Annie Paxton Transforms Metal Into Sculptural (and Functional) Art

Annie Paxton shies away from definitive labels. She makes furniture and lighting from a textural combination of silk, metal and chainmail, yet the NGV Rigg Design Prize finalist is happiest flitting between multiple disciplines. Her work blurs the boundaries between architecture, design, interiors and craft.

Paxton first began building objects in 2020, while working at influential Melbourne architecture firm Kennedy Nolan. On weekends, she’d “sketchily” melt metal in her then-partner’s workshop using crude techniques. The resulting forms, which often look as though they’d been hewn from ancient rock, quickly made her one to watch in Australia’s design scene. In 2025, she won Product Designer of the Year in Vogue Living’s VL50 awards.

Although she’s now based in Berlin, you can still spot Paxton’s works at Sydney’s Hot Listed Olympus restaurant and at the upcoming Melbourne Art Fair as part of its Futureobjekt salon. The debut design exhibit brings together works from top designers across Australia and the world.

Here, Paxton discusses her metal casting process, what to expect from her at the fair, and elevating considered design to the level of art.  

What comes first for you: architecture or design?

I think it’s very important to not let one discipline hold you. The act of design thinking is one and the same across many of these disciplines. I’m a registered architect in Australia, but I’ve been in and out of practicing. When you develop a distinct design practice, it’s a lot harder to find work that’s going to satisfy you. I would love to have an architecture project where I could do the shell, the interior and the furniture within it – it would be an indulgence. But that’s a hard thing to come by.

How does a piece of furniture begin for you?

If it’s a commission, I have parameters. But if we’re talking pure expression, where I get to have two weeks to just sit and make something, it’s a lot more intuitive. I always go back to drawing, writing and reading before I touch anything. I definitely have an architectural lens: I interrogate the idea and then start drawing to understand where I’m going and how to problem solve. It’s similar to how writing by hand can release something when you have writer’s block. My process is more internal because I don’t have the skillset of throwing myself into a workshop and seeing what happens.

What’s involved in the process of working with cast metal?

The casting process is quite crude and rough. [It involves] melting the metal in a furnace and pouring it into a bed of sand. A few weeks ago, I was casting metal in the snow, but I also have some people that I trust to help me with it. My process is the most rudimentary.

With metal casting, there’s an unknown aspect. When I started, I longed for irregularity and rough texture. You’re surprised every time, and it’s often those little mistakes that are interesting. When one of my lamps was cast, one side formed air bubbles and that created perforations which allowed light to filter through.

Materials like sheet metal or timber need to be highly finished. You don’t have that same playfulness; you have to focus on the perfection of the joint and consistency. But when you’re working with something like scrap silk and cast metal, it’s a lot more freeing and forgiving. These are materials that absorb instead of reflect light – they’re warm even though they’re kind of harsh. 

In the beginning, I was interested in reusing production waste – that was the crux of my Vestige series – but that kind of thinking these days feels far too surface level. If we’re reusing production waste, it has to go beyond a piece of furniture. It just feels like a bit of a wishy-washy pursuit within the design industry.

What are your favourite pieces that you’ve made?

My pieces for the NGV Rigg Design Prize: the Masque I and Masque II cabinets. I began by revisiting the work of architect John Hejduk, who is very playful with how he writes about and interprets architecture. The idea behind these cabinets was how we hold stories and contain memories. What do we hold on to and why? What are our own patterns of collecting?

How has Berlin influenced your practice so far?

I have this fascination with urban space that’s always been at the core of my architectural research. My friend and I are always talking about the pavement here. It’s just crazy layers of cobblestones and all kinds of shards being cut in and re-formed. And then there are these bleak walls and bleak stucco. The layers of history within the material are what’s fascinating.

What can we expect from you at Melbourne Art Fair’s Futurobjekt exhibit?

I’ll be presenting with Dalton Stewart, who’s one of my close friends. We shared a studio together in Melbourne and exhibited at Collectible [design fair] in Brussels last year. Our practices are both about layering and revealing stories, histories and archaeology, and we look at our inherited relationships to domestic objects. I’ll have an assemblage of older and new works there. I’m working on a new piece – a table of sorts. And there might be a big mirror.

What do you make of the growing buzz around collectible design?

It’s interesting to see and be a part of it, but it’s always been there. Again, this idea of labelling and putting things into categories is exhausting. People have slammed “collectible” in front of “design” but “crafted objects” is another way of saying it.

It’s about a return to slow production, craft and considered design, and elevating these practices to be considered on the same plane as art. It’s about pushing away from things that feel antiseptic and mass-produced, and elevating beautiful objects that have utility – objects that are touched daily, like door handles or knobs on your kitchen cabinet. What do we relate to in an everyday setting and why is that not celebrated and pushed further? The handmade, the touch of the maker and the return to things with patina are really compelling in this day and age.

How do you hope your objects make people feel?

I would like people to feel curious; there’s not enough of that. I also think it’s interesting to reframe something that feels familiar in an unfamiliar way. It can expand your interpretation or perception, and new meaning can seep in. But I never want anything to be didactic – you should always run away from didacticism.  

 anniepaxton.com
@ anniepaxtonstudio

See Annie Paxton’s work as part of the Melbourne Art Fair’s Futureobjekt exhibit from February 19 to 22.