As part of the London Design Festival 2025, artist and ceramicist Emma Louise Payne opens the doors of her five-storey London atelier, Seventy-Six, to unveil The Objects We Live By – an immersive exhibition exploring how design shapes, inhabits, and becomes part of our everyday lives.
Located just moments from Hyde Park, Seventy-Six offers a quietly poetic setting for this intimate exhibition. Each room plays host to new works by one of nine invited designers and makers – some longtime collaborators, others newly encountered voices. With no plinths, no spotlights, and no traditional display mechanisms, the objects are placed as they might be found in a lived-in space: a textile draped over a chair, a vessel on a kitchen shelf, a light catching the morning sun.
“This exhibition is not about showcasing objects as isolated artefacts, but about understanding how they settle into our lives and surroundings – how they become part of our daily rituals and spatial rhythms,” says Emma Louise Payne. “It’s about asking what design means when it is lived with, not just looked at.”
The exhibition invites visitors to experience each object in its natural context – through proximity, use, and atmosphere – and to consider how our lives are subtly shaped by the pieces we choose to live alongside.
Study
In the fully accessible basement space, each designer will also be represented through an index display, offering background on their work and a featured design object for closer study.
Exhibiting brands and designers:
Granite + Smoke
In collaboration with British rug makers Roger Oates Design, Granite + Smoke presents a new collection of hand-tufted rugs made in Devon, UK. Crafted from 100% British blended wool, the rugs feature specially developed yarn spun and dyed in Yorkshire. Sculpted by hand to create a three-dimensional pile effect, each piece blends traditional techniques with cutting-edge technology. Multiple hand-finishing processes allow for varied surface textures and pile heights, resulting in richly tactile rugs that celebrate geometry, craft, and heritage.
Granite & Smoke, Infinite Loops Rug, British Wool, 2400mm x 1920mm, £2,819.00
NAT MAKS & Brogan Cox
Marrying fluid ink marbling with refined woodworking, the TIDES collection is a debut collaboration between artist NAT MAKS and designer Brogan Cox. Inspired by Margate’s tidal landscapes, the collection includes High Tide and Low Tide – two table designs crafted from English-grown sycamore. Each piece is CNC machined, hand-finished, and dipped in marbled ink to evoke the motion of waves. The result is sculptural, functional furniture that gives new life to an often-overlooked material.
Studio B.C. Joshua
Minneapolis-born, London-based designer Blake Carlson-Joshua explores the emotional and tactile potential of furniture. Balancing raw materiality with refined craftsmanship, his work invites connection and engagement. By fusing authenticity with precision, Carlson-Joshua creates pieces that feel immediate and timeless. For this exhibition, he presents his Dogtrot Side Table, alongside a suspended Topo Lamp, part of an ongoing series of hanging lighting works made from sculpted pulp.
Atelier Thirty Four
Founded in 2022 by Dave Britton and Harry Hasson, Atelier Thirty Four introduces Gradini – a modular candlestick series combining cast and extruded aluminium. Precision meets imperfection through sand-cast components and industrially extruded tubes, offering subtle variations in each piece. Designed for visual balance and flexibility, Gradini reflects the studio’s ethos of honest materials, process-driven design, and quiet expressiveness rooted in modern craft.
Daniel Mullen
Based in Los Angeles, Daniel Mullen is an interdisciplinary designer working at the intersection of textile innovation, material research, and fine art. With academic roots in art history and design from New York and Copenhagen, Mullen’s practice bridges aesthetics and materiality. For the exhibition, he presents Columnar Vase I and II – sculptural vessels that reflect his ongoing exploration of volume, structure, and surface through a cross-disciplinary lens.
David Irwin
Known for thoughtful, function-led design, David Irwin presents work from his long-standing collaborations with Another Country and Heathfield & Co. Marking its 10th anniversary, the Hardy Chair is a central feature – originally created in 2015 using Windsor techniques and inspired by Dorset heritage and Thomas Hardy’s poetry. Also on view is Oslin, a modular brass lighting system inspired by branching natural forms. Both pieces showcase Irwin’s signature balance of craftsmanship, innovation, and timeless appeal.
Emma Louise Payne
Curator and host of the exhibition, Emma Louise Payne expands her London Plane collection to include bowls, mugs, and pendant lights. Known for her organic approach to ceramic design, Payne’s tableware is complemented by custom bathroom tiles and lighting installed throughout the atelier. Her work reflects a deep commitment to texture, utility, and the quiet beauty of everyday rituals.
Gather Glass
Gather Glass is a contemporary glassmaking studio known for its exploration of fluid form, transparency, and colour through a distinctly handcrafted approach. For The Objects We Live By exhibition, they will present a series of table lamps that capture the spontaneity and motion of molten glass. Shaped in the moment rather than by strict design, each lamp embraces the natural flow of the material, resulting in forms that seem to dance and balance with poetic fragility. Drawing on classical silhouettes, the lamps are brought to life with Gather Glass’s signature bold, saturated colours – transforming them from utilitarian objects into sculptural celebrations of process, colour, and the fleeting act of creation.
Opening dates and times:
Saturday 13th – Sunday 21st September, 1 – 6pm
Address: 76 Sussex Square, London London W2 2SS
www.emmalouisepayne.com
See also: Nicole Wassall; Retrospectively
