Ella Doran in collaboration with Urban Upholstery 'Clean Up Plastic Camo chair’, rebuilt during London Design Festival

The Upholstery textile design, ‘Ocean Clean-Up Camo’, is born from another collaboration, between Ella and communications designer/environmental campaigner Sophie Thomas.

The back of the chair was deliberately left open to expose the intricate work involved in making the piece. The chair plays with a traditional Chesterfield buttoned-back feature, each button is hand-made from plastic bags. The chair’s acid-blue-vinyl legs are supremely sewn to fit like tights.

Watch the Talk Here on the Blog during Shoreditch Design Triangle 2020. For further in-depth information, please read the interview with Katie Treggiden over at Design Milk

Commission to create a collection of home ware products for Kew’s retail shop.

Client:          Camira Fabrics
Project:        Waterlake
Year:              2018

Camira Fabrics is currently previewing an exciting new fabric, created in collaboration with Ella Doran and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Due to launch in 2019, ‘Waterlake’ will feature in Ella’s YSP exhibition ‘From Sheep to Seat & Fleece to Floor’ and will adorn a piece of furniture created entirely from materials sourced at the Park. The wood for the chair will originate from YSP’s trees, for example, whilst the wool used to create the fabric will come from the Park’s own flock of sheep. Camira will be weaving the fabric at its local Yorkshire facilities.

To be seen in Ella Doran’s 2019 Exhibition at YSP

Client:    Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Project:   Exhibition - Sheep to Seat, Fleece to Floor

As an homage to local products, suppliers and processes, the exhibition highlights the importance of the circular economy in reducing waste and sustaining livelihoods and traditions. It shines a light on one of the most versatile, sustainable, abundant and undervalued of the UK’s agricultural products: wool.

‘I loved working on this project with YSP, featuring the journey of British wool, culminating in my exhibition in Summer 2019. It celebrates the Park’s resources, its beauty, and the joy of creativity and collaboration.’

Watch Paul Wyatt’s short film here

Year:            2019

Designer and circular economy advocate Ella Doran has collaborated with communications Designer & environmental campaigner Sophie Thomas on a new textile design called ‘Ocean Clean-Up Camo’, which not only draws attention to the huge quantities of discarded plastic in our oceans, but uses it as inspiration for a beautiful, new Textile design.

Sophie Thomas has been beach cleaning and collecting waste plastic for several years, and these particular pieces were washed up by the tide from a favourite beach in Northern Spain. Whilst helping to keep the beach clean, the waste plastics collection also started to evoke something more. ‘The particular rock formation of the area helped make the waste plastic pieces particularly smooth, almost like flat pebbles, whilst maintaining their original colour’, Sophie explained.

The duo created artful arrangements from the plastics, which Ella then photographed, making a textile design from the resulting images, ‘From a distance, the design is reminiscent of a particularly colourful Italian mosaic tile’, Ella said, ‘with the true nature of the objects only visible under close inspection.’

‘Whilst the end-product is beautiful and has turned non-biodegradable pollutant waste into something positive, the message is still very much that it shouldn’t be there to start with!’ they added. ‘We hope that the life cycle of the new textile will carry that message forward into the future.’

View the collection here with 10% of the sales going to Surfers Against Sewage

Client:           
The John Radcliffe Hospital
Project:         
Radiology Department
Year:              2017/18

The Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust commissioned Ella Doran to research, develop and create new artwork to improve the radiology department experience for patients, visitors and staff and to create a calming, friendly and welcoming feel to the ward, helping reduce stress and providing distraction for patients and visitors. The artworks also had to provide a sense of light and airiness and appeal to a wide age range, from young families to the elderly.

‘Ella’s creative and thoughtful approach, ability to listen to staff needs and respond sensitively to them, and patience with the complexities of commissioning work within an NHS context and tight budget has meant that she has created a programme of work which is entirely appropriate for the department.’
(Ruth Charity, Arts Coordinator at the Radcliffe Hospital)

Clean Up Camo is a collaboration between Ella Doran and Sophie Thomas.

10% of the sales of all of the Clean Up Camo range goes to the charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS).

This website is currently being updated for the full back story click here, for any purchases get in touch here.

Client:
Twentytwentyone Ltd.

