Biography
Richard La Trobe-Bateman (b. UK 1938) has an international reputation for designing and building structures – from chairs and tables to bridges – using home-grown timbers, steel and wire rope. "Richard demonstrates that ‘craft’ is a fluid, technological activity that cannot be easily categorised into one set of attitudes or lifestyles. In one sense the existence of a ‘salon de refuse’ suits La Trobe-Bateman: it provides him with a home." "The main concern of the work, on all scales is to show how the object operates as a physical structure: things like tension, compression, bending, twisting, joining and so on. The geometry, materials and constructional methods are chosen to expose the physical operation of the whole, and of each part, as clearly as possible" (Peter Dormer, The Culture of Craft) He works with Mary La Trobe-Bateman OBE.
