Designers often tend to deny the influence of changing tastes on their work. William Morris’s “joy in labour,” or the Bauhaus principle of “truth to materials,” are wellknown principles of this kind; Charles Eames once advised, “innovate as a last resort – more horrors are done in the name of innovation than any other.” But of course, Charles and Ray Eames are celebrated as among the greatest design innovators of all time, and Arts and Crafts and Bauhaus knockoffs can be found in any home furnishings store. In practice, modern design has been constantly subsumed within the imperative toward the new, on the assumption that the market will quickly burn through even the best ideas. The question is how to achieve objects of inherent value against this backdrop – to accept the fact that design operates (for all practical purposes) oriented to an insatiable market, yet one that can, on occasion, produce ideas of transcendent grace. Here is where Fredrikson Stallard come in.