Project:
The twentytwentyone collection

Year: 2017/18

A special homewares collection was designed by Ella Doran, based around images by photographer Mark Whitfield of ‘the twentytwentyone collection’ of iconic vintage chairs, dating from the 1930s to the present day and collected, archived and catalogued by twentytwentyone founders Simon Alderson and Tony Cunningham. The chairs represent the founders’ depth of interest in and passion for twentieth century and contemporary design in the form of the chair, which they say is ‘symbolic of a designer’s creativity, their use of technologies, materials and form’. The collection also cements the longstanding retail partnership between the two parties.        
‘Ella’s distinctive eye for pattern and arrangement has transformed the furniture into something closer to a textile print’         
(Simon Alderson, twentytwentyone)

Client:
TATE


Project:
Artist’s Tools collection


Year: 2014 to date

Tate commissioned a collection of artist-inspired designs by Ella Doran for their museum shops in 2014, which continues to be stocked throughout their galleries today, as well as online. The overarching idea was to design a playful-but-sophisticated collection that would appeal to and create enthusiasm for the artistic process across the diverse community of the Tate visitors – young and old, men and women, professional creatives and the less artistically educated, who all have different tastes, but are united in their passion for art. Colour, as we encounter it in its material form at the beginning of an artistic project, was the starting point for 'Artist's Tools for the Tate' and, to introduce a feeling of authenticity into the images, Ella explored her own creative process, photographing personal artistic tools in her own studio.
Commissioned in 2014 and still stocked today        

Client:
Vital Arts NHS Charity

Project:
Children’s ward curtains and bedside cabinets

Year: 2011-12

Ella Doran was commissioned by NHS charity Vital Arts to design curtains for the Royal London Children’s wards. She worked with young patients, staff and parents to create her bespoke designs to transform the children’s wards and bedrooms for the new Hospital (RLH), which opened in March 2012.   In this pioneering commission, Vital Arts and Ella Doran worked closely with NHS procurement, on the designs. Ella’s unique sensibility, which finds magic and play in the everyday world, has turned institutional spaces into environments full of colour and intrigue, providing positive distraction for the young patients coping with a difficult situation.

Challenging the conventions of interior design for hospitals

Client:
Collaboration with designer Avantika Agarwal

Project:
Re-Weave

Year: 2014

Ella Doran worked on a collaborative project with highly-talented designer Avantika Agarwal, who graduated from the RCA in 2012. Ella’s iconic Icelandic photographic design ‘Rekki of Reykjavik’ was used in the project to produce a piece of woven furnishing silk that transforms into an abstract expression of the original design through the ‘Reweave’ process, born off the back of India’s rich history of resist-dyed Ikat fabrics. Through collaborating with craftsmen and introducing digital techniques, the project, carried out through Other Kingdom in India, created new and unexpected textile patterns, using digital printers to print photographs onto the yarn as a means of dying the thread. The printed warps were then unraveled and hand-woven, creating new abstracted textiles.         
Collaboration with RCA graduate revisiting Indian textile-weaving history    

Client:
RSA The Great Recovery Project

Project:
Bulky Waste Residency

Year: 2014/2015

The mission of the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) is to enrich society through ideas and action by sharing powerful ideas, carrying out cutting-edge research and building networks and opportunities for people to collaborate. One such undertaking is ‘The Great Recovery’ recycling project, of which Ella Doran is a great supporter. Ella participated in a 10-day residency on the project that involved trips to waste sites, Ikea, Reuse centres, and tear-down workshops at the FabLab in London. Paul Wyatt's resultant short and incisive film - the Great Recovery's design residency around bulky waste - was shown on the BBC Community Channel in 2015. Watch it here. 
Designer residency supporting the work of the RSA

Client:
Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Project:
Brushmarks and Through the Camera Lens

Year: 2017

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park commissioned two major homewares collections from Ella Doran to celebrate the iconic Park’s 40th anniversary of ‘Art without Walls’. Ella visited YSP throughout the seasons, documenting every aspect through sketched impressions and photography to create two unique ranges inspired by the Park’s 500-acre landscape. ’Through the Camera Lens’ includes photographs of the 18th-century historic landscape – including a canopy of leaves and tactile tree bark – applied to a tea towel, tote bag, apron, cushion, trays and mugs, whilst ‘Brushstrokes’ is distinctive textile design, mirroring the movement of the lakes and plant life growth at YSP. The ‘Brushstrokes’ palette is inspired by the colours of YSP, including Stone Wall Chapel, Autumn Leaf and Maple Leaf with Sunlight.      
Commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Yorkshire Scultpure Park

