Nakagawa Store

Shop design and fit out. Sycamore, Cork and Book Cloth.

Calvert Avenue, London - Sept 2025

Nakagawa is an iconic Japanese company that has been promoting and selling a carefully curated collection of products made by small manufacturers and artisans from around Japan for over 300 years. Established in 1716 in Nara, they now have over 60 stores around Japan. We were honoured to be asked design and make their first outside of Asia.

Located on Calvert Avenue in Shoreditch, the store design aims to answer Nakagawa’s brief for a space that felt specific to its East London location whilst also acknowledging the companies Japanese heritage. The layout of the store takes the folded and stitched pattern of Nakagawa's famous Hana Fukin cloths and overlays this with the octagonal geometry of the Arnold Circus bandstand at the end of the road to organise the space. The materiality nods to traditional Japanese interiors, but interprets them with UK grown pale sycamore timber joinery, linen book cover cloth panels and cork tile floor pattern. 

The graphics and signage were designed and directed by A Practice for Everyday Life and elegantly adopt Nakagwa’s traditional logo alongside new signage, both hand painted onto the inside of the shopfront glazing and on the sycamore wall panel behind the sales desk.

Photos - Jones Neville