Magazine
London Design Festival celebrates and promotes the city as a design capital of the world.
Once again, Rose Uniacke will participate in the 23rd edition of the festival by unveiling new products and hosting workshops at the Pimlico Road showrooms, where makers will showcase the intricate processes behind products, underscoring the brand’s commitment to excellence in craftsmanship and materiality.
13 & 15–20 September, 11am–4pm
The Rose Uniacke Felted Cashmere range will be celebrated for its embodiment of pared-back luxury. During London Design Festival, textile designer and Young Weaver of the Year 2024, Scarlett Farrer, will be in residence at the Fabric Shop, demonstrating this ancient felting process. Crafted from rare Mongolian cashmere, each piece is hand-felted using nomadic techniques that enhance its strength and texture. The cashmere is hand-combed to preserve its natural softness and warmth, honouring a heritage of craftsmanship passed down through generations. Existing pieces include bedspreads, cushions, blankets and accessories.
The Gallery will introduce new pieces to the Rose Uniacke silver collection - including a Cutlery range that celebrates the traditional excellence of silver. With clean lines and its lovely weight in hand, the design draws inspiration from an old English flatware set admired for many years by Rose. Grounded in tradition yet contemporary in form, the cutlery evokes natural movement, recalling the flow of water. The knives carry a subtle collar where blade meets handle; spoons blossom from slender stems into generous bowls; and three-tined forks offer a slim elegance that nods to their two-pronged beginnings, back in 4th-century ancient Byzantium. Each piece is hand-stamped, filed and polished. Functional yet refined, the collection is designed to age beautifully, developing a complex patina over time.
Also joining the collection of silverware is the Silver Lamp. Like a shy flower, with its modestly bowed shade, it is lightly influenced by the art nouveau movement, which took so much of its inspiration from natural forms. It is based on a simple line-drawing by Rose, of a single-stemmed flower, with its slender, curved stem, nodding blossom, and feminine base. Made of spun brass, using a technique first perfected by the ancient Egyptians, the lamp is hand-planished and plated with silver by Sheffield’s only remaining silver hammerer. The surface finish is dimpled, giving a softness to the way it reflects light, like breeze-ruffled water, implying the possibility of change and perfectly chiming with the natural forms of its initial inspiration. In keeping with this idea of nature and change, the lamp is an important part of our ‘living surfaces’ narrative, for which, the intention is to allow the silver to patinate; gently taking on, over time, a warm and complex antique tone. The interior of the shade is also gilded with 23-carat gold. This hidden surprise delivers a wonderful golden ambience once lit which is operated by a single push switch on its base.
Continuing Lighting, Rose Uniacke introduces the Skirt Light collection, crafted from brass and finished with a loosely pleated raw cotton skirt to balance the soft with the strong. This artisanal range of simple and elegant pendant lights and wall sconces draws inspiration from the Viennese Secessionist movement. Spearheaded by Gustave Klimt, the modernist movement held a belief in uniting art and design. Klimt was fascinated with fabric and its expressive potential. This is reflected not just in the exquisite flowing and overlapping robes, patterned kimonos, and glowing drapery of his paintings but in his own daily life, in the clothes that he and his fellow Secessionists wore. Each pendant is made of solid, patinated brass shaped into a slim band and hung from a brass ceiling-boss, on hand-dyed, braided cotton ropes. A single lightbulb sits within a drop of loosely pleated raw cotton that diffuses a warm, soft radiance. The unstructured canvas creates a creamy glow that almost has the quality of candlelight.
A White Spotlight is also introduced to the Lighting category, which is a directional wall light in hand-spun brass, and left unlacquered, allowing the colour to age over time.
Finally, the New Chair will be revealed during London Design Festival. This Regency-inspired dining chair, with its classic low swept arms and elevated rake, is a fusion of three of Rose's favourite chairs. The chair has a traditional beechwood frame with solid walnut legs. Both the front and back sabre legs have bevelled corners and are finished with a richly coloured wax. The arms have been cut low for relaxed dining and the squab seat cushion comprises of a comfortable feather and down fill. This chair is traditionally upholstered in the UK.
With its clean lines and its lovely weight in the hand, Rose Uniacke’s new cutlery range takes part of its inspiration from a set of old English silver flatware that Rose has owned and loved for many years.
Like so much of Rose’s design, grounded in the beauty of long tradition, but contemporary in its simplicity, her cutlery calls on natural forms. It reminds us of liquid movement, of the way that water pools and flows. The knives have just the hint of a collar where the traditional simplicity of the stainless steel blade meets the silver handle. The feel is comfortably weighted and balanced. The little uptick at the end of the handle nestles to the palm and the whole effect is contemporary and flowing. The spoons flower, from a beautifully slender stem, into a generous bowl and the forks, three tined, rather than four, have a length and a slim elegance that lightly recall their two-pronged beginnings, back in 4th century ancient Byzantium.
The cutlery is made in Sheffield, a town famous from the fourteenth century for its knife-making, in workshops with an uninterrupted and globally recognised tradition of excellence in silver. Elegantly functional and with balanced proportions, each piece is hand-stamped, filed and polished, and designed to evolve a complex and subtly characterful patina, over time.
The tableware comes in boxes of six, the servers in boxes of two, each plated to 35 microns.
