Commissions

Felicity Bristow is an Artist Designer living and working in the Scottish Borders.

Felicity came to Scotland in 1993 qualifying as an Architect at ECA and in practice until 2008. After starting a family, she studied part time for a BA in Art & Design transferring to complete an MA in Contemporary Art Practice at ECA in 2016. Felicity works from her WASP’s studio at St. Mary’s Mill in Selkirk as well as on location for site-specific installations; she has exhibited as a member of the Collective ‘bound : unbound’.

Felicity was an invited artist at the 2015 Gayfield Creative Spaces programme demonstrating her ‘live’ process in the Bunker space, curated by GRAS Architects, as part of the British Council Maker Library residency at Gayfield, produced by John Ennis.

It was during this period that John first approached Felicity about the commercial potential of her work and resulted in further discussion in 2017 for the Gayfield Design Commission.

The Design Commission enabled Felicity to spend time at William Clarks of Upperlands, a progressive centre of linen production and design in Northern Ireland and a company with over 300 years textile experience. Working with Dundee graduate Duncan Neil, design entrepreneur behind the label ‘Earthed’, all stages of the industrial process from design to production for the international interiors market were explored.

We are very grateful to Duncan and his team for their time and commitment to this new initiative. Duncan Neil joined the panel of experts at our twilight Talk about Design: Place-making and Creative Industry.

Commissioned Artist designers will be keen to develop their practice in an explicitly commercial direction by exploring novel process and production: a prototype/finished product is anticipated with a proposal/arrangement for ongoing manufacture.

We have developed appropriate commission, contract and licensing agreements.

We have worked with contacts in our partner countries to progress residencies at centres of excellence and we hope these residencies might open research and development opportunities for other Scottish artist designers in the future.