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Award
Winning Designer Launches Enchanted Textile Design
Enchanted Textile Design Launched in Sussex
Enchanted Textile
Design Making a Mark in Sussex
Award-winning
Sussex-based textile designer, Kirsteen Benson BA (Hons) is now launching her
new Spring & Summer collection. Exciting,
sensual and delicate could be some of the adjectives that best
describe her latest collection. As Director and founder of
Sussex-based Enchanted Textile Design, Kirsteen is busy making her
mark with her new range of joyful florals.
Kirsteen
Benson's passion for design is intrinsically interwoven with her
artistic background: born and raised in the Scottish highlands in an
artisan family craft pottery business run by her father, Alastair
Hodgson MA Hons (Etching) and Kitty Atkinson MA Hons (Stainglass &
Murals.) Kirsteen is a doubly gifted designer: where inherent artistic
ability meets a driving self-determinism to strive professionally for
the best one can create. So often, our backgrounds help to forge our
own career paths and Kirsteen's exceptional educational journey is
one of not only overcoming personal barriers to studying - she was
diagnosed with dyslexia from a young age – and went on to surpass
at academic A Levels and then acceptance into one of the finest
Scottish Textile & Design Schools at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt
University.
Kirsteen
Benson won 2 awards as an undergraduate: joint
first prize-winner of an industrial competition for Muraspec
Wallcoverings UK, (one of the Hilton Hotel chain's preferred
wallcoverings design company) and 1st
Prize-winner of an industrial competition for Morton Yong &
Borland. This was a prize for the best of Madras lace design and was
added to their collection. Muraspec judges noted the excellence of
Kirsteen's work which had been so highly placed due to its relevance
and applicability of her response to the brief,
“There
are people out there making good livings with far inferior products”.
Kirsteen was then offered the coveted position of New Product
Development Coordinator Muraspec, which she undertook in style.
The
pioneering attitude
fostered at Heriot-Watt – they welcomed women students as early as
1869, 20 years ahead of most others – was no
doubt the perfect environment for Kirsteen's artistic abilities to
shine and shine she did. Kirsteen
distinguished herself at University by being one of only a few
students in the country to have work exhibited at Scotland's most
well-known centre for Design and Architecture: Glasgow’s flagship
“Lighthouse Design Centre”.
Since
leaving university, Kirsteen has since exhibited in an impressive
array of galleries and venues from Scotland
to East Sussex: the Islington Exhibition Centre: London, Birmingham's
Gallery of Contemporary Art and City Theatre, Tilgate Park in Crawley
and many others. Yet the exhibition at the Lighthouse Design Centre
remains her most prized.
More
recently, Kirsteen was the brains behind the Crawley Craft Fair –
with over 300 artists and small business owners and has now teamed up
with Jenny Frank BA Hons Woven Textile Design, and is busy preparing
the Paris launch of “Enchanted Textile Design” with a team of
professional designers, sales and administrative personnel
freelancing under Kirsteen’s management. Kirsteen's aim is to
continue the rich heritage of British florals, isolating the
importance of colour and vibrancy which is a trademark of her
textiles. 'I want to enhance the too often grey backcloth of the city
with colourful floral designs.' Kirsteen lives & works in East
Grinstead with her totally creative, source of inspiration daughter,
Jasmine.
Kirsteen
Benson is available for media interviews and is contactable by
e-mail: kirsteenbenson@yahoo.co.uk
or
mobile: 07799201417
Links:
Gallery
of Contemporary Art, Birmingham
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