For Melbourne Design Week 2026, @objectmassive & @union.magazine are thrilled to present Table Manners.
To stage an exhibition of cutlery is to imagine a room full of mouths anticipating contact—lips closing over a rim, teeth grazing metal, the instinctive choreography between wrist and jaw.
During Melbourne Design Week, Table Manners convenes Belle Thierry, Hamish Munro, Hamish Donaldson, Julian Leigh May, Studio Kyss, Ryan Mueller, Sebastião Lobo, Soie Lait, Snelling Studio, Studio Yeodong Yun and Tai Snaith—each producing a one-off set distilled through the guiding principles of their own practice. Shown alongside selections from the @thekraftsman collection.
Florian Home
Thu 14 – Sun 17 May 2026
Curated by @objectmassive
Exhibition design by @streifen._
Presented by @union.magazine
Hosted by @florianhome.florianhome
Production by @b.ells___
Graphic design by @3z22j
Table Manners opens today.
The exhibition gathers designers who have each produced a singular set of cutlery distilled by the guiding principles of their practice, shown alongside historical and contemporary pieces from the Kraftsman collection, spanning centuries of making.
Exhibition design by Streifen—deliberately slippery sites of deferral and clarity—fingers, object, mouth.
At Florian Home, Carlton North – through Sunday.
Thursday to Saturday, 10am–5pm. Sunday, 10am–3pm. Free and open to all.
Images by @matthewmcquiggan@union.magazine@objectmassive@streifen._@florianhome.florianhome@b.ells___
The Kraftsman is a family business and each member of their operation has their own set, worn in, chosen and known. Arne and Nicolette collect fastidiously–they buy and sell, but the transaction feels secondary to the hunt. When we visited, we began in the kitchen and moved to the collection room, where they showed us a series of drawers that open to reveal subtle variations–elongated handles, narrow throats, Victorian sets, children’s sets, bowls that taper somewhat imperceptibly, and their attention to history and context between the objects is forensic, fixated.
For the latest edition of @union.magazine , we pay a visit to Arne and Nicolette of @thekraftsman whose collection will sit alongside commissioned works for Table Manners presented as part of Melbourne Design Week.
Images by @b.ells___ & @georgiasmedley 🍴
Commissioned works from Table Manners will be shown alongside historical and contemporary pieces drawn from the Kraftsman collection including Josef Hoffmann, Raymond Loewy, Carl Mertens et al.
Together, the collective works heighten awareness of exchange across time and context, and in doing so, asks why these objects have remained so standardised when eating itself is so personal. What habits have we inherited, how to expect our hands and mouths to behave, and what might we unlearn?
Images by @georgiasmedley
Collection from @thekraftsman
Presenting partner @union.magazine
Hosting partner @florianhome.florianhome
Exhibition design @streifen._
We are incredibly fortunate to have been asked to contribute to issue 4 of Mobilia Journal, with Art Direction by Sam Fazzari of @mobilia_ , design by @becstawellwilson and edited by Sarah Langley of @column.au .
For this edition, I wrote about the the journey of a chair over the last century to guide readers through the arrival and tenure of modernism.
I read somewhere that Yves Saint Laurant once said he wished he had invented blue jeans: “the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.” Like blue jeans, a chair is honest and modest in ways few objects manage to be. The chair, too, is re-enivisioned with the same obsessive wear that leaves other objects unchanged. As chairs are a relatively mobile object within the entirely expansive world of design, they have a habit of absorbing and representing whatever people are feeling. In our lives, all of us will have sat on, leaned back in, swiveled on, wrapped our ankles around a chair, but few of us delve into its history—the why of a chair, the when and the who by.
You can find the journal in store at Mobilia 🪑
Last week I sat down with Sam Henley of @agglomerati on behalf of @est_living to chat about his foundationally collaborative practice, his approach to stone, and what the way forward looks like.
When we speak, I ask Henley to walk me through his relationship with Tyakina and how the collaboration began. “I reached out to Maria because I adore her work,” he offers. “Her practice is very restrained, and that translates well into stone. That kind of minimal but gestural language suits a hard surface.”
The pair’s collaboration began in 2023 with Between a Rock and a Hard Place and has since expanded into a broader body of work titled Geologies of Memory. For the @melbourneartfair , Henley and Tyakina have collaborated on a series of works that speak to true partnership, each honouring the other.
Images: Agglomerati/Tom Fereday, Nicola Gnesi
Agglomerati/Maria Tyakina, Nicola Gnesi
Courtesy of Agglomerati
Piercarlo Quecchia
I’ve had the brilliant pleasure of writing the @melbourneartfair Hit List for 2026 for @est_living . A small but meaningful exercise in reading the floor, spending time with practices I felt admire, and thinking about how art and design are speaking to one another right now.
I genuinely love being asked to do these and feel very grateful (and somewhat tickled) to have been asked again.
There was not nearly enough space to mention the all of my practice crushes, and I’m deeply excited to lay my eyes on @_jordanfleming , @zacharyfrankel_ , @soft_baroque , @_daltonstewart and one million more 🪑💔
Link is in bio etc etc
03. Object Massive emerged from an ongoing interest in how objects are valued, positioned and understood through design. The practice reflects a close attention to the cultural work objects do, and to how meaning is shaped through context, use and representation.
