Karun Thakar x National Trust: Three Houses, One Journey
Karun Thakar remembers the moment the idea took shape. He was visiting Osterley Park on a summer afternoon when a Sikh wedding party gathered on the steps, many of them stepping inside the grand Robert Adam interiors for the first time. Watching them, something clicked. These walls, hung with portraits of the Child family and gilded with the proceeds of East India Company shareholdings, had never held space for the textiles those visitors might recognise from their own family weddings. Thakar wanted to change that.
Karun Thakar and long Asafo flag on the Best Staircase at Dyrham Park. Photo: James Dobson
That idea has now become a reality. Journeys, a new partnership between Thakar and the National Trust, brings highlights from his global textile collection to three historic properties: Osterley Park in Isleworth, Blickling Estate in Norfolk, and Dyrham Park in Gloucestershire. Each house gets its own exhibition, shaped by its own history, but the thread running through all three is the same: textiles as carriers of memory, migration, and the uncomfortable global stories that grand houses often leave unsaid...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Asafo flag from Karun Thakar Collection on display in Dyrham house 2026. Photo: Desmond Brambley.
All further images as credited in captions.