Market | Move Aside for Seth Payne’s Colorful Cup Bus + more!

Playfully arranged and stunningly executed, check out designer Seth Payne’s Un-Modular Modular series. Rather than conform his brightly glazed works to the concept of creating ultra-efficient objects, he explains he strives throughout his intimate artistic practice to make objects that are less efficient, yet ultra specific—those which question the social value of physical things.

My work appropriates ideas from modern design to achieve completely different objectives. Like modular furniture the stacking bowls, wall plates and cup bus employ repeated independent parts that can be configured together in various quantities, to form a functional system.

This is evident is Payne’s Cup Bus range, which features a series of colorful hour-glass shaped cups with chubby handles arranged linearly in wooden storage container. Obviously, not an efficient arrangement, by integrating his objects and they’re storage system achieved through architectural and industrial design techniques, Payne says the objects are ritualized into the days-in and -out of ordinary life elevating every aspect of living.

The process of removing it, eating from it, cleaning it and then returning it to its place is part of a cycle that emphasizes the relationship with the object, the occasion, and the community of people connected by it.

Payne’s Wallplate, similar to his Cup Bus, features a delightful arrangement which traverses the length of the walls; Payne uses his presentation to shed new purpose and beauty in a way that makes his objects more special.

My intention as a maker is that I can redistribute the importance of a useful object more evenly between efficiency and specialization, between practical and ritual. I am interested in how the physical “inconvenience’ of the cup bus, can initiate the attention that might elevate a routine act.

Our life is composed of little moments, often repeated, altered slightly, and repeated again. My work’s role is to nudge the user, whisper “pay attention”, then stand back so they can consummate these objects into their own personal practices.

Check out more of Seth Payne’s work.

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