning, Anne Ligtenberg, Isabel Mager, Sabine Marcelis & Brit van Nerven, Tamara Orjola, Reineke Otten, Eva Oyevaar, Mathilde Philipponnat, Madeleine de Pontevès, Sanne Ree Barthels, Martin Sallieres, Renee Scheepers, Leo Schlumberger, Makiko Shinoda, Ines Sistiaga, Pieter Städler, Stone Cycling, Super Local, Pascale Theron, Daan Veerman, Elin Visser.

Ignorance is Bliss project is a nominee of the New Material Award 2018. The works of all the fifteen finalists are on display in Alcova, Milan from 9 to 14 April. Alcova opening event: 11 April, 6 - 8:30 pm.

Alcova is a platform for independent design developed by Space Caviar and Studio Vedèt. Currently operating as an itinerant network of exhibition spaces across multiple sites in and around Milan, it activates forgotten locations of historical significance, temporarily recasting them as venues for performative activities.

The New Material Award focuses on innovative material research at the interface of science, design, art, and technology. Across the boundaries of their own field of expertise, nominated visual artists, designers and architects contribute to the development of new materials. Ceramics, building materials, metals, and textiles are developed based on existing and unusual raw materials such as cow's blood, algae, waste metal, and borrowed material.

With its public presentations, the New Material Award offers a platform to a generation of designers who dare to ask fundamental questions about industrial production processes and natural growth, waste flows, and residual materials.

Designers: Agne Kucerenkaite with Ignorance is Bliss, Alexander Marinus with Hey Jute, Basse Stittgen with Blood Related, Daria Biryukova with Forz Glaze, Envisions with Wood in Progress, Inge Sluijs with Plasma Rock, Iris de Kievith & Annemarie Piscaer with SerVies, Ekatarina Semenova with Care for Milk, Studio Klarenbeek & Dros and Atelier Luma with Algae Lab LUMA, Overtreders W & bureau SLA with People's Pavilion: 100% geleend, Sanne Visser with The New Age of Trichology, Shahar Livne with Lithoplast, Studio Chris Kabel with Recomposed Bamboo, Telesilla Bristogianni & Faidra Oikonomopoulou with Re3-Glass en Xandra van der Eijk with Future Remnants.

Humans have been fashioning art and tools from earth for at least 25,000 years. Despite the age of this relationship, continuing technological developments mean we are still coming up with new ways of shaping clay, stone and soil. Material Design Process: Elemental/Earth is a deep-dive into the latest in earth-based making, from composite stonework to 3D-printed ceramics. Profiles of artists renowned for their work with earthen materials explore the frontier where inspiration, skill and technology meet.

Whether working with new technologies or bare hands and clay, these artisans push the boundaries of stone and soil, creating truly unique, inspiring new forms, never losing sight of the ancient relationship our species shares with the materials. The first in a new series of books exploring elemental materials, Material Design Process: Elemental/Earth presents a bold picture of the present and future of handmade earthenware.