Finding inspiration in unusual places with Banjo Beale

Banjo Beale on how to turn everyday and reclaimed objects into desirable homeware

I’ve just recorded a podcast where the host asked me when I began designing. I suppose it might have started as a little boy when I used to rearrange our family living room every Sunday. I’d have to return it back to normal each time but the potential to transform the space really excited 10-year-old me. This should have been a massive clue to my future career path but somehow I ended up in advertising with a very fancy job title: ideas director.

The world of advertising was an unusual induction into interiors, but it did teach me an invaluable lesson: the art of ideas. See, an idea is just a new combination of previously existing elements. It is this philosophy that allows you to see the potential in everything: how a canoe could become a light shade and its oar a curtain rod, or how adding legs to a vintage trunk could make a coffee table.

This is also true of how we collect and interpret data, or ‘inspiration’. By saving, scrolling, screenshotting and collecting, we amass an image bank – physically, digitally and inside our minds – of the things we love. All of this data is swirling around in our heads, waiting for a ‘ping!’ of sudden realisation, when one random thing connects with another to create that light-bulb moment.

Seeing the potential in the everyday is the key to resourceful design. A science lab counter worktop could become a kitchen island, while an upturned walking stick could become a coat hook. Sometimes it will require a creative intervention and a little elbow grease, and other times it will be as simple as hanging a Hungarian bee skep as a light shade.

A favourite alternative to virgin timber for me are Victorian pottery boards. These lengths of timber have been quietly supporting clay for over a hundred years as it was fired, dried and glazed. With the traces of time, touch of hand and the powdery marks of earthen objects, these shelves make characterful cladding for a counter and sit perfectly at The Tobermory Fish Company, a shop I designed on Designing the Hebrides.

In our little reclaimed corner of the world, imperfections are celebrated, or buffed out if you’re that way inclined. The key lies in the form. Think of what you need and then reconsider what else could be used in place of that. And remember, there is no such thing as a bad idea.