The Ralph Saltzman Prize 2024

This Q&A introduces Attua Aparicio, the winner of this year's Ralph Saltzman Prize. Learn more about the inspiration, process, and materials behind her work.

Discover the unique range of plates created by designer Attua Aparicio, which are now available to purchase through the Design Museum Shop.

Co-Founder and President of Designtex, Saltzman's curiosity and collaborative spirit are evident in the legacy of innovation he leaves behind and in the company he founded 60 years ago. Designtex's development of sustainable textiles and the partnership that emerged between William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart won First Prize in the International Design Sense competition at the Design Museum in 2000.

Brewster is a London-based artist, designer, educator & cultural changemaker. Strongly grounded in craft, she uses her creative outputs as her voice, celebrating and sharing windows into varied Black female narratives and histories. The threads that flow throughout her work display a balance of function with beauty, a repurposing of the “ethnic” and the “western”, continuously playing with scale, materiality and architectural form. Brewster is the Now Gallery 2023 Design Commission winning artist.

Charny is a designer, educator and creative director recognised for a range of culturally significant projects from the Power of Making exhibition to the global Maker Library Network and the award winning Fixperts learning programme. Alongside Dee Halligan, he co-founded Forth, a creative studio and Community Interest Company concerned with the new formats, models and spaces needed to support learning and engagement in a changing world. Charny advocates for design as a tool to unlock a better future.

Gamper was born in Merano, Italy. Working across disciplines, Gamper engages in a variety of projects from exhibition design, interior design, one-off commissions and the design of mass-produced products for the cutting edge of the international furniture industry. Gamper opened his design studio in London in 2000, where he continues to live and work. In 2023 Gamper was awarded an OBE for services to Design.

Marcelis is an artist and designer based in Rotterdam. After graduating from the Design Academy of Eindhoven in 2011, Marcelis began working within the fields of product, installation and spatial design with a strong focus on materiality. Her work is characterised by pure forms which highlight material properties. She applies a strong aesthetic point of view to her collaborations with industry specialists and considers her designs to be sensorial experiences that becomes the function, with a refined and unique aesthetic.

Known for his ‘Super Normal’ approach to design, Morrison looks to find the exceptional in the world of the ordinary. He is a firm believer that design should have an almost invisible presence in the end product and that an atmosphere of naturalness in things is more important than a designer’s signature. His work is represented in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and many other prominent collections around the world.

Nominated by Sabine Marcelis, ASTRONAUTS is a creative studio founded by Danae Dasyra and Joe Bradford specialising in limited-edition sculptural objects, highly considered from conception to creation. Their respective yet complimentary skills collaborate towards a shared vision – the act of making is their emphasis, where a material or process dictate and design is merely a response. Most of the fabrication remains in-house, with artisans and industry collaborations often becoming integral to the outcome.

Nominated by Martino Gamper, Aparicio is a multidisciplinary artist working in the intersection of design, craft and art. She studied an MA in Design Products at RCA and her practice is driven by material research and experimentation seeking to find new combinations and ways of making. Interested in sustainability, material hybridization and tactility, she often collaborates with her sister, artist Saelia Aparicio, glass artist Jochen Holz and co-founded Silo Studio with Oscar Lessing.

Nominated by Jasper Morrison, Pearce Chedier is a Brazilian-British designer and creative currently based in London, where she earned her degree in Product and Furniture Design from Kingston School of Art in 2020. Within her work, she delves into her dual heritage and cultural ties, employing a charismatic, process-oriented approach within design. Tabatha draws inspiration from a diverse mix of traditions, demonstrating a consideration of materials and manufacturing in her exploration of ideas.

Nominated by Simone Brewster, Marks is a London based emerging designer and maker who studied Product & Furniture Design at Kingston University. His work focuses on the expressive reimagining of natural materials, often using those that are overlooked or disregarded to produce distinctive contemporary works. Fundamental to his practice is research into the landscapes materials are harvested from, and how design can be used as a tool to address complex social and ecological issues.

Nominated by Daniel Charny, Pedros is a French designer and maker based in London where she studied an MA in Design Products at RCA. Driven by sustainability and empowerment, she revisits materials, local resources and waste to explore new territories of use with a strong low-tech influence. From plastic joinery to gravity-powered machines, she investigates woodwork in furniture and narrative objects and collaborates with museums and maker spaces. Sharing findings during workshops is a key element of her practice.

Designer Marco Campardo was selected as the 2023 prize winner. Nominated designers included Joseph Yanney Ewusie, Rio Kobayashi, Simón Ballen Botero and Timi Oyedeji.

Designer Mac Collins was selected as the inaugural prize winner in 2022. Nominated designers included Alexandra Fruhstorfer, Francisco Norris, Marion Pinaffo & Raphaël Pluvinage, and Sky Lucy Young.