Catherine Aitken is a London-based furniture designer whose work I spotted at this year’s designjunction at the London Design Festival. Her work stood out for both its simplicity in form – the clean lines and skeletal frames – and the complex patterns that subtly, but beautifully decorate parts of her pieces.
Fade Stool was my favourite of hers, a pretty little piece of furniture that wraps lengths of cotton cord around a plywood plate for the seat and powder-coated steel base for the legs. The design explores a gradual change in intensity (hence the name Fade) by increasing and decreasing the levels of colour of the cord as well as the spacing of the thread from the inside out.
Another favourite was the Hexagon side table, made up of a tightly slotted together ash dowels. The tables neatly fit onto the utilitarian steel base as well as to each other.
Images above: James Champion
Images above: ESW Shelving, developed in collaboration with David Murphy for Edinburgh Sculpture Workshops, photo by Gordon Burniston
