Factory Design District: ESTABLISHED_ Founders in Conversation, including Tait, Dinosaur Designs and more

David Harrison is a Sydney based design journalist and interiors stylist.

He is the founder of the Design daily blog which covers all manner of subjects related to design. He has been contributing to Australian interiors magazines since 1999 and has work published in Belle, Vogue Living, Real Living, Inside Out and Habitus. He also contributes regularly to the Powerhouse Museum’s D*Hub blog.

Portrait photography: Sam McAdam-Cooper.

Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy are the Creative Directors of Dinosaur Designs. During their three-decade career of designing jewellery and homewares, Olsen and Ormandy have taken their unique designs around the world, with representation in stores and galleries across five different continents and eight freestanding stores in Australia, New York and London.

They have exhibited at galleries around the world, from Victoria & Albert Museum to Tokyo Writers Block and Guggenheim Museum, and collaborated with international designers including Louis Vuitton Romance Was Born, Jac+ Jack and more.

Olsen and Ormandy's work is inspired by nature and the materials that they work with. Their formal training and love of the Australian light and landscape can be seen in their sense of colour and forms. There is warmth and tactility to their pieces, brought together by the juxtaposition of resin and the hand made nature of their objects, which they design and create in their Strawberry Hills studio.

Business partners and designers, Celina Clarke and Simon Christopher credit the ongoing success of their Melbourne-based lighting design, manufacture and retail business, ISM Objects, to a shared business vision and cohesive approach to design.

Clarke and Christopher have been pivotal in establishing the company as a unique entity within the design and retail sector. Where many of their industry counterparts simply import and retail lighting products, ISM Objects designs 75 per cent of its lighting in-house – the remaining 25 per cent conceived through collaborations with other Australian designers.

ISM Objects manufactures all its products from its factory in Mentone, Melbourne and also retails and distributes its lighting nationally.

Mud Australia was founded in 1994. The porcelain range, designed by Shelley Simpson, combines hand made processes, clean lines, colour palette and functionality. The end result is a product that neatly intersects a minimalist aesthetic with an artisan finish. Our porcelain happily fits in any interior, providing a timeless alternative to mass produced ceramic design.

As a small business we strongly believe in the global values of craft and community. We actively build relationships with the people who buy, use and love our product.

Our retail stores present all products exclusively on the Vitsœ 606 Universal Shelving System, the iconic furniture range designed by Dieter Rams.