SuperChristmasMarket at Somerset House

When on your way to the ice rink this weekend, Somerset house are also hosting an affordable design fair featuring 20 selected makers.

For £2 entry you can see these people.....

Alex Bettler www.aalex.info
Bernadette Deddens www.bernadettededdens.com
Carl Clerkin www.carlclerkin.co.uk
David Weatherhead www.davidweatherhead.com
Gitta Gschwendtner www.gittagschwendtner.com
Hannah Waldron www.hannahwaldron.co.uk
Isabel