When designer-maker Poppy Booth first rocked up at Kingston University, she wasn’t sure the world needed more designers. Having studied furniture and cabinet making at the Boat Building Academy and at École Boulle respectively, the driven and technically accomplished Poppy felt comfortable with functional, useful craftsmanship but found that the consumerist nature of the design industry – plus its obsessions with meaningless adornment, what she calls “hundreds and thousands” – jarred with her ethics.
But pushed by her tutors, Poppy discovered she was not alone. Discovering other rebellious spirits like Italian self-build master Enzo Mari, she realised that this resistance to consumption could be one of her strongest selling points. Now her work marries the exacting detail of a carpenter with a playful, often humorous attitude. At New Designers she’ll be exhibiting her Soap Box for Nihilists, a rebellion against a brief set by London furniture shop SCP, and Megaphone for Introverts, which allows shy but politically minded protestors to have their say without showing their faces.
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