“It feels like coming full circle,” says Bethan Laura Wood of returning to the Design Museum to stage her first UK solo show. The designer and artist, who will show more than 70 objects as part of the museum’s inaugural ‘Platform’ series, credits the institution with giving her an early springboard for her career, after she joined its cohort of designers-in-residence – then based at the former Shad Thames site – as a new graduate from the Royal College of Art. “Back in 2009, I was asked to make a piece of work that responded specifically to the location,” she explains, “so it’s very special to be coming back and interacting with the new space.”
Wood’s practice is diverse, spanning installations, furniture, lighting and jewellery, and ranges in scale from small, everyday domestic objects imbued with meaning to large, highly decorated textiles inspired by her travels. “I’m definitely someone who enjoys finding and collecting things,” she says. “I’ve always connected to learning through physicality, so for me, being a magpie around objects – for instance, by picking things up in flea markets around the world – is a way for me to understand the context of what goes in and out of a city’s culture. I love objects that tell a story, especially ones that connect very much to their time and place.”
The Design Museum show offers a snapshot of Wood’s changing practice over almost two decades, and is divided into three sections – ‘Desire’, ‘Adornment’ and ‘Hyperreality’ – that loosely reflect the key themes of her work. The first section explores how the appeal of certain material things can grow with repeated use, as seen in Wood’s project ‘Stain’ – a set of teacups on which the stain marks form intricately beautiful patterns. “It’s about the idea of use and reuse being a positive rather than a negative,” she explains.
While Wood does not present her work as explicitly environmentalist, much of it is geared towards sustainable thinking, such as her preoccupation with extending the lifespan of a product and with repurposing materials that would otherwise be wasted in the manufacturing cycle. “I’ve always been interested in how, as a society built on mass and volume, we can reassess or change our approach when needed,” she says. As such, she is drawn to things that blur the divide between the natural and the man-made, or that she can transform from by-products into keepsakes. Her ‘Meisen’ furniture series, for example, is made from sheets of wood veneer that usually only exist in this form at the mid-point of the production process, yet whose rippling waves of colour make them objects of beauty in their own right.
Indeed, colour and pattern are ubiquitous in Wood’s practice, which is as joyful as it is erudite. Her most recent project, the ‘Travelling Bluestocking Salon’ series, saw her draw inspiration from the 18th-century feminist Bluestocking group to create a range of vibrant pieces incorporating techniques traditionally associated with female-led crafts, such as quilting and appliqué. The striking patterns on her ‘Kaleidoscope-o-Rama’ rugs, made from hand-dyed yarn woven into abstract shapes, speak to the complexity of women’s history, while doubling as exquisite designs. “All of my work has a kind of visual and thematic layering that I hope means it’s open to multiple interpretations,” says Wood. “I’d like it to fuel conversation, but not in an aggressive or divisive way. Ultimately, I always hope to bring joy.”
‘Platform: Bethan Laura Wood’ is at the Design Museum from 14 February until January 2026 and is free to visit.
