Elliat Rich is not your average designer: her love of exploration and discovery sets her, and her work, apart from the crowd.

The Urban Billy gives a hint of Rich’s unusual background and her extraordinary talent. The design comprises seven glass components that fit within one another. The design aims to release the ritual of tea-drinking from its traditional indoor realm, and draws on Rich’s experience of life on the road.

“When we offer someone a cup of tea, it’s not just about the tea,” she says. “It’s about spending time together and setting up the right dynamic. In the bush, you sit down around a fi re and use a billy to boil water. You set up the space to be still and enjoy each other’s company. There is a simplicity and honesty in the process that I tried to distil in The Urban Billy, for use in an urban environment.”

While she was a student, boiling the billy became an integral part of Rich’s life for a year. At the age of 22, Rich and her partner set off on an epic journey across alpine and outback New South Wales, accompanied by two camels and three donkeys.
They walked from Bathurst to Broken Hill, covering a distance of over 2000 kilometres on foot, stayed in the outback city for three weeks, bought a wagon and then walked another 1000 kilometres back. Before they set out, the pair spent a year acquiring and training the camels and preparing for the trip. They used Rich’s grandfather’s old industrial sewing machine to make tarps, saddles and panniers so the animals could carry their possessions. “It was definitely a formative experience because we became enlightened to the fact that there were other ways of living,” she says.

After they returned to Sydney, Rich produced The Lichen, a portable sheltering system that can be used as a swag, tarpaulin or jacket. “It derived from the complexity of that experience as a way of offering that same sense of freedom and empowerment to others in an urban setting,” she says.

Another of her designs was intimately inspired by nature. Two-Way is a garment that prompts its wearer to refl ect on the “somewhat magical” process of respiration. It celebrates the fact that every breath a person inhales has undergone the process of transpiration by a plant. “While observers can get a sense of the connection between breath and movement, wearing Two-Way is the only way to experience it for yourself,” Rich says. “When you wear it, you become completely aware of your own breath, and, as a result, you sense a connection with a larger holistic system, and the sustaining nature of living systems that we tend to take for granted.” The Mycelium Pendant offers its owner an opportunity to rethink long-held beliefs about value and decay. The owner creates the ‘jewels’ that make this adornment piece unique, by placing a piece of bread within the bezels and encouraging the growth of mould. Over several days, the mould begins to change colour and extrude from the pendant’s perforations. The piece is ready to be worn when the mould’s sculptural form has taken hold. At the end of its life, the bread is removed before the process begins again.

“Mycelium turns the idea of waste around, by allowing you to see mould for what it is: an intricate form that grows incredibly quickly,” Rich says. “It celebrates the fascination of watching things grow and reignites our wonder in such events.”
Rich’s strong appreciation of the beauty of the natural world and the pleasure of social interaction is especially apparent in her latest project, the Yala Sofa. Like The Urban Billy, this furniture piece celebrates the joy that spontaneously arises when people share unhurried time together. In addition, it reflects her ability to design objects that encourage happiness to flourish among their users.

Rich’s upholstery fabric design employs thermochromatic inks that enable the vines to burst into flower when the sofa is occupied. The imprint of this shared time slowly fades away. The process calls to mind the informal social events that occur around Ipomoea plants when Pintupi and other indigenous people in Central Australia gather to harvest bush potatoes (yala).

All of Rich’s designs focus on the experience of using them rather than the objects themselves, she says. “My work is about finding the poetry in humble pleasures, finding the honesty in things,” she explains. “I want to draw people’s attention to the humble things that are worth remembering, celebrating and sustaining in this sophisticated and complex world.”

Richs’ objects offer an alternative view of sustainability, one in which her designs help their users filter out the trappings of the modern world to focus on simple and honest qualities that enhance their lives. From her home in Alice Springs, where she and her partner have lived since 2004, Rich continues to delve into the depths of her unusually fertile imagination to produce objects that surprise and delight.

By Rachael Bernstone