As the fair’s 20th Guest of Honour, Faye Toogood offered visitors a glimpse into the raw and formative stages of design through her exhibition Manufracture
Photography by Toogood featuring Manufracture
Words by Jessica-Christin Hametner
Faye Toogood isn’t afraid to push boundaries. Her work – from furniture to interiors to fashion – often defies the mainstream in favour of experimentation. This year, as Guest of Honour at Stockholm Furniture Fair 2025, the British designer took this ethos one step further with Manufracture, an exhibition that put the raw and the unfinished on full display.
Set against the fair’s curated backdrop, Toogood’s archive of maquettes took centre stage in an expression of bold vulnerability. Sketches and early prototypes sat alongside her latest furniture collection, Assemblage 8, as Toogood turned the spotlight onto the creative process itself – the early models, mistakes and works that never quite made it.
‘I am essentially opening my cupboards, my processes, my works – things that usually don’t get shown,’ says the designer. ‘It makes me feel vulnerable. There are unfinished things, things that didn’t work, things I still hope for in the future. But sharing this feels important to me. It’s been very cathartic,’ adds Toogood.
Photography by Martin Brusewitz featuring Faye Toogood’s Manufracture
More than a retrospective, the exhibition offered a glimpse inside Toogood’s studio today, laying bare her creative process to demystify designing and making in an increasingly digitised world. But it also exposed what designers often conceal: the hesitations, uncertainties or feelings behind their work – the qualities that make them human.
‘This exhibition is about questions that I have,’ explains Toogood. ‘Can AI design a better Faye Toogood chair than Faye Toogood? What is my role as a designer today? Are we going to let go of emotional intelligence for artificial intelligence?’, ponders Toogood.
‘I believe that the new technological age, the Internet 3.0, needs to make us more human, not less. We need to fall back in love with nature and humankind,’ she says. ‘I am trying to make sense of AI by comparing it to the birth of photography in the early 20th century when suddenly it felt like there was no need for painting anymore.’
Photography by Toogood featuring Faye Toogood
‘However, in the history of art, it gave birth to abstraction, so perhaps coming up now is a truly creative, abstract moment for us. But maybe to find a new way of working, we need to look back at how we used to work.’
Toogood has built her career on rejecting the often-rigid definitions of what a designer should be. Studying fine art and art history, she then became a magazine editor and stylist before transitioning to interiors and fashion.
‘I don’t like labels,’ reflects Toogood. ‘My designs are often described as multi or interdisciplinary, but if I dare, I push myself to say perhaps now I am more of an experimental designer working on the fringes of industry and design.’
Photography by Toogood featuring Faye Toogood’s Manufracture
Her work is often marked by a sense of fluidity and materiality – folded, crumpled, carved or sculpted, Toogood’s designs embody an artistic quality and, much like Manufracture, emphasise the value of the handmade.
‘I grew up with a father who was a scientist and a mathematician,’ she says. ‘He was at the forefront of computing and technology in the 60s and 70s. But in his spare time, he made ceramics, bowls and the plates on the table at our family kitchen,’ shares Toogood.
‘I also have a mother who is a maker, and she made everything from scratch using her own hands – from the bread on the table to the clothes on her back. So, from an early age, I witnessed a human desire to blur the boundaries between craft and industry.’
Photography by Martin Brusewitz featuring Faye Toogood’s Manufracture
With projects spanning design, art and fashion, Toogood’s approach aligned with Stockholm Furniture Fair’s 2025 theme, Connecting the Dots, which merged different creative fields and explored the cross-disciplinary influences shaping contemporary design today.
‘We wanted to show more perspectives on design than just the traditional part,’ shares Daniel Heckscher, the newly appointed director of Stockholm Furniture Fair and Stockholm Design Week. ‘With Manufracture, we tried to communicate and show how we’re taking Stockholm Furniture Fair into the future.’
Following her recent WOMANIFESTO! installation at Maison&Objet in Paris, which celebrated her studio’s playful experimentation and creative spirit, Toogood continued her vision in Stockholm. There, she hoped to encourage visitors to contemplate the objects around them and the human hands that made them.
Photography by Toogood featuring Faye Toogood’s Manufracture
‘Yesterday, I realised I should have perhaps titled the exhibition Manufuture and not Manufracture,’ reflects Toogood. ‘I am feeling more positive now about my role within manufacturing, production and craftsmanship,’ explains Toogood. ‘We need to take a step towards humanising manufacturing to embrace change.’
Highlighting the relationship between maker and material, Manufracture captured the spirit that Toogood is taking into the future and displayed how she embraces process over perfection. The clay moulds and unfinished edges were not flaws but proof of creativity, emotion and our shared humanity – and the hand was at the heart of it all.
‘The power of the hand, craft and industrial technology will be the future. We are not being replaced by a robot, but it is in the power of these two intelligences together that we can find something rewarding,’ concludes Toogood. ‘I hope to continue playing to connect people. I think that is my role, but I also know that this “luddite” needs to tool up for the future.’
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