British designer Simon Hasan has just announced his new installation, 'Industrial Makeshift', which will be on show in Northampton Market Square from the 23rd July until the 1st of August.

Designed as part of Northampton’s Blink Festival, Industrial Makeshift sees a customised vending machined stocked with Hasan's mass–produced, handmade leather objects. All pieces are moulded on archetypes of mass-production and pound shop plastic objects.

With the cry of 'Mass-produced, hand-crafted, one-offs, £3 whilst stocks last', the installation was conceived in response to an invitation by Northampton Festival to create a site-specific installation in the town’s 700 year-old Market Square.

Like many market towns, Northampton has witnessed the explosive growth of high street chains that are part of an automated system of global manufacturing, supply and consumption.

Hasan explores this evolution through themes of commerce, craft and industry, and by questioning the role of the handmade within the modern production system.

To do this, Hasan has used the medieval leather-working technique of Cuir Bouilli (an on-going research project of Hasan's) to mass-produce over 400 handcrafted objects, which can be purchased via a coin-operated way from a customised vending machine.

Selling for only £3, the pieces are moulded on archetypes of mass-production such as cola bottles or anonymous pound-shop plastic objects.

Rendered in hardened leather, these symbols of globalised industry become curious artefacts with an almost archaeological quality.

The project alludes to William Morris’ 1894 lambaste of unsatisfactory mass produced goods, although in this iteration it is Hasan’s unique hand-made objects that have become makeshifts of the ubiquitous engineered products they are formed on.

At the request of the designer, all proceeds from this installation are to be donated to the Northampton Market Trader’s Association.

If you're headed to the show - here's the opening times:

23rd & 24th of July, 10 - 5pm.

30th & 31st of July, 10 - 5pm.

1 August ,12 - 5pm.

Photography Emma Wieslander.

Illustration & Graphic Design Xavier Poultney and Jasmine Raznahan.