ONCE upon a time you could cuddle your Neisha Crossland cushion or don your Cath Kidston apron knowing that you were the only proud owner in your postcode. Now they are everywhere. So are the designers. This means that we need to look even harder to find the newest and most exciting products and the people who make them.

These are the designers who could be shaping our domestic environment this year and possibly for decades after. Thrink is making us rethink homeware; Martino Gamper is deconstructing and reconstructing the chair; and Ulrika Jarl is making us eat our greens.

Thrink is a homeware design collaboration set up by André Klauser, 30, and Barnaby Barford, 27, in 2002 while they were studying at the Royal College of Art. “We are a collaboration, not a company,” says Barford, who teaches ceramic design at Brighton University and Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design.

A sneaky humour informs their work. Their latest effort is a foray into cushions. Domesticated Violence is big, red and lightly embroidered. He says: “There is a pocket for your hand, so it becomes a kind of boxing glove.” Perfect for fighting over the remote control. If You Haven’t Got Anything Good to Say, Come and Sit Next to Me is a cushion artfully ripped and stuffed with printed ribbons that you can pull out. Barford adds: “They have snippets of conversation and questions on them. The more you pull out and read, the more you destroy the cushion. So you have to think twice about whether you really don’t have anything to say.”

They have already found success with products based on games: battleships napkins (£9.50 for a pack of 100) and the o’s and x’s ashtray (£9.50), which is not to be confused with the solitaire olive bowl (£23.50). Later this year Thrink’s products will be on show at the department store Liberty. “Among them will be a table with a dirty secret,” says Barford. Whatever you do, do not lift the tablecloth.

Gamper, a furniture designer, won the Oxo Peugeot Design Award last year and, at 31, is teaching where he studied, at the Royal College of Art. “I actually find designing on paper very hard, so I do 3-D sketching instead. If I am making a chair, I start with an existing chair and alter it.” He has done this in one example by adding the seat from a Vespa scooter, a reference to Italy, his home country. He is currently making 100 chairs in 100 days; Stuffed, his one-off beanbag chair, costs £450. “Some days I will make one or two and some days I will not make any. I have been going to a lot of car-boot sales and jumping in a lot of skips to find materials.”

Nobody really likes broccoli, but that could be about to change, thanks to Jarl, 27, and her Romanesco light. “I take my inspiration from nature,” she says. “I look for patterns and repetition. Romanesco broccoli actually contains the Fibonacci sequence, which is why the spirals are perfect.” She left Sweden in 1996 and has just completed the wood, metal, ceramic and plastics degree at Brighton University — a hothouse of design. The Romanesco has just returned from the Twinkle, Twinkle exhibition in Japan and will be going to the 100% Design exhibition in Moscow. Habitat hopes to produce it and has shown interest in Wall- Light, based on the patterns of pinecones.

“You buy Wall-Light as single panels and arrange them into your own pattern. Right now I am really enjoying working with ceramics. They are perfect for lights, especially bone china. The creamy translucency is so beautiful.” Fame is calling, but for now she is staying in Brighton: “It is a very inspirational place, so I am looking for a workshop.”

www.thrink.net, products available from Thorsten van Elten, 22 Warren Street, W1. 020-7388 8008 www.thorstenvanelten.com www.gampermartino.com, 020-8985 5344, martino@gampermartino.com. His Sit Together bench is £3,550 from Aram, 110 Drury Lane, WC2, 020-7557 7557; Ulrika Jarl 07773 328919, www.ulrikajarl.com. Wall-Light costs £265 and is available at Beyond the Valley, 26 Ganton Street, W1, 020-7437 7338

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