The Smock Lounge Chair reinterprets traditional fabric manipulation techniques as sculptural furniture, celebrating the craft of hand stitching. The work received a Special Mention at the inaugural House & Garden Craft Prize in 2026 and was exhibited at Sotheby's during London Craft Week. Made entirely from natural materials, the chair's timber frame is built up using traditional upholstery methods - layers of coconut fibres, horsehair, hessian and calico - before being dressed in a hand-pleated ivory cotton drapery. Some 60 metres of deadstock cotton make up the drapery alone, bringing to light the colossal scale of surplus fabric generated by the fashion industrial complex.

The chair's fabric layers contain over 18,000 individual hand stitches. Each one honours the history of stitching as a quietly radical act, used as a tool for survival, repair, protest and the passing down of memories and skills through generations of women. Hundreds of tiny gathers create complex forms, with pleated pockets stuffed with loose organic wool to produce soft, irregular bulges and contours that ripple and swell across the surface like a rolling landscape.

The Smock Lamp is made from a welded stainless steel structure with a hand-smocked ivory cotton shade, matching the chair. When illuminated, the pleated cotton allows fragments of light to filter through its folds, creating patterns of light and shadows across the surface. The edges of both pieces are left deliberately raw and unfinished with threads unravelling, whilst lengths of waxed thread hang from the frame offering a glimpse into the process.

Developed for Collect 2026 at Somerset House and exhibited with Max Radford Gallery.

Photos by Will Edgecombe