Craft, Design and Material Culture

I’m a curator, historian and writer who specialises in craft, design and material culture—the objects that make up our world but aren’t usually considered art. I'm especially interested in how craft responds to personal, political and social needs, and the role that making things plays in our identities and society.
I grew up in Sunderland in the Northeast of England, then studied History at Queen’s College, Oxford. I have an MA is Design History and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York, where I specialised in historiography, looking at how history can be made through objects (and pictures) rather than texts.
After curatorial roles at the V&A, Tower of London, and Teien Museum, Tokyo, since 2018 I have been Curator at the William Morris Gallery in London, where I have curated exhibitions including Art Without Heroes: Mingei (2024), Ashish: Fall in Love and Be More Tender (2023) William Morris and the Bauhaus (2019), Distant Fellowship: Morris and South Asia (2020) and Young Poland 1890-1918 (2021), which was awarded the AAH Curatorial Prize.
My publications include Art Without Heroes: Mingei (Yale University Press, 2024), chapters in Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (Lund Humphries, 2020) and Enlightenment Princesses (Yale, 2017), as well as numerous articles on architecture, material culture and design. I also contribute regularly to Apollo magazine.