WAYS OF SEEING: Emma Burns

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Launched for London Design Festival and London Craft Week 2020 by The New Craftsmen, WAYS OF SEEING is a collaborative project that brought together maker and interior designer to celebrate new collections from The New Craftsmen and their makers.

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We invited three prestigious interior design studios to explore their interpretation of these new collections within an interior. They included:

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Maria Speake, Founder of Retrouvius
\nEmma Burns, Senior Design Director at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler; and
\nSasha von Meister and Tom Bartlett, Directors of Waldo Works

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Each interior designer developed their own unique scheme and room concept that showcased their individual personality and exquisite taste, whilst highlighting new pieces from The New Craftsmen makers’ collections.

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Over a 6-week period we explored these three imagined interiors, the collections they celebrate and the distinct viewpoints on craft they represent. \n

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Emma Burns is the Senior Design Director of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler. Her ability to absorb the new and re-interpret it in a classically elegant context is evident in all of her designs. Emma's interiors are always deeply comfortable and personal.

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For her space, Emma took inspiration from poet and writer, Vita Sackville-West’s writing room in the Elizabethan tower at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent.

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Instantly drawn to Alfred Newall’s Bobbin furniture, Emma has used both the dining and console table in her interior. These pieces form part of Alfred’s new Bobbin Collection, which focuses on simple furniture silhouettes with traditional, elaborately turned legs; combining an antique appeal with a playful modern aesthetic.

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Emma has selected a pair of Pembroke Chairs designed by Sarah Kay and hand painted by Pedro da Costa Felgueiras and Sue Skeen’s Plank Settle in the corner of the room to add structured seating to the scheme, softened with a Greek squab in the block printed Toile de Rhone by Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler.

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Fully embracing The New Craftsmen’s wide catalogue of makers, Emma has also curated a mix of harmonious pieces to create a room of humble elegance. A flower-filled Sussex Cuckmere Trug sits atop the rush matting - a symbolic nod to Vita Sackville-West’s conviction that ‘a flowerless room is a room without a soul’, something Emma Burns whole-heartedly agrees with. \n

\n \nEmma uses playful and organic shaped objects in the room including the Wobble Ceiling Light by Alexandra Robinson, the bronze patinated Lichen Mirror by Charlotte Kingsnorth and an assortment of Polly Fern’s Romantic plates hanging on the wall. \n \n

“To quote Vita, ‘I like muddling things up.’ She was speaking of gardens, and a room is no different.”

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Emma Burns – Senior Design Director at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler
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