Australian history told through a teapot

Sydney-based designer and former Brit Insurance Design Award nominee, Trent Jansen has created a tea service to tell the story of a young British man named George Briggs who arrived in Austraila as a 15 year old free settler in 1805. The Briggs Family Tea Service records Briggs' marriage and subsequent family with his Tasmanian Aboriginal wife Wortermoetyenner.

The tea service commissioned by Broached Commissions represents the turbulent nature of the Bass Straight in the north-east of Tasmania during the early years of colonisation and is a physical amalgamation of the life native Australians like Wortermoetyenner were forced to adopt to survive the cultural collisions they were faced with at the time.

Jansen travelled to Tasmania to research life at the time of the colonisation and met with descendants of Briggs and Wortermoetyenner. "The one thing I came away with from this trip is that there is no one historical truth," Jansen tells Phaidon. "And that (like anything) history is open to interpretation. It was my interpretation of these individuals that eventually formed The Briggs Family Tea Service, with each piece of the set being shaped by my understanding of the lives that they led. They are in essence a series of biographical objects."

George Briggs' rough and ready character, originally from Barnstable in England takes the form of a porcelain teapot with an elegant spout but a gnarly, organic body and handle. The form was inspired by roots that settlers were forced to eat in times of hardship. Wortermoetyenner, an important member of local royalty for the Pairrebeenne people, is represented by the sugar bowl influenced by a water carrier with a handle and lid derived from the work of French and British porcelain houses of the period.

The three youngest children are manifested as tea cups and the couples eldest daughter is represented by the milk jug and takes on characteristics of both parents heritage - the wallaby skin, her mothers and the refined porcelain handle and lid, her fathers. Watch the video above to hear Jansen talk more about The Briggs Family Tea Service.

Trent Jansen with his 3-D Stencil

Jansen, who features in &Fork, graduated from the College of Fine Arts in Sydney and trained under product and interior designer Marcel Wanders in 2004. He has since worked on sustainable designs reusing road signs to create benches, tables and bike reflectors as well as his pieces for Broached Commissions which are influenced by Australia's historical and contemporary ways of living. In 2009, Jansen was nominated for a Brit Insurance Design Award for 3-D Stencil which uses expansion foam to create three-dimensional artworks on the street.

Trent Jansen's 3-D Stencils along a street in Melbourne

Jansen's work has always has a strong historical narrative to it. "History interests me. Perhaps this comes from living in a country with such a diverse one. It is around 220 years since Australia was colonised and its history since then is a complex and often horrific one, but pre-colonial history is equally fascinating to me. I feel incredibly lucky to live in a country that still remembers its Indigenous background."

Jansen spend most of his time in the countryside outside of Sydney but returns to the city to run a gallery with fellow designer Henry Wilson. The Drying Green - the colloquial term used during the early 1900s to describe its location in Sydney's oldest suburb which was used by the community as a place for drying clothes - is currently undergoing renovation, but will shortly resume to being a hub for encouraging conceptually rich design internationally and from the local area.

The Drying Room gallery before it's renovation with Trent Jansen's Sign Benches on display

Jansen is keen to broadcast that good design has a place in Australia: "There is a small, but growing design community in Australia. We certainly do not lack design magazines, design stores or designers," he tells Phaidon and he intends to continue referencing the country's rich heritage in his work."I've spent much of the past few years researching historical and contemporary elements of Australian identity. So many designers seem to take influence from Scandinavia, Holland and Italy, but I am trying to draw upon the place that has defined me, an incredibly unique country with a savage history and all of the idiosyncrasies that can only be bred in isolation."

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