umum+ is a London and Hangzhou-based studio founded by curator Dan Huang and architect Shutong Fan in 2025 at their home in Kensal Green, London. We work across curation, spatial design, publication, object design, and situated research under one theme: Craft.
Craft is understood not as the preservation of tradition, but as a mindset for approaching the world. We attempt to reintroduce, recontextualise, regenerate, and readapt craft for a contemporary life context, bringing it to a wider audience who might not have been interested in craft before.
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We collaborate with a cross-disciplinary group of creatives: makers, artists, writers, graphic designers, architects, archaeologists, and filmmakers. Together, we translate overlooked materials, objects, and designs into curated encounters framed by displacement and recontextualisation. We approach design as a connective framework. Each project develops from attentive research into its cultural context, constructing a ground where stories surface and unfold through sustained dialogue.
umum+ grew from umum objects. The original idea was to adapt a private living space into a communal space for contemporary craft. Now, the practice has grown into an object gallery, umum objects, and a studio, umum+. The studio has been invited to host exhibitions and events in London, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Hunan.
Our collaborators include: Saltriver Studio, Arisu Ange, Slowdance, Gegend Gallery, Common Divisor, Zephyrus Art, and Storyage.
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umum+ grew from umum objects. The original idea was to adapt a private living space into a communal space for contemporary craft. Now, the practice has grown into an object gallery, umum objects, and a studio, umum+. The studio has been invited to host exhibitions and events in London, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Hunan.
Our collaborators include: Saltriver Studio, Arisu Ange, Slowdance, Gegend Gallery, Common Divisor, Zephyrus Art, and Storyage.
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Project
- Used to Use #2: Garden, Kitchen, Game
- 7-day Wonder II: Isobel Napier
- 7-day Wonder I: Marian Bijlenga
- Drifting Home
- Ready-to-Pot
- British Household Curios
- Used to Use #1: British Silverware Curios
- Crafted Escapes
- The Art of Repetition
- umum x common divisior
- Reading Room #2
- Reading Room #1
- Zhàngwù: Youyou Wang
Library
Chen Bao: A Conversation with Clay and the Past
Contact
77 Fulham Palace, London, England, W6 8AF
Coming Soon
We welcome portfolios from graphic designers, architects, product designers, sound artists, construction consultants, stage designers, filmmakers, and craft researchers. Please share your work with us at hr@umumobjects.com
info@umumplus.com
Press
press@umumplus.com
Type: Exhibition
Client: Zephyrus Art
Location: Chenzhou, Hunan, China
7-Day Wonder stems from a craft tour across Hunan organised by London-based curatorial group umum+, driven by curiosity about regional craft and the dialogues that emerge through displacement and recontextualisation.
Travel is often reduced to a form of hurried looking. This exhibition asks whether another way of seeing might be possible. Assuming the role of tour guides, the curators lead British artist Isobel Napier away from tourist destinations and into Hunan's villages, where direct encounters with people, materials and place become the conditions for making.
Fragility runs through everything on view. Cut paper can scarcely survive intact beyond the exhibition itself — much like the uncertain futures of the traditions it encounters. Napier responds by adopting a method from archaeological documentation: photograms made by placing her paper works directly onto photosensitive paper. She records Master Tan's handwoven ramie cloth in exactly the same way. Displayed together, the resulting images make it remarkably difficult to tell apart objects produced through fundamentally different craft processes — a convergence that perhaps responds more directly than any statement could to the question at the heart of the journey.
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Travel is often reduced to a form of hurried looking. This exhibition asks whether another way of seeing might be possible. Assuming the role of tour guides, the curators lead British artist Isobel Napier away from tourist destinations and into Hunan's villages, where direct encounters with people, materials and place become the conditions for making.
(More...)
This inaugural edition focuses on the region's textile traditions. Among the encounters that shaped the work were Tan Zhixiang, a third-generation inheritor of ramie cultivation and Xiabu weaving in Liuyang, and the Yao women of Baishuidong Village, who continue the daily practice of Tiaohua embroidery. Working in paper, Napier uses laser cutting and CNC milling to create works that carry the illusion of woven cloth.Fragility runs through everything on view. Cut paper can scarcely survive intact beyond the exhibition itself — much like the uncertain futures of the traditions it encounters. Napier responds by adopting a method from archaeological documentation: photograms made by placing her paper works directly onto photosensitive paper. She records Master Tan's handwoven ramie cloth in exactly the same way. Displayed together, the resulting images make it remarkably difficult to tell apart objects produced through fundamentally different craft processes — a convergence that perhaps responds more directly than any statement could to the question at the heart of the journey.
(Less...)
Exhibition View
Rather than interpreting what she encountered, Napier adopts a method used by archaeologists to document historical textiles: placing her paper works directly onto photosensitive paper to create contact prints. She records Mr Tan’s handwoven ramie cloth in the same way.
The concept of layering runs throughout the exhibition, from the thread-tensioned hanging structure of the warping installation at the entrance to the suspended paper works by Isobel Napier on the opposite wall. This quiet bridging dialogue between the two speaks continuously to the connection between their respective practices.
The archive table in the exhibition has been conceived along the same principle: a structure of literal layers. Tools from the Xiabu weaving process, a Huayao antique cloth embroidered with the peach blossom motif (仙桃纹), and the original photosensitive paper and objects used in Isobel Napier's photograms are brought together in a layered accumulation, each element resonating with the next through association rather than explanation.
Drawing on Isobel Napier and James Trundle's shared love of board games, the artists have translated the indistinguishable visual language of the photogram works into a handmade laser-cut matching game.
Audience are invited to win by pairing the different patterns found in Isobel Napier's paper pieces and Mr.Tan's Xiabu cloth.
Team
Curators: Huang Dan & Fan Shutong
Producer: Yang Yueqing
Exhibition Advisor: Dr. Penny Dan Xu
Exhibition Designer: Fan Shutong, Haoge Gan
Visual Designer: umum+ studio
Photography: Fan Shutong, Isobel Napier
Planning & Script: umum+
Voiceover: Huang Dan, Isobel Napier
Videographer: Tang Lingzhi, James Trundle
Post-production editor: Chen Yuan