Glass meets textile in The Ground of Things by Dawn Bendick at Charles Burnand Gallery

Charles Burnand Gallery presents The Ground of Things, a design exhibition by American, Kent-based artist Dawn Bendick, known for her use of dichroic glass and transitional materials. On view from April 7 – May 17, 2026, and launching as part of London Craft Week, the art and design show is created in collaboration with New York–based carpet and tapestry specialists FJ Hakimian. It marks a pivotal expansion of Bendick’s practice into textile design, introducing her first body of rugs alongside new kiln-formed glass sculptures.

“This exhibition was conceived as a continuation rather than a shift. Dawn’s work has always been about material intelligence and colour as structure. Textile allows that thinking to unfold horizontally, across space, while remaining deeply sculptural,” Simon Stewart, founder of Charles Burnand Gallery and exhibition curator, notes in an official release.

“Textile has always been part of how I think,” Bendick explains. “From fashion and interiors to digital sound and animation, I’ve long been interested in materials that move, shift and respond. Working with rugs has allowed me to bring that sense of motion and structure into something grounded—a surface that holds colour, light and time. In this work, the rugs and the glass sculptures inform one another, both materials responding to light in different ways.”

The Ground of Things positions textile as an extension of her sculptural works. The works are made in England in collaboration with specialist kiln-forming experts, Max Jacquard Glass Studio. The collaboration with FJ Hakimian provides both technical and historical depth to the project. The rugs are realised through its Custom Carpets programme by master artisans in Nepal, working within a lineage rooted in Tibetan weaving traditions established following mid-20th-century migration.

“What drew us to working with [Bendick] was the clarity of her vision. Her understanding of colour and form translates beautifully into textiles. The process became a true dialogue—between studio and loom, sculpture and surface, contemporary thinking and deeply rooted craft traditions,” notes Roxanne Hakimian, creative director of FJ Hakimian.

The rugs are structured as two distinct groupings. The Rock Rugs, developed specifically for the exhibition at Charles Burnand Gallery, include Time Rock Stack Rug and Time Rock Boulder Rug. A second group, produced in collaboration with FJ Hakimian, sits slightly differently, with pieces such as Pond Rug and Gradiated Pavers Rug which extend into the company’s ongoing line of Tibetan wool-and-silk rugs.

The show unfolds across two galleries, each establishing a different set of relationships between materials. In the first, rugs are placed in direct dialogue with the contemporary artist’s glass works. One is installed on the wall, shifting it away from a purely functional role and into a sculptural register. An enlarged Time Rock Stack sits alongside colour-shifting glass, making visible the shared logic of form and chromatic structure across media.

The second gallery features a more dispersed material field. “Rugs sit alongside raw rock, plaster moulds, casting glass and clear Perspex stacks containing yarn, wool, silk and dyed liquid. These elements operate as material presences rather than didactic displays, allowing process to be sensed rather than explained,” the design gallery explains.

“Together, The Ground of Things offers a quietly powerful meditation on how colour, matter and form move between mediums—and how sculptural thinking can be translated, with clarity and authority, into textile,” Charles Burnand Gallery concludes.