Design Museum announces nominees for fourth annual Saltzman Prize for emerging designers
the Design Museum
March 18, 2025
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March 2025
#SaltzmanPrize
@DesignMuseum
The Design Museum has announced the five nominees for its fourth annual The Ralph Saltzman Prize, which celebrates emerging product designers in recognition of Ralph Saltzman’s design legacy. Created by Lisa Saltzman on behalf of the Saltzman Family Foundation, The Ralph Saltzman Prize reflects the Design Museum’s overarching commitment to champion new talent and nurture the development of a vibrant design sector.
The shortlist in this year’s Saltzman Prize feature designers from across Europe and is made up of Ella Bulley, Johanna Seeleman, Lulu Harrison, Samy Rio and Sarah Brunnhuber. All are nominated for projects that explore material properties and innovate around different manufacturing techniques.
Each nominee was selected by the Design Museum’s curatorial team and presented to a selection panel including the museum’s directorate and members of the Curatorial Committee. The winner will be showcased in a display at the Design Museum and will receive a £10,000 bursary to support their work. The winner will be announced in mid June with the exhibition running from 24 June until August 2025.
The work of the five shortlisted nominees have been presented to an international jury made up of Konstantin Grcic (industrial designer), Seetal Solanki (material designer), Stephen Burks (artist and designer) and Michelle Ogundehin (design journalist and author), along with Mr Saltzman’s daughter, Lisa Saltzman, who will make a decision around this year’s winner. “It was really great to see how varied each person’s approach was. The attention they paid to not just taking care of the planet, but also the amount of attention they have paid to people and skills,” said juror Seetal Solanki. “They are all really socially engaged: that’s the common thread between them.”
Lisa Saltzman said:
"I created the Ralph Saltzman Prize four years ago to honour my father, Ralph Saltzman, who was an innovator and a pioneer. He was truly passionate about design and believed that great design could improve our lives. This prize is his legacy.
This year's nominees all show a deep originality in their work, a curiousity for material exploration and an unwavering commitment to high environmental and sustainability standards. It has been inspiring to see what each of them has submitted. These emerging designers are the design leaders of the future; much like my father when he founded Designtex, a company that went on to gain numerous awards for its innovation and sustainable ideas. My father was a trailblazer, renowned for his vision and creativity.
My mother encouraged my father to start his own company and was supportive from the beginning and throughout. The prize is inspired by his passion and commitment to great design.”
The 2025 Shortlisted Designers include:
- Sarah Brunnhuber
- Ella Bulley
- Lulu Harrison
- Samy Rio
- Johanna Seeleman
Johanna Agerman Ross, Conran Foundation Chief Curator at the Design Museum, comments: “We are delighted to continue our work with Lisa Saltzman and the Saltzman Family Foundation to support emerging designers. It is always a privilege to work with our jurors to select a winner and enable fruitful discussions around the shape and future of the design discipline.”
Juror Seetal Solanki comments: “It was really great to see how varied each person’s approach was to the brief. The attention they paid to not just taking care of the planet, but also the amount of attention they have paid to people and skills. They are all really socially engaged: that’s the common thread between them.”
Sarah Brunnhuber, Studio Stem
Danish weaver and textile designer Sarah Brunnhuber is a graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven and launched Stem, an innovative zero-waste production brand, for woven garments in 2021. Her weaving, cutting and sewing system eliminates garment production waste and creates a visual aesthetic that tells a production story. With her experimental approach to zero-waste garments, Brunnhuber bridges craft and industry, aiming to disrupt the current cycle of overproduction and overconsumption. Her philosophy is: produce better, produce less – buy better, buy less.
Sarah submitted textiles and garments that tell the story of her innovative weaving techniques, and also embody her mission to make the fashion and textile industry less wasteful, to foster a spirit of collaboration within the industry, to share and emphasise the production process, and to bridge craft and industry.
Ella Bulley
in collaboration with Wassaman Ltd, a timber factory based
in Accra, Ghana
Ella Bulley is a materials designer, creating work that frequently crosses the realms of textiles, product, art and set design.
Contextual research and material experiments are intersected with artisan techniques to direct Ella's design approach, becoming a tool to transform the raw into the refined. The design outcomes whether objects or experiences, narrate the craft process, material research and explored themes of historical, social and cultural movements.
