For Wallpaper*s 2024 Next Generation issue, we have rounded-up a hotlist of emerging design talent from around the world, shining a light on the newcomers paving the present and forging the future. Join us on our journey to meet ten designers from Adelaide, Tokyo, London, Lagos, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Loch Lomond, New York and Paris. Welcome to our ascending stars of 2024.
Emerging designer Miranda Keyes, London
London-based Miranda Keyes is part of our Keyes studied sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art, specialising in bronze. She did an Erasmus year in Berlin, then moved back to London, where she had grown up, and began working with glass, which she had dabbled in a little in Berlin. ‘I began experimenting and haven’t really stopped,’ she says.
Wallpaper*: Why the shift from bronze into glass?
Miranda Keyes: It was as simple as being able to work by myself when working with scientific glass blowing, instead of more people, which would have been necessary with bronze or regular glass blowing. I did other jobs, such as set design, like everyone does in London, but it was hell carrying heavy things around the streets. I grew my glass through grunt work of fabricating uninteresting things until I could support myself full time. It has been slow and intuitive. I didn’t go into this thinking I’m going to become a glass person. I went into it because I love doing it; it satisfies an urge to make things. I enjoy focusing intensely on one material.
W*: How do you describe your work?
MK: People who make things with glass are obsessed with its lowly status. It’s the opposite problem to bronze. I want to shake glass artists and say: ‘It doesn’t matter!’ That said, I don’t identify myself as a glassmaker but as a sculptor working in glass, because I find it fascinating. Working with one material, you get to know it intimately, how it behaves and all its nuances.
W*: What has been a career highlight?
MK: I feel lucky I’m able to make a living out of what I do. There are no pinnacles; the highlight is the thing itself. It’s a miracle being able to live off what you love. I’m currently preparing for two shows, which feels a little masochistic. I’m not really doing anything apart from glass all day, and still it is so exciting.
W*: What would be a dream commission?
MK: Utter freedom, no one sticking their oar in too far.
W*: What do you believe is the power of design?
MK: Good design is the objects you love to live with, and, where possible, they are sculptural, too. I find it so much more moving seeing paintings in houses, not galleries. Using glass at home that you’ve made yourself is something I still find thrilling. Having things around you that give you pleasure is so important to me. The ultimate sculptural project for me would be to build my own house and everything in it. It’s a formal pursuit.
Miranda Keyes, photographed by Alessandro Raimondo, in her south London studio
@miranda.keyes
