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Apple is reportedly planning to close its retail stores in Italy on 7 and 8 March temporarily according to the order issued by the Italian Government to prevent the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19).

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Words by Emily Martin

Anyone can draw. It's a message conveyed, particularly to those who are otherwise convinced, from charities and leading figures such as The Campaign for Drawing, with its patrons including Quentin Blake, Lord Foster and David Hockney. Generally, children need little encouragement to draw as we often see when in restaurants, for example.

But adults may feel a little self-conscious about reaching for a pencil today with the same enthusiasm. 'I didn't need any encouragement to draw, I just liked doing it,' says artist and furniture designer Chris Eckersley, while recalling his memories of drawing as a child. Eckersley is widely noted for his freehand technical drawings, which he says forms the backbone of his career as both a furniture designer and sculptor.

Chris Eckersley

In 2011, he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize and last November won the FX Awards Drawing category for his Santa Croce Basilica study, a drawing taken from his Mornings in Florence project. 'It's part of an ongoing project I've been doing for a number of years, for which I go to Florence and draw, measure and compare things,' he says. 'I'm always on the trail of good proportions; is there such thing as good proportions? I look at all the relationships between the measurements because I think you can learn a lot from that. That's what the Santa Croce Basilica chapel drawing is all about.' Although not intended for a specific purpose, a number of Eckersley's sculpture works and furniture design spring from this and other drawing projects.

Chris Eckersley's drawings of Florence architecture, which helped him win the FX Award for Drawing

Like many, he says developing a drawing confidence comes from your surrounding environment. 'I grew up in Birmingham and in those days it was an absolute hive of little things', he explains. 'I think that's what got me on to the idea of making, figuring how things work, drawing and then taking them apart.'

Although not limited to drawing such technical studies, Eckersley says his particular interest in drawing architecture stems from attending a 'very academic school'. Opting to study A-level art, his school convinced him to also study history of architecture. Through this he discovered the works of Le Corbusier and became a 'big fan' of his work, and it features among his large collection of studies.

Eckersley's rocker chair,designed and made with bodging techniques

So beautiful and elegant, it's hard to believe when Eckersley says that these drawings form his personal research and are never intended as being solo works of art.

'Drawing is the basis of everything. It's more than just representation; it's a way of working things out in your head, but on paper,' says Eckersley. He talks about trying to 'get up to date with CAD' when computers first became an integral tool, but says it wasn't for him. 'For me it was like office work, whereas I wanted to have an art-school life. I didn't want to type things and look at a screen all day.'

Graduating from sculpture studies at Gloucestershire College in 1974, and already working as an established designer before gaining his MA in design studies at Central Saint Martins in 1994, Eckersley has worked extensively across the disciplines of art and design and delivered works for clients all over the world in the forms of furniture, sculpture and drawings. Nevertheless, he stresses the importance of distinguishing a boundary between disciplines, despite often walking close to the edge himself. '[It's not right] to pretend that art and design is all one; I think there are certain characteristics to each discipline,' he says.

Eckersley applies the best of each discipline to gain extraordinary results across the art and design worlds. Achieved more through curiosity, or 'research' as he calls it, than an executed business plan, he selects the necessary tools to produce his works that capture the attention of many.

Another example of Eckersley's chair work

'I was designing some chairs for a chair specialist in Coventry, called Sitting Firm Chairmakers, and I'd become very interested in the traditional Windsor chair-making process,' he says. 'I felt I needed to research it.' After taking himself on a bodging holiday the previous year, Eckersley led a group of designers, including Rory Dodd from Designersblock, into rural Herefordshire to put their hands to the craft of greenwood chair making (bodging).

The group decided to exhibit their products at the Milan Salone in 2010, with the project entitled Bodging Milano. 'It's sort of taken on a life of its own,' Eckersley says, with the project leading to involve himself and others in Heal's Tottenham Court road store, bodging in the window.

Co-producing a 'well-proportioned' cabinet range for Heal's, as well as working on a sculpture commission for Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire, Eckersley says it's no longer about 'making money', which is what furniture design brought for him. 'Mornings in Florence has developed into looking at different systems of measurement, so I'm spending quite a lot of time on that, but I don't know where that is going at the moment,' he says. 'I have more time to design, draw and on art or sculpture projects. A much more balanced lifestyle.'