When Libby Day abandoned the bright lights of New York City — where she had worked for fashion empires Hugo Boss and French Connection — to study design in her native Scotland, her friends thought she was mad.

“It was the height of the Sex and the City phenomenon and everybody thought life in New York was one party after the next,” she says. “I worked in marketing and store design, which basically meant spending lots of time in meetings and hotels. It wasn’t that glamorous and I had this passion to create my own work rather than promote other people’s.”

Day moved to Aberdeen to study three-dimensional design at Gray’s School of Art before setting up her own studio in the city, where she produces ranges of furniture, jewellery and lighting for sale and exhibit.

Her inspiration is the natural structures of landscape. After months of research, she works up a series of sketches and models before putting her designs into production. The finished articles are wonderfully intricate creations that straddle a curious line between the organic and the futuristic. It’s a time-consuming process and, though she uses traditional practices when possible, she is also a fan of new technologies such as laser cutting, which save time and increase her output and profit margins.

“The way I work it would take me weeks to do one piece, but if there’s a new technology that can do something that is as good, if not better, than by hand, then why not do that?” she says. “But there are people in craft circles who think that the use of craft technology is in conflict with the spirit of craft and closer to mass production.”

She is hoping Craft Scotland’s C Word campaign to promote Scottish contemporary craft, will bring her work to a new audience.

“I am a craftswoman, I am a designer and I am an artist,” she says. “People tend to forget they can actually go to a designer and have something bespoke made for their home that’s of the highest quality and is essentially a craft. Hopefully the campaign will help get that idea out there.”

craftscotland.org

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