Collect Week: Isobel Napier - 5 Minutes with a Friend
For today's Collect special, we catch up with Isobel Napier, a London-based artist whose work in paper and wood reimagines textile traditions through a fusion of digital precision and organic unpredictability. Her work blends laser cutting and 3D milling to transform solid materials into delicate, textile-inspired forms.
Ahead of her showcase at Crafts Council’s Collect Week 2025, she shares some insights about her affinity with textiles:
What is your first memory of textiles?
Growing up, my mother and I collected mid-century textiles together; thick, textured bark-cloths with rough, painterly patterns. I loved their graphic presence - abstract paintings that you could hold and cut and live with. Some were so crude with brushstrokes and murky colours that they were almost ugly; these were my favourites. Some had simple suggestions of scenes and characters that were very whimsical and elegant. I’ve been collecting and making textiles ever since. More recently, plain hand-loomed linens are my preference, I’m interested in texture and colour. I love to find old fabrics that show the traces of their use.
Where is your most inspiring space/ place to create?
I live in a Victorian house in London with my partner, furniture maker James Trundle. It’s dilapidated and shows all the layers of its structure and life. We love the old brickwork and exposed joists and lath. Like textiles, it shows its history. My studio is at the side of the house; it used to be a workshop, and I sit at the old wooden workbench. My practice is inspired by the patterns of architecture, traditional craftsmanship and the textures of materials, so it feels appropriate to create here.
Where did you learn your craft?
I studied in London at the Slade School of Fine Art. At first I spent my time working with pattern using traditional analogue processes in the print room and photographic darkroom. At the end of my first year I was quickly trained on the Slade’s laser cutting machine, to help a student finish work for their graduate show. I would never have naturally been drawn to such a contemporary, digital process, but as soon as I started working with the machine I had an affinity with it. For the following three years of my degree I gave a huge amount of time to experimenting with laser cutting paper.
There is great value in working with equipment without a deep understanding or prior experience. Serendipity is important in both making and designing. My practice has evolved by working intuitively, following those mysterious, fortuitous moments that arise when you commit time to a process and engage deeply with a material.
Through my processes, paper is meticulously cut line-by-line to mimic warp threads, recreating the intricate patterns, threads and textures of fabric. Solid forms are transformed into delicate, ephemeral creations, evoking a sense of fragility and flow. I’m exploring the balance between solidity and transience, tradition and innovation.
What is the inspiration behind your work for Collect 2025?
For Collect 2025, I’ll be showing work with Flow Gallery, who’s exhibition will focus on the ‘Spirit of Things’.
The theme expresses how hand-crafted objects are imbued with ‘spirit’ – they evidence the process of their maker and come alive through our sensorial encounter with materials. Celebrating the philosophy of minimalism, the concept places emphasis on organic textures.
Taking inspiration from this, I’m developing the elements of chance in my processes, allowing the paper to respond to the laser's heat. By capturing the smoke emitted during the process, irregular, warm tones are imprinted across the surface. This organic patterning, in contrast to the precision of the laser, creates a dialogue between human touch and digital technique. For me, the ‘spirit’ of my work is found in the fragile, shifting nature of the material and in the sensory interplay between the controlled heat and the delicate threads.
What is it you love about textiles?
Textiles are inherently modest; they are made for living and working with. Their beauty lies in their simplicity. A fraying edge, the natural wear and coloration of a piece of cloth that has been used, evoking histories.
In this way they are also mutable and non-permanent. They favour a more humble, organic beauty that is rooted in imperfection and change.
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Further Information:
Website: Isobel Napier
Instagram: @isobelnapier_art
Isobel at Collect 2025
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Image Credits:
All Images courtesy of Isobel Napier