At Stockholm Furnishings Honest 2025 maker and making come centre stage

Because the honest’s twentieth Visitor of Honour, Faye Toogood provided guests a glimpse into the uncooked and formative levels of design by means of her exhibition Manufracture

Images by Toogood that includes Manufracture

Phrases by Jessica-Christin Hametner

Faye Toogood isn’t afraid to push boundaries. Her work – from furnishings to interiors to trend – typically defies the mainstream in favour of experimentation. This 12 months, as Visitor of Honour at Stockholm Furnishings Honest 2025, the British designer took this ethos one step additional with Manufracture, an exhibition that put the uncooked and the unfinished on full show.

Set towards the honest’s curated backdrop, Toogood’s archive of maquettes took centre stage in an expression of daring vulnerability. Sketches and early prototypes sat alongside her newest furnishings assortment, Assemblage 8, as Toogood turned the highlight onto the inventive course of itself – the early fashions, errors and works that by no means fairly made it.

‘I’m basically opening my cabinets, my processes, my works – issues that often don’t get proven,’ says the designer. ‘It makes me really feel weak. There are unfinished issues, issues that didn’t work, issues I nonetheless hope for sooner or later. However sharing this feels necessary to me. It’s been very cathartic,’ provides Toogood.

Images by Martin Brusewitz that includes Faye Toogood’s Manufracture

Greater than a retrospective, the exhibition provided a glimpse inside Toogood’s studio in the present day, laying naked her inventive course of to demystify designing and making in an more and more digitised world. But it surely additionally uncovered what designers typically conceal: the hesitations, uncertainties or emotions behind their work – the qualities that make them human.

‘This exhibition is about questions that I’ve,’ explains Toogood. ‘Can AI design a greater Faye Toogood chair than Faye Toogood? What’s my position as a designer in the present day? Are we going to let go of emotional intelligence for synthetic intelligence?’, ponders Toogood.

‘I consider that the brand new technological age, the Web 3.0, must make us extra human, not much less. We have to fall again in love with nature and humankind,’ she says. ‘I’m making an attempt to make sense of AI by evaluating it to the start of pictures within the early twentieth century when all of the sudden it felt like there was no want for portray anymore.’

Images by Toogood that includes Faye Toogood

‘Nonetheless, within the historical past of artwork, it gave start to abstraction, so maybe arising now’s a really inventive, summary second for us. However possibly to discover a new manner of working, we have to look again at how we used to work.’

Toogood has constructed her profession on rejecting the often-rigid definitions of what a designer must be. Learning effective artwork and artwork historical past, she then grew to become {a magazine} editor and stylist earlier than transitioning to interiors and trend.

‘I don’t like labels,’ displays Toogood. ‘My designs are sometimes described as multi or interdisciplinary, but when I dare, I push myself to say maybe now I’m extra of an experimental designer engaged on the fringes of business and design.’

Images by Toogood that includes Faye Toogood’s Manufracture

Her work is commonly marked by a way of fluidity and materiality – folded, crumpled, carved or sculpted, Toogood’s designs embody a creative high quality and, very like Manufracture, emphasise the worth of the handmade.

‘I grew up with a father who was a scientist and a mathematician,’ she says. ‘He was on the forefront of computing and expertise within the 60s and 70s. However in his spare time, he made ceramics, bowls and the plates on the desk at our household kitchen,’ shares Toogood.

‘I even have a mom who’s a maker, and he or she made the whole lot from scratch utilizing her personal palms – from the bread on the desk to the garments on her again. So, from an early age, I witnessed a human need to blur the boundaries between craft and business.’

Images by Martin Brusewitz that includes Faye Toogood’s Manufracture

With tasks spanning design, artwork and trend, Toogood’s method aligned with Stockholm Furnishings Honest’s 2025 theme, Connecting the Dots, which merged totally different inventive fields and explored the cross-disciplinary influences shaping modern design in the present day.

‘We wished to indicate extra views on design than simply the normal half,’ shares Daniel Heckscher, the newly appointed director of Stockholm Furnishings Honest and Stockholm Design Week. ‘With Manufracture, we tried to speak and present how we’re taking Stockholm Furnishings Honest into the long run.’

Following her latest WOMANIFESTO! set up at Maison&Objet in Paris, which celebrated her studio’s playful experimentation and artistic spirit, Toogood continued her imaginative and prescient in Stockholm. There, she hoped to encourage guests to ponder the objects round them and the human palms that made them.

Images by Toogood that includes Faye Toogood’s Manufracture

‘Yesterday, I realised I ought to have maybe titled the exhibition Manufuture and never Manufracture,’ displays Toogood. ‘I’m feeling extra constructive now about my position inside manufacturing, manufacturing and craftsmanship,’ explains Toogood. ‘We have to take a step in direction of humanising manufacturing to embrace change.’

Highlighting the connection between maker and materials, Manufracture captured the spirit that Toogood is taking into the long run and displayed how she embraces course of over perfection. The clay moulds and unfinished edges weren’t flaws however proof of creativity, emotion and our shared humanity – and the hand was on the coronary heart of all of it.  

‘The ability of the hand, craft and industrial expertise would be the future. We aren’t being changed by a robotic, however it’s within the energy of those two intelligences collectively that we will discover one thing rewarding,’ concludes Toogood. ‘I hope to proceed taking part in to attach individuals. I feel that’s my position, however I additionally know that this “luddite” must software up for the long run.’

Get a curated assortment of design and structure information in your inbox by signing as much as our ICON Weekly e-newsletter

Tagged as Lengthy Learn, Stockholm Design Week 2025