Wright Auction

Mark Brazier-Jones is a designer and sculptor known for his primitive-futurist furniture and lighting that uses motifs from mythology, esoterica, the occult and celestial phenomena. In the past two decades, he has mostly worked on unique, commissioned pieces for high-profile clients such as Karl Lagerfield, Prince Madonna, Elton John and Mick Jagger but his beginnings were far more ill-mannered than his luxe, polished designs let on. 

Brazier-Jones originally studied ceramics in London and in the 1970s and early 1980s he designed sets for music videos. In 1983, he and fellow designers Tom Dixon and Nick Jones founded the Creative Salvage group, which was built around the tenants of using scrap metal to create “stylish and functional artifacts."

"The way ahead does not lie in expensive, anonymous, mass-produced, hi-tech products, but a more decorative, human approach to industrial and interior design."
—Creative Salvage

The movement grew out of the party scene that had reclaimed abandoned warehouses in London, where Brazier-Jones and others would do “performance art welding” on destroyed cars to accompany bands and DJs. Creative Salvage’s apocalyptic, punk aesthetic reflected England’s bombed-out, post-industrial landscape and contrasted sharply with other concurrent design movements that sought to elevate low materials, like Memphis. 

Creative Salvage was short-lived but greatly affected Brazier-Jones' style and his handling of materials. In 1987, he moved to a sixteenth century farmhouse in Hertfordshire to establish his own studio. It was there that he began to refine his use of archetypal symbols and imagery—sunrays, eyes, wings, heraldry and Art Nouveau-inspired fancies—and make objects for the home that “crystallize a representation of our eternal nature, explore the sacred geometry within nature [and] find expressions of true reality”.

[My work is] a broad scan of nature, sacred geometry, and cultures across the ages. I like objects with lasting qualities. An engine that still does its job after 100 years excites me, something that is so well made you never need to replace it—that is worthy of respect. I am making objects of desire from noble enduring materials.

Mark Brazier-Jones