Throughout his career Rod Bamford has worked between art, craft and design. Bamford exhibited his large ceramic sculptures, "Shard" at Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Sydney in 1989. One of them is now in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum. Bamford and partner, Janine Brody, established Cone 9 in 1993 making tableware and manufacturing and marketing Soft Metals, a metalic finished ceramic tile, winning the National new product design award at Designex in 1999.
As a winner of the Australia Council's 2005 MMM (Maker to Manufacturer to Market) grant, Bamford chose to capitalise on his experience of earlier design and manufacture projects. These included working with Manfredi Enterprises and Douwe Egberts on a suite of contemporary coffee cups for the launch of Espresso di Manfredi and a range of tableware for restaurants.
Bamford is an award winning designer who has been practising for 25 years. He is an elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics. His work is represented in public and private museums, the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. Overseas he is represented in the Kunstgewerbermuseum in Germany, the Wocek International Collection, Korea, and the John Michael Kohler Foundation in America. He is currently lecturing in Design Studies at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney.