For this week’s Sunday Series, we sat down with London-based designer and artist Eden Frymel, whose work transforms everyday objects into living, breathing companions.
With a background spanning architecture, fine art, and furniture design, Eden’s sculptural creations bring a wonderfully wonky, surreal energy into functional spaces, asking us to rethink the lamps, tables, and quiet corners we live with every day.
From studio rituals without Wi-Fi to the joyful chaos of layering studio trousers for a night out, she opens up about material dialogue, guarding her creative energy, and finding magic in the strange. Read on to step inside her colourful, tactile world.
Scout O'donoghue
Your work balances a strong sense of intention with fluid creativity. How has your relationship with your medium evolved over time, and what specific textures, colours, or feelings are drawing your focus right now?
My relationship with my medium has evolved significantly over time. I come from a background in both architecture and fine art, so my practice has always been quite fluid and has moved through many material iterations. After finishing my master’s in furniture design, I really felt as though my fascination with the uncanny and the surreal had finally found its natural home in furniture.
I’ve always been drawn to the surreal, to colourful, textured, wonky worlds where nothing is quite as it seems. Furniture allows me to take the forms I imagine in that space and ask them to function in the real world: to hold a body, bear weight, or provide light. Right now, I’m especially interested in softness, tactility, and movement in lighting objects. I’m curious about how light can move beyond something static and purely functional to become bodily, flexible, and responsive, something that can be held, rearranged, and lived with almost like a companion.
Every artist hits moments where the canvas or page feels uncooperative. What is your personal ritual for stepping away from the work, resetting your perspective, and coming back to the creative flow?
I know this sounds so cheesy, but moving my body. It gets me out of my head and back into myself. When I’m really present in my body, that’s when I create most authentically. The second I start thinking too much, nothing flows quite as naturally. Sometimes that means dancing around my studio, going for a walk, or physically stepping away from whatever I’m trying to force. Once I stop attempting to think my way through the problem, I can usually return to it with much more curiosity and openness.
Theodore Williams
The environments we inhabit deeply shape what we produce. How do you cultivate your studio space to feel like a sanctuary, and does your home aesthetic naturally bleed into your art, or vice versa?
My studio is my escape from reality. My home is still part of the real world, unfortunately! It has lots of quirky, colourful accents, but it still has to function as a house. My studio, though, is another world. It’s a place where the usual rules don’t really apply and where my mind feels like it can expand and breathe.
We don’t have Wi-Fi, and the phone service is horrible, so when I’m there, it’s really just me, my objects, my body, my music, and whatever I’m making. That separation has become incredibly special to me. It gives me permission to be fully absorbed in the strange little world of my work without constantly being pulled back into everything happening outside it.
What is one piece of advice from a mentor that continues to influence you?
It wasn’t necessarily one exact sentence, but throughout my master’s, I was continually encouraged to trust the strangest version of an idea, the one that felt the most instinctive and the least easily explained. I think creative education can sometimes make you feel as though you need to intellectualise every decision, but I learned that the things I’m most naturally drawn to are usually there for a reason, and that it’s not always so complicated.
Now, when an idea feels slightly ridiculous or makes me laugh, I try not to edit it out too quickly. That’s often where the most exciting work begins.
Theodore Williams
There is a delightful sense of play, imbalance, and spontaneity in your pieces. How much of your sculptural process is meticulously engineered in advance, and how much is discovered through tactile experimentation in the studio?
When I’m working on a commission, the design is decided before I begin making the final piece. I’m a huge model maker, so I usually finalise both a wire model and a paper-clay model, which then become the basis for everything that follows.
The headspace I’m in while sketching and making those models is probably my freest and most curious. The rules don’t apply yet. I let my mind get as silly as it possibly can: Would it be wild if this flipped over? Stood on its head? Floated? Had eight arms? That’s where the surreal speaks to me most clearly, in that very first phase of the design. Once the design is finalised, making becomes a process of bringing it into reality. For a commission in particular, I follow the model as closely as I can, within the limits of the materials. I keep that little model with me everywhere I go. It sounds slightly crazy, but it becomes my reference point for absolutely everything. It comes to the metal workshop with me and stands beside me while I pulp in the studio.
There is still so much experimentation and intuitive play within that process. I try to listen to my materials as much as I can. Sometimes I’ll be in the metal workshop and realise that the metal simply doesn’t want to bend a certain way, or that it won’t stand as I had imagined. It speaks back and defines its own limits, which is one of the reasons I love metalwork so much. In those moments, I gently adjust the design and try to honour what the material is telling me.
Because every piece I make is so different, with its own oddly shaped arms, legs, and functional demands, there is always an enormous amount of discovery along the way. Every strange shape introduces a new ergonomic or structural challenge that I have to problem-solve my way through.
Sundays often hold a specific kind of magic for creative minds. Walk us through your ideal slow morning, from the ambient noise and the morning brew to the small, unhurried moments that set the tone for your week.
This question sounds so romantic. Sundays really do have a special flavour, I couldn’t agree more. Honestly, though, my Sundays are usually reset days. I’m a very scatterbrained, chaotic person whose brain is constantly firing at full speed, so Sunday is when I attempt to organise my life. It’s all the not-so-pretty things: laundry, groceries, and a proper deep clean. I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl, so if I’m doing a reset, I’m doing a full reset.
But I always give myself Sunday morning. I set no alarm, make coffee or tea, and read my book until the little buzz in my brain starts reminding me of everything I need to do. That’s when I blast my music and begin my Sunday tasks.
Scout O'donoghue
In an industry that often demands constant output and visibility, how do you actively guard your energy? Is there a non-negotiable daily habit or wellness practice that keeps you grounded?
I do my absolute best not to check my phone in the morning. I know that sounds like such a small thing, but if I give my brain silence for the first hour it’s awake, just staring out the window while I eat breakfast or reading my book with my coffee, it gets to ease gently into activity. I really try not to catapult my nervous system directly into social media, emails, or the demands of other people the moment I wake up. It’s a tiny boundary, but it makes a world of difference to how my mind feels for the rest of the day.
How do you view the intersection between physical well-being and creative energy? What does true balance look like for you when life gets particularly busy?
My physical well-being and creative energy are completely intertwined, although I’m definitely still learning how to honour that. Because my work is so physical, I can’t really separate the state of my body from the work I’m able to make. When I’m exhausted or overwhelmed, I feel it immediately in my creativity, everything becomes harder to access.
When life gets especially busy, balance doesn’t always look particularly glamorous. It’s eating properly, sleeping enough, moving my body, and allowing myself to stop before I’ve reached total burnout. I’m naturally an all-or-nothing person, so my instinct is often to keep pushing until everything is finished. True balance, for me, is learning that rest isn’t something I have to earn after the work is done; it’s part of what allows me to make the work in the first place.
Style is such a quiet form of self-expression. How would you describe your personal style aesthetic, both in what you wear in the studio versus how you dress for a night out?
It sounds crazy to say, but I think they’re basically the same. I’m notorious for wearing my paint-covered studio trousers to the pub or out dancing. I layer texture and colour like crazy, both in the studio and in my everyday life.
It’s genuinely a challenge for me to leave the house wearing only a top and a bottom. There’s always a pair of trousers under a skirt, a long-sleeved shirt under a tank top, or a button-up layered over something else. And then two bags. Always two bags. Everyone makes fun of me for it, but why would I carry one when I could carry two? Two textures, two colours, two bases for charms.
Reading often offers a different kind of creative fuel. What book is currently resting on your nightstand, and what about it is keeping you hooked?
Reading is so important to me, anyone close to me knows that. More than anything else, it’s my escape from reality. I tend to go through phases with books. I spent about three years devouring nonfiction feminist writing, and now I’m deep in my novel era. I’m reading one or two books a week at the moment. I literally eat them.
I’m currently reading Hanako Footman’s debut novel, Mongrel, which follows the parallel stories of three Japanese women. It’s beautiful, tender, and raw. I’m especially drawn to its layered, nested structure, stories held within other stories and different perspectives interwoven to reveal unexpected but lovely connections between the characters.
The objects in our homes actively shape our daily mood. How do you view the relationship between a person and the functional sculptures they live with every day?
This is actually the question at the very core of my practice. I’m interested in what happens when an everyday object, something we think we already understand, begins to feel unfamiliar. When a lamp appears to have a body, or a table looks as though it might move, our relationship to it shifts. We look at it again. We take an extra second to reconsider its function, use, or purpose. I think we so often take ourselves and our spaces too seriously.
The objects we live with can be so much more than passive, functional things. They can carry personality, provoke curiosity, offer comfort, or create moments of humour and surprise.
We love the idea of surrounding ourselves with objects that tell a story. Is there a piece in your home, a thrifted find, a piece of art, or a gift, that carries immense sentimental value for you?
I’m very intentional about the objects I bring into my space, so honestly, almost all of them mean something to me. But if I had to choose one, it would be a framed print by CéPé. It was the first piece of art I ever really bought for myself, and the first thing I hung in my flat when I moved to London in 2022.
CéPé is a French digital illustrator and painter whose quirky, colourful compositions deconstruct bodies, faces, and everyday scenes into a playful, naïve world that celebrates imperfection. His work is simultaneously silly and beautiful. Every time I look at that print, I smile.
Scout O'donoghue
What’s your hidden gem spot, a café, park, or gallery, that always brings you joy?
Hands down, no questions asked: Victoria Park. Living in Homerton, it’s where I go to sit in the grass and pet cute dogs. It’s so vast that I can always find a quiet spot beneath a tree, and the phone service is so bad that I often don’t even bother bringing mine.
I end up rotting away in the grass for hours with a book or my sketchbook. It’s my little haven.
Café culture in London is as much about atmosphere and design as it is about the coffee. What’s currently on your café bucket list, either a trusted local favourite you frequent or a new design-led spot you’ve been dying to try?
I have a never-ending list of coffee shops I love across the city, but a tried-and-true favourite, just a canal walk away from me, is Café Hebe in Haggerston. It’s part of the Playhouse East family and has such a warm, creative energy. It feels thoughtful and full of character without being overly polished or precious, which is exactly what I want from a café.
The walk along the canal is part of the ritual too. By the time I arrive, it already feels like I’ve briefly stepped away from the rest of London.
It is rare to encounter a creative who embraces the weird, the tactile, and the delightfully spontaneous with such grounded clarity. Through her thoughtful reflections on listening to materials, honouring physical limits, and preserving moments of utter quiet, Eden Frymel reminds us that design doesn't always need to be solemn, it can be a conversation, a laughter-inducing experiment, and a source of everyday joy.
Whether she is lost in the grass at Victoria Park with a book in hand or coaxing rebellious metal into unexpected silhouettes in her studio, Eden’s practice invites us to hold our own spaces a little more lightly. To explore more of her work or keep up with her latest creations, follow her journey and immerse yourself further in her surreal universe.
Cover image: Theodore Williams
