As part of Galvanize Sheffield festival of contemporary metal and the celebration of the centenary of Stainless Steel, Yorkshire Artspace artist David Appleyard undertook a residency at Ancon Building Products, an award winning local manufacturer who mainly fabricate products for the construction industry.  

The reason for this new collaboration was to create a seat for Museums Sheffield's Millennium Gallery.  Ancon generously contributed their time, expertise and materials to help David with his design ideas and development of the seat.  After trialling a number of prototypes and solving a number of problems with the help of production and project engineer Paul Fisher, the end product will go on display at Yorkshire Artspace Open Studios event on 15th and 16th November, before it will be donated to Museums Sheffield.

"This was a completely new way of working for me", says David.  "Normally I research a project, design a product and then look for a manufacturer to help me produce it.  This time I worked with the parameters of what was available at Ancon Building Products.  I thoroughly enjoyed learning about stainless steel as a material to work with and am grateful for the help received from Paul and the Ancon team.  It was a proper collaboration between an artist and engineer. I just hope that people like to sit on it now".

This project was a collaboration between Galvanize Sheffield, festival of contemporary metal, Ancon Building Products and 100 Years of Stainless Steel.  It was financially supported by Arts Council England, 100 Years of Stainless Steel and Ancon Building Products.