For those who didn’t make the trek to the Sub Club on Friday, Stephen Cappello was the winner, receiving a cash prize of £500 and a licence agreement for his design, ‘The Devils’ Church’. Four of the remaining shortlisted designs were also awarded a licence agreement, so Kavan Studio, Veeny, and Titas (two patterns) will all have their designs offered as part of the Shadow Screen range. As with the existing patterns, the designers will be paid a percentage royalty based on the selling price for each screen sold.

So, how did the judges come by this decision? It’s probably fair to say that the immediate impact of the patterns is hard to shake – it’s pretty clear whether a design is visually arresting, and this rarely changes. When we met for shortlisting, we looked at nearly a hundred entries in total, and it was pretty clear which of these should make it into the final ten. Although we didn’t pick a winner at this first meeting, we all had our favorites. It’s probably fair to say that even though we took pains to keep the comments on the designs fairly equal, it’s hard not to hope that your favorite wins.

What really showed through from the facebook comments is that each of the patterns works in a different way, and arguably four or five of them could have been the ‘favourite’. It made the final choice immensely difficult. Should we choose the pattern with the most immediate impact (which for me was the ‘bubbles’ pattern by Chris Veeny)? Or the one that received the most positive reactions (the beautiful ‘Smog’ pattern by Daisy Macdonald)? How about the patterns most likely to be used by interior designers looking for a compliment to other materials (Titas’ work)? Or the pattern that looks simple but is actually more complex than it looks (Mathew Kavan Brooks)?

In the end, the shortlist was so strong that I decided to offer licences to the five patterns which were most likely to be commercially viable for use as a cut screen. This decision left some fantastic patterns out, not due to the quality of the patterns themselves, but because they had a major issue with production – Dele Adayamo’s lovely collage of children and balloons, for example, didn’t offer an obvious positive and negative for the cutting process, and Daisy Macdonald’s Smog was stunning but very hard to crop due to the areas of uncut sheet. Daniel Sunden’s Untitled would be great as a piece of art in it’s own right, but hard to incorporate into an interior without overwhelming. The simplicity of Catrin Lewis’ work, though very strong in the right context, could be mistaken for a standard pattern, with the same going for the undulating waves of Titas’ third pattern.

Offering several licence agreements also freed up the choice of winner, and the judges felt that it’s clear concept had been executed in a refined way, pushing both the intellectual buttons but also subtly the right visual ones. What clinched it was that the pattern offered the possibility for customizing a screen to incorporate a hidden message of particular relevance to a client, or a context. It’s simplicity of form might also offer the potential of more economical production techniques, should the volume be sufficient. I’m looking forward to working with Stephen and with all those who have been offered a licence agreement to develop the work.

A huge thankyou to all those who entered, and I hope that the experience has offered some value even for those who didn’t win.

The architectural importance of shadows was was so described by Eighteenth Century writer, artist and architect John Ruskin.  His approach to design was to manage the light and dark areas within a building to create the ultimate impact within a space, and to highlight interior details.  These ideas are universally important in design and architecture, and later in photography and film.

With this in mind, there are many interesting effects that can be achieved through the use of patterned shadow screens. The main challenge for me of this project was designing a screen that would be adaptable to many different environments.  I was keen not to allow too much light through, for the ultimate dramatic effect, and to keep the pattern abstract but dynamic. I was also interested in the projection of the shadow, how this would change with the movement of the screen – I tried to align the pattern so the most interesting effect would be created.

One other thought that inspired me was reading some of Japanese author Junichiro Tanazaki’s I933 book In Praise Of Shadows.  He describes his regret of the elimination of shadows by the introduction of the electric light, and the acceptance of the Western obssesion with brightness. He writes ‘Surely you have seen in the darkness of the innermost rooms to which sunlight never penetrates, how the gold leaf of a sliding door will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow upon the horizon at sunset.  Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.’

Perhaps the Screens of Paul Kerlaff will bring the beauty of shadows back into our Western homes.

My design has been adapted from a project I started at college.  It was a conceptual project in which I explored how electro magnetic radiation was present in the home, leaking from various different technology.  I made maps of EM leakage in my home, and represented the ‘Smog’ shapes that were formed with various patterns.  I was inspired by the structured form of traditional craft patterns in quilts and other textiles, as a direct contrast to the boundless invisibility of the EM waves.

It was very interesting to take the project in a new direction and consider a different format and material.  I think my design could be an effective Shadow Screen with or without this original concept in mind.