Following the launch of the first of its kind see-now-buy-now collection at London Fashion Week, Burberry has teamed up with The New Craftsman for a week-long exhibition at Soho’s Makers House, showcasing the entire new collection alongside various British craftsmen and -women. With a programme of demonstrations ranging from literary readings and clay sculpture to saddling and lacquering, Makers House was bustling all week with members of the public eager to see the creative processes of craft in action.

Walking down the aisle just off Greek St, bushes, trees and ferns line our way while incense tucked away in the foliage wafts between the huge plaster busts of Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Virginia Woolf and various figures from classical history. Lights are strung across the courtyard and elegant white furniture rests on the white gravel. The message is clear – we’re entering another world, one of inspiration, creation and aestheticism.

A pop-up of Regent St’s Thomas’ Café features an extravagant banquet table of berries and baked goods, and a staircase adjacent to it leads upstairs to the collection. The space is open-plan, with areas inspired by Nancy Lancaster’s famously sumptuous 20th Century interiors, populated by stalls of some of the master craftsmen and –women curated by Burberry and The New Craftsman.

The walls are plastered with recreated moodboards featuring prints of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – a major inspiration for the new collection – and a patchwork of fabric recognisable from the ruffed shirts and translucent trousers upstairs. Halfway through Orlando, the character’s gender changes and the Burberry collection features a similar disregard for any sense of stable gender. The collection is evidently the centerpiece and focal point of Makers House, and features some truly incredible pieces, but unexpectedly it’s one of the installations downstairs that remains my enduring image of the exhibition.

Interiors assemblage artistic duo Hannah Plumb and James Russel – founders of the company JamesPlumb – presented the piece “Reading Steps” in part as a stage for the readings taking place this week. The spiraled staircase is itself a remarkable artistic piece, however, with its spindly bannister guiding the way to a cushioned top step, with a reading lamp overhead casting long shadows across the darkened room it’s kept in. The concept behind the piece is to use a staircase not as a route to a destination, but as a destination in itself. On the way out of Makers House – complementary poster print tucked safely under my arm – I couldn’t help but compare the “Reading Steps” to the creative process itself: usually glossed over as a means to an end, it is undoubtedly beautiful in and of itself. Makers House is all about highlighting the beauty of the process of craft – “Reading Steps” encapsulates that even more than the scraps of fabric pinned to the walls.

All images courtesy of Nosakhari.