A stone’s throw from Hyde Park in west London, an elegant post-war townhouse turns into an unusual exhibition space for London Design Festival this year. Both family home and work studio of ceramicist Emma Louise Payne, the building becomes an immersive showcase of crafted design pieces for ‘The Objects We Live By’ (13–21 September 2025).
'The Objects We Live By': design and everyday life
Bringing together the work of nine makers, the curated group exhibition places one object in each room of the house, inviting the visitor to explore design in a natural domestic setting.
'Every room is activated – from the basement studio up to the attic,’ says Payne. Named Seventy-Six, the five-storey house in Paddington is ‘a place designed to accommodate both work and family,’ she adds. ‘The fact that it is a domestic setting, as well as a commercial space, adds to the theatre of this exhibition and helps demonstrate how design is a part of our everyday lives. The whole point is to see how design pieces sit within a real, lived-in environment, with all the quirks and compromises of a family home.’
Work on show includes a colourful hand-tufted rug with striking geometrical design by Granite + Smoke in collaboration with rug maker Roger Oates Design, a wooden stool with hand-painted aluminium inlays by London-based Studio B.C. Joshua, and molten glass table lamps by glassware studio Gather.
The Tides collection by artist Nat Maks and designer Brogan Cox – sycamore tables dipped in colourful marbled ink – are also featured, after a successful debut at London Craft Week earlier this year.
Other makers featured include Los Angeles-based designer and artist Daniel Mullin, industrial design studio Atelier Thirty Four, Newcastle-based designer David Irwin and Payne herself – showcasing everything from sculptural vases and lighting to candlesticks and tableware.
‘I invited friends and collaborators with distinct practices, from furniture to textiles to hybrid art and design,’ says Payne. ‘There is a mix of artisans I have worked with before, and then others who I have long admired and now relish the opportunity to collaborate with. Each designer offers something unique and has been chosen for a specific room, so their work feels at home in the space.’
Focusing on design in a domestic setting, rather than a white-cube gallery space, allows the visitor to understand how objects take on lives after they are made, and play a role in ours.
‘Our homes are portraits of our lives,’ says Payne. ‘They contain souvenirs from holidays, inherited oddities, practical purchases, and design pieces we can’t live without.’ How and where we place these objects around a house, she adds, ‘signals something about how we live and what we value’.
‘The Objects We Live By’ is on show at Seventy-Six, 76 Sussex Square, London W2 2SS from 13 to 21 September 2025. Find out more at londondesignfestival.com
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