Client:
G-Wizz

Project:
Sunlight Through Leaves

Year: 2008

GoinGreen, the retailer of the G-Wiz EV (electro vehicle), commissioned one of Ella’s signature designs, Sunlight through Leaves, to be used as an application to the vehicle’s exterior, for a limited edition G-Wiz car, targeted at London drivers. GoinGreen said, ‘We love the fact that our already unique G-Wiz is totally complemented by Ella Doran’s idiosyncratic approach to design. And the Sunlight Through Leaves design gives the G-Wiz a really fresh and summery look.’    
First transport application of Ella Doran’s designs for pioneering electro-vehicle

Client:
Ella Doran Galapagos Design & the RSA

Project:
LDF14 @ the V&A

Year: 2014

To help spread the word about the RSA’s The Great Recovery project, Ella Doran initiated a collaborative ‘live’ installation of unique, refurbished, upholstered chairs at the V&A Museum during London Design Week 2014, aimed at increasing the general public’s awareness of long-term sustainability issues and possibilities in design. The initiative put the circular economy into action, with high-design furniture products produced live in a collaboration between Ella Doran, Galapagos Design and The Great Recovery, with the public watching, engaging and asking questions as the products were re-made live in front of them.  
Raising public awareness of the circular economy  

Client:           
Shelter
Project:         
House of Cards
Year:  2008/9

In one of several commissions to create special one-off pieces for leading charity Shelter, Ella Doran took part in an initiative to help raise funds creatively in 2008/9 through special artworks created by a group of designers and artists including Damian Hirst, Vivienne Westwood, Marc Quinn and Antoni & Allison. Each participating artist or designer was given a playing card to interpret. Ella was given the three-of-diamonds and decided to create a pillow cover that looked like a playing card. One thousand sets of all the designs were produced and sold as playing cards, whilst the original artworks were auctioned to raise money for Shelter. Shelter helps over 170,000 people each year to fight for their rights, get back on their feet, and find and keep a home.
Artists and designers come together to help tackle homelessness

Client:
Shelter

Project:
No Place Like Home

Year: 2009

Ella Doran invited 25 designers and photographers to create images for a one-off set of placements on theme ‘There’s no place like home’. To help raise funds and awareness of the homeless charity Shelter. The list of 25 included Martin Parr, Michael Marriott, Matthew Hilton and Michelle Grabner. Ella managed the production of all the images for the special placemat sets, which were sold at a silent auction after being exhibited by Ella in her former shop in Cheshire Street, as part of London Design Festival 2009.      
Selected and managed the contribution of 25 designers and photographers and silent auction for Shelter

Client:
Liverpool Capital of Culture

Project:
Fast Glass in collaboration with Nick Munro & Liquid Projects

Year: 2008

As part of Liverpool’s 2008 ‘Capital of Culture’ year of events, Ella Doran collaborated on an ambitious project with fellow designer Nick Munro. The aim was to create a new world record by recycling glass bottles and designing, making and selling transformed products to the general public, all within a 24-hour timeline and in full public view. Glass bottles were melted down and new vessels created by being blown on the makeshift stage with a glass kiln, using equipment supplied by Liquid Projects, with overall project sponsorship by John Lewis. Ella enrolled a group of schoolchildren who had come to watch the spectacle to help her make gift bags for the new products with each one numbered for identification.

World record attempt celebrating Liverpool as Capital of Culture 2008       

Client:
Absolut Vodka

Project:
Limited edition gift for the ‘Absolut’ community

Year: 1998

In 1998, Absolut Vodka commissioned Ella Doran to create a 100-strong, limited-edition boxset of coasters, which was to be sent out to the brand’s top-selling bars and stockists. The boxset was inspired by the Eames’ House of Cards, fused with Cubist principles. The coasters Ella designed, using her own photography, can work on their own and can also be assembled to create a stylised Cubist bottle through distorted and, in some cases, back-to-front photographs of the bottom, middle and top of the Absolut Vodka bottle itself. 
Leading brand commission fusing Cubist and Eames influences

Client:
Budweiser - curated by Inflate

Project:
Exhibit B

Year: 1999

A key early commission for Ella Doran took place in 1999, when she and designer Michael Marriott were sponsored by Budweiser to promote the beer brand on a road trip from Seattle to Portland, photographing everything from cars to supermarkets and diners, capturing and purchasing proper Americana for a subsequent exhibition in London. The design duo re-created a ‘garage sale’, using a Mock-Croc Chrysler Newport that was shipped back to the UK, and told their story through coasters and placemats, exhibited with zip-ties on pegboard with crown silver lights. The collection was snapped up by Sheridan Coakley of SCP and sold as ‘Gas Guzzlers’, ‘Randy’s Diner’ and ‘Supermarket Sweep’.      
Commissioned by Budweiser with subsequent products sold by SCP