Magazine

Emerging Weaver of the Year Award

West Midlands weaver Leonie Edmead has won the 2025 Emerging Weaver of the Year Award, supported by Rose Uniacke, including a special presentation at Wentworth Woodhouse on Monday 17 November 2025.

The award, now in its third year, celebrates an emerging weaver who has made an outstanding start to their craft career. The winner is highly skilled amongst their peers, whilst raising the perceived value of their craft through sharing and awareness raising. They have given themselves a fantastic chance of achieving long-term success, perhaps overcoming disadvantage or setbacks along the way.

Leonie Edmead’s practice is uniquely focused on exploring Caribbean identity and history, blending traditional techniques with contemporary influences. She is now based at Cockpit Studios in London, creating textiles that tell underrepresented cultural narratives through vivid colour and pattern and has been recognised with the Worshipful Company of Weavers Scholarship and Clothworker’s Award.

Rose has long been committed to championing traditional skills and craftspeople. Over the years, she has nurtured relationships with an exceptional group of highly skilled artisans and craftspeople who have the experience, virtuosity and sensitivity to interpret her designs. Since 2021 Rose Uniacke has been supporting the Heritage Crafts Association through this award, as well as donating profits from her cushion collection and wall hangings made for London Craft Week.

Leonie will be in residence at our Fabric Showroom during London Craft Week in May

The Winter Show NYC - Collection

This year Rose Uniacke presented for the first time at The Winter Show in New York. While Rose has had many private commissions in America, not least of which is her recent reimagining of the Jane Hotel for San Vicente West Village, this is the first time that her distinct style and internationally acclaimed aesthetic was made available to the American general public.

Reminiscent of how gifts, in ancient times, were carried back and forth across what Homer called ‘the wine-dark sea’, given from king to king, Rose sent a collection of objects across the Atlantic worthy of a king in the same ancient spirit of homage and friendship - Rose’s own odyssey to New York.

Among the most imposing pieces on the stand was a large Gio Ponti writing desk, made to commission in Milan circa 1946. Italian walnut with the original black vinyl desk surface punched with polka dots, it stood on tapering legs finished in brass sabots. Its playful compatriot piece, a parchment gaming table by Paolo Buffa, inlaid with brass stars, has brass ashtrays and stands on slender, pin legs.

Equally striking was the collection of Axel Einar Hjorth sports cabin furniture, including twin cabinets made of stained Swedish pine, standing on pedestal bases. The centre of the stand was given to a monolithic dining table, hewn from a single Juerena tree trunk, by the ecologically avant-garde Brazilian architect and sculptor José Zanine Caldas. It was paired with eight chairs by Axel Einar Hjorth, perfectly complementary in their natural simplicity, their softly rounded, solid backs, studded with blackened iron rivets.

By contrast Jean Royère’s set of three white glass and brass nesting tables felt refined and elegantly sophisticated, balancing the open-air grandeur of the Swedish and Brazilian pieces with a flavour of mid-century Paris. A rare gilded parclose mirror from the early 18th century brought echoes of France under the ornate extravagance of the Sun King.

On the walls of the stand, Simone Prouvé’s pale triptych tapestry, soothed and calmed with its cloud-like, boulder forms in muted blue-greys, enlivened with tiny touches of red, along with delicate hangings by Peter Collingwood and a large 1920s Fortuny panel.

Lighting was provided by the masters of mid-century Scandinavia, including delicate four-shade pendants and a rare question-mark floor lamp, all by Poul Henningsen. Also from Scandinavia were a rare table lamp, by Paavo Tynell, its simple bent head like a drooping flower.

Finally, to bring the collection home, was an American Aesthetic Movement mirror by the Herter brothers, who were German immigrants designing and working in New York in the late 19th century. Its striking golden marquetry, set against a polished black surface, recalls the Japanese lacquerware that was such a strong influence on the Aesthetic Movement.

The stand, with its ebonised oak floor and wall-panels upholstered in Rose Uniacke Raw Umber velvet, was a showcase for all that is finest in European design, with a particular focus on the 20th century, collected and put together with Rose’s characteristic erudition and eye for quality of craftsmanship. Her unique ability to combine the different aesthetics of each place - the austerity of Scandinavia with the grandeur and playfulness of Italy and the refinement of France - resulted in a collection of unusual harmony, an atmosphere of exquisite quality, serenity and intimacy.

Rose Uniacke was honoured to receive both ‘Outstanding Booth Design’ and an ‘Exhibition Highlight’ award for the ’Triptyque Panneau’ by Simone Prouvé, at this year’s Winter Show.

Click here to discover the collection

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