FEATURE
Uncommon Ancestor
Type
Interview
Contact
UNCOMMON ANCESTOR TURNS FAMILY MEMORIES INTO EMBROIDERED HEIRLOOMS
Uncommon Ancestor embroiders people’s memories directly into furniture. Women have told stories through thread for centuries, and the London-based practice picks up that tradition somewhere we didn’t expect it: stitched into the fabric of solid walnut furniture, in pieces designed from the start to be handed down.
The signature piece is the Story Stool, a footstool whose flat surface becomes a canvas for a client’s memories. There are also Memory Boxes, cabinets of curiosities with bespoke embroidered lids made to hold your most meaningful things, and jewellery trays lined in velvet with motifs drawn from the Victorian language of floriography.
Every commission starts with a conversation about the flora, fauna, and objects that hold a client’s memories. Sometimes clients arrive with a fully formed picture, sometimes just fragments to brainstorm around.
Uncommon Ancestor brings together illustration, furniture, and embroidery, three pretty distinct disciplines. How did the idea to combine them come about, and where did the practice begin for you?
I originally trained as an architect at The Bartlett – a school known for a more experimental and research-driven approach to design. I always enjoyed the research and after university I switched to working in behavioural science, a job rooted in understanding people and their stories.
Alongside my day job I honed a passion for making things. Building on the design skills I had already learnt, I sought-out new more hands-on skills, from welding to joinery and I started to experiment with embroidery.
Two years ago I took a sabbatical and during that time I made the first Story Stool for my husband, stitching our shared memories into the fabric as a wedding gift. The piece led to new commissions for friends and suddenly I was making beautiful things that are underpinned by human understanding and storytelling.
You start each commission with a client’s story and a conversation about the flora, fauna, and objects that might capture their memories. What is that process like, and how do you translate those conversations into the final embroidered motifs?
I love this part, some people come with really refined ideas and others want to brainstorm. I usually ask for reference images as I really want to capture what’s in someone’s head.
I’m working on a beautiful brief at the moment with a very specific species of eagle and a beloved pet – both very important to get right! Clients are usually surprised how close I can get to their favourite things.
Next I’ll create a series of illustrations and layout proposals – these may go through several rounds until we have a signed off design. The final motif designs are then digitised and sampled. I spend a lot of time choosing thread colours and stitch types. It usually takes a few rounds of sampling to get the combinations right.
Your work draws on a deep history of symbolism and iconography, from Renaissance pomegranates to Vanitas candles to the language of floriography. How do you research and choose the symbols that go into a piece?
I’m lucky that I live in London so I have access to many galleries and museums. From the obvious – The National Gallery and its collection of still lives, to the not so obvious – Dennis Severs House in East London, a time-capsule of a building with a recent floral and natural history installation inspired by 17th-century Dutch paintings.
Can you walk us through how a piece actually comes together, from the illustrations through to the embroidery stitched in Soho and the frame making and upholstery across East London? We’d love to understand that whole chain of making.
It’s always been important to me that each part of a Story Stool is made in London. I work closely with each craftsperson so having their workshops nearby makes the process much more collaborative.
Embroidery sampling and stitch-out happens at a studio in Soho. We use an embroidery machine to make sure the stitching is strong enough to withstand regular everyday use as a footstool.
At the same time, the frame-making takes place at a workshop in East London. All the pieces of walnut start off as raw planks that have to be planed and rested, so the process takes skill and time. Sometimes people will ask to change the size of a frame to fit a specific space, so I’ll work closely with the team to chat through design changes before they start.
Finally the pieces are assembled, crated and shipped around the world.
All of your frames are solid walnut. What draws you to that material, and how does it shape the final pieces?
All of my furniture is made from solid walnut, a dense slow-grown hardwood. My favourite thing about it is the grain. Each piece has its own distinct pattern, meaning that no two frames will ever be the same.
A Story Stool is meant to be a time capsule passed down through generations. Has making these changed the way you think about furniture, memory, or the objects we choose to keep?
I grew up close to a large antiques market where I would go most weekends with my mum. Over time, I collected many pieces, often wondering about the hands they had passed through to end up there. I guess this is where I first started to think about the memories in objects and what we choose to keep. Maybe my pieces will stay in a family, or maybe they’ll end up in an antiques market – the stories behind the embroideries lost to time and reinterpreted by new owners.
Photos by Anna Waletzko, Simon Bevan, Justin De Souza, Mat Maitland
