ANIMISM OBJECTS at Pick Store

For this year’s London Design Festival, we’ll be welcoming ANIMISM OBJECTS into Pick Store for five days, bringing a new collection of speakers from Japan to London for the first time.

Created by Tokyo based VOID, ANIMISM OBJECTS brings together sound and contemporary design with materials and techniques that have been practised in Japan for centuries. The project takes its name from animism and the idea that people, nature and the objects around us exist in relationship with one another. It is an approach that feels particularly present in the way these speakers have been made, where the material and the hands behind it are as much a part of the object as the technology inside.

The first collection is made up of three editions, each using a different traditional Japanese technique. Washi is formed by hand from natural plant fibres, Aizome uses the traditional process of indigo dyeing and Yakisugi involves charring the surface of cedar to change its character and improve its durability. Each process leaves its own marks and variations behind, so even though the speakers share the same simple form, the surfaces give each one a very different presence.

These techniques all come from the San’in region of Japan, an area where craft and everyday life have long had a close relationship with the surrounding landscape. Rather than treating those traditions as something belonging to the past, ANIMISM OBJECTS brings them into a contemporary setting and allows them to sit alongside sound and technology in a way that feels natural.

It is this meeting of different worlds that first caught our attention. We spend a lot of time in the shop around objects that have a particular relationship with their maker, whether that comes through ceramics, clothing or something made for the home. With ANIMISM OBJECTS that relationship comes through in a different way. These are functioning speakers but they are also objects where you can see and feel something of where they have come from and how they have been made.

Alongside the speakers, the exhibition will include garments bringing together Eastern and Western perspectives as well as Mingei folk pottery from the San’in region. For a few days the shop will become a place to spend some time with all of these things together and see how the materials, objects and sound sit alongside one another.

ANIMISM OBJECTS will be at Pick Store from 16 to 20 September as part of London Design Festival 2026.

On Thursday 17 September we’ll also be hosting a listening party from 6pm to 8pm, giving everyone a chance to hear the speakers properly and spend an evening with us in the shop.

Pick Store
64 Charlotte Road
Shoreditch
London EC2A 3PE