Edward-Barber

When Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby announced on 20 May 2026 that their London studio would close after 30 years, they ended a partnership that put one product into the hands of 8,000 Olympic torchbearers and another under millions of office workers. The question this piece sets out to answer is the simplest one anybody asks after such an announcement: what, exactly, did Barber Osgerby make between 1996 and 2026? The answer is roughly four dozen products of consequence, spread across a tight roster of manufacturers — Vitra, Flos, Cappellini, B&B Italia, Established & Sons, Knoll, Hermès, Isokon Plus, Mutina, Fredericia and Emeco — plus one Olympic torch, one circulating coin, and two sister practices that outlived the founding studio in different corporate hands. What follows is that catalogue, in order. ...

Barber Osgerby designs span thirty years and ten manufacturers, and on 20 May 2026 Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby confirmed in interviews to mark the closure of their London studio that the catalogue is now closed. The partnership that began in 1996 with a bent-plywood low table for Isokon Plus ends in the same week that their Triennale Milano retrospective, Alphabet, comes down — a roster that runs through the Loop Table, the Tab Light for Flos, the Iris Table for Established & Sons, the Tip Ton chair for Vitra, and the London 2012 Olympic Torch. The Barber Osgerby designs that defined the last three decades of British industrial design are not being withdrawn; the practice is. The majority of the pieces shown at the Triennale remain in production, which is the answer to most of the questions readers will ask first. ...