What I love about Britain, as a seafaring island nation, is its ability to look well beyond its shores and the way that it assimilates and absorbs people of different cultures and the influences that they bring.

At the same time, I also love the British inventiveness and self-reliance built from its own inward country attitudes, culture, history and traditions. It is a healthy mix of the “inside” and “outside” influences that make Britain and British design, so interesting.

Good design (and engineering) has always been about problem solving and making things “better” but what sets British designers apart, I think, is their pragmatic approach and the balance that they seem to achieve between the visual form and the end use function.

Behind most British designs is a kind of “protestant ethos” that celebrates simplicity, fitness for purpose and proportion… understated beauty combined with practicality… products that are made well and work as they were intended.

Great design makes the function so obvious that you cannot imagine an item in another form and for that reason, it doesn’t need inventing – often with the aesthetics emerging from the function of the object itself.

In an age where products often resort to cheap tricks or exalted gestures to get noticed, there are some products where that impact can be achieved through sophisticated forms and details that clearly reveal the fruitful legacy of tradition and forerunners in design history.

Sheffield company Joseph Marples manufacture joiners’ tools, such as: brass inlaid rosewood & ebony braces, boxwood spoke-shaves, beech planes, gauges and squares, all beautifully made and great to use.

The business has remained within the family to this date and though modern technology has been used in some instances, many of the traditions of manufacturing fine hand tools has remained the same using selected materials and hand finishing, indeed the same threads are used in the gauges as were used over 100 years ago.

Certainly, their commitment to both the quality of materials and manufacturing remains undiminished, as evidenced by their antique tools produced long ago seen in sheds and workshops across the country.

I inherited both my father’s and grandfathers’ oval beech-handled screwdrivers with their precision ground tempered steel blades for a great grip and lasting edge. All of which are as good today as they were tens of years ago.

These are the products that have subtle signals, operate intuitively and couple grace with the ordinary: these products that don’t “shout” but are appreciated by the owner or wearer to years to come.

Pull on a Barbour coat, for example, with its evocative smell and corduroy collar, and we immediately think of long walks over wet hillsides, of point-to-points, muddy dogs and shooting weekends, so its functional qualities of weather protection, imbue us with subliminal emotional qualities too and with it, brand affinity based on positive experiences and memories.

The same qualities apply, when putting up an umbrella by Fox Umbrellas, carrying a Chapman weekend bag, wearing a Lock & Company hat, walking in NPS/Solovair boots, keeping warm with a Guernsey jumper or sporting a pair of Dents leather gloves.

To prove a point, in March 2015 Samsung Galaxy S6 conducted a survey, The Great British Design Study, to decide what were the best 25 British designs as voted for by the British public.

The list included such functional and iconic designs as Sir Giles Gilbert-Scott’s red phone boxes, the Routemaster double decker bus, the Spitfire aircraft, Jaguar E-Type car, the wellington boot, the London Taxi and Underground tube map. All items produced with function in mind, but are beautiful by design, none the less.

The list also revealed how great design can spark strong emotions, as three in four participants said that home-grown creations like the Raleigh Chopper, Concorde and Dr Martens boots made them feel nostalgic. Designs that start as a product, but quickly become part of a nation’s visual DNA.

Some of the brands on my “radar” are ones that your ancestors would recognise over 200 years ago and some are new brands that follow a sense of tradition in everything that they do, even though it’s using the latest technology. The existence of all of the brands on the list relies on creating beautiful, practical products that will last.

It is worth remembering, that 90% of clothing that we buy in Britain is outsourced when it comes to production in order to cut costs, but this often means sacrifices in the brand’s sustainability as well as in the quality of the clothes produced.

When you buy a British made product, you are not only choosing something that is generally better for the environment, but you are also supporting the local people where these British companies are located.

If you are looking for products that will last, have great craft and subtle design, the “Made in Britain” label is still the byword for quality and good taste.... and long may that continue!