Number One Designer in Britain: Ilse Crawford

July 15, 2016

Ilse Crawford has been chosen as the most successful designer in Britain, and named as Designer of the Year, according to Maison & Objet Paris honour selection, which will be in September 2016 fair. She will be the very first Designer of the Year to handle the scenography of the Designers’ Studio, in Hall 8.

Ilse Crawford is a designer, an art director, a curator, a lecturer and an author of three books which are named in order with Sensual Home, Home Is Where the Heart Is, and A Frame for Life. She was a member of the Most
Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014, for her services to interior
design. In 2015, she received a Doctorate honoris causa from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

She had begun her career as a journalist and she was the founding editor in chief of Elle Decoration UK. After over a decade in magazines, she came up with a mission to put human needs and desires back at the center of the design, she founded her multi-disciplinary practice Studioilse in 2001.

Soho House Group was where she had worked for ten years, she gave her talents to this international network of exclusive private clubs, hotels, restaurants and spas. During that time, she completed a great number of projects, which are respectively; a restaurant, Cecconi’s, and the club of the Electric Cinema, both is located in London, the Babington House hotel in Somerset, the Soho House hotel, in New York City.

There are countless project, which carry the name of Ilse Crawford over, and one of them is Ett Hem, that is shown above, she used her talent to reveal the magic on this project, in Stockholm, where she turned an arts and crafts building into a hotel, run like a family home, in 2012. The following year, her vision turned Duddell’s a private club in Hong Kong, into a collector’s house.

Also in the year of 2015, she began a collaboration with IKEA which transposes her philosophy into a democratic design. The Sinnerlig collection is a line of lamps, accessories, and furniture, everyday useful pieces that celebrate the tactility of natural materials.

Recently, Ilse Crawford is busy to be the founder of the Man and Well-being Department at the Design Academy Eindhoven, she curated an exhibition of students work on the sense of touch during the Milan Design Week. At Salone del Mobile, Studioilse unveiled ‘Perching’ a family of stools designed in collaboration with Artifort. As for interior projects, Studioilse completed the first Aesop shop in Copenhagen in April and Cathay Pacific’s business class lounge in Hong Kong opens in May.