Before establishing the studio, Ella completed a design residency at the Design Museum, London. Ella was also listed as Crafts Councils design graduates to watch 2014 and 'Project Saccharum’ was awarded the ‘Form 2015: Innovative Craft’ award for its use of sugar as a material. Her work has gone on to be exhibited at London Design Festival, Milan Design Week, Tendence, Somerset House and the Design Museum, London.
Ella’s submission is a set of stools entitled 'Transitions' produced in collaboration with Wassaman Ltd, a timber factory based in Accra, Ghana that specialises in indigenous sustainable practices. The collection was inspired by a ritual performed at a marriage ceremony by some Ewe clans, symbolising an invitation of the new bride into a new family. Yet, each stool explores a different transitional stage where women are the forebears of instilling wisdom: nurture, adolescence and spirituality.
Lulu Harrison
Lulu Harrison is a geo alchemist glass artist based between London and Oxford. She studied Art & Design Foundation Diploma at Central Saint Martins in 2011. From 2012 - 2015 she studied Photography at Falmouth University and later went back to Central Saint Martin’s in 2022 to study her MA in Material Futures.
Lulu’s work has won the LVMH Maison/0 Green Trial Award and has been showcased in leading museums and major exhibitions, including the V A, London Design Festival, London Craft Week and The Saatchi Gallery.
Her studio is currently based in Oxfordshire. Lulu travels extensively working alongside glass chemists, glass studios and glass blowers around the UK and Europe, and with research-, commercial- and industry-based organisations to widen her creative research and collaborative work.
Lulu submission is Thames Glass, a project inspired by the idea of creating geo-specific glass using local, abundant and waste materials from one location or region. Growing up by the River Thames in Oxfordshire, Lulu was drawn to work with materials sourced from the area, including river sands, wood ashes, and waste quagga mussel shells from Thames Water.This project embodies circular glass production by integrating 21st-century waste materials into glassmaking.
Samy Rio
Samy Rio is an industrial designer based in the South of France, with a practice that is based on the combination of crafts and industry address to local needs in order to build projects that maintain a close link with the territory where they take place. He tries to create, where possible, production ecosystems by connecting people, tools and resources in the service of issues specific to the locality.
Rio has developed a wood glue from the resin of sea pine based on the tapping technique in order to produce wood-based panels (such as particle board, plywood, etc) for his furniture collections, which are all locally made. The local pine is then used to produce two ranges of wooden furniture. Wood from chestnut trees is steam bended into a range of simple and affordable furniture.
Johanna Seeleman
Johanna Seelemann, born in Leipzig, Germany, graduated from the Contextual Design masters programme at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (2019) as well as the bachelor course in Product Design at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavík (2016) and set up her studio in 2020. She previously assisted Studio Formafantasma in their ‘Ore Streams’ and ‘Cambio’ projects.
Seelemann’s practice encompasses conceptual design, developing products, exhibitions, video works, creative direction, often transcending the distinctions between different fields of creativity. Her work explore the process and the aesthetics of everyday-consumed products, commodity journeys along their supply chains, developing design methods. The investigations morph into designs developed using the tools of substitution, adaptation, and resiliency.
Her submission is called Oase, a concept that proposes an intervention to improve the conditions of trees in urban spaces, inspired by an ancient low-tech method used for irrigation. It is a series of unglazed terracotta vessels that are filled with water and buried in the ground, near a tree, which can retain water directly through its roots, thanks to the porosity of the material.
About the Design Museum:
The Design Museum is a multifaceted museum, an ever-changing space for the public, industry and education to come together and explore new ideas. A registered charity, the museum's innovative exhibitions, partnerships, research and learning programmes evidence how design can enable this planet and its inhabitants to thrive. Our landmark building in Kensington is the centre of our national network and a global hub for the transformative potential of design.
About Designtex:
Ralph Saltzman was a key design figure whose curiosity and collaborative spirit is evident in the legacy of innovation he leaves behind and in Designtex, the company he founded nearly 60 years ago. Designtex's development of sustainable textiles and the partnership that emerged between William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart won First Prize in the International Design Sense competition at the Design Museum in 2000.
Designtex is the leading company in the design and manufacturing of applied materials for the built environment. A recognized innovator known for their rigorous and dedicated approach to research and development of textiles and wallcoverings with reduced environmental impact. They share their ongoing insights and efforts toward greater sustainability through open patents and leadership within standard-setting industry organizations to benefit the industry as a whole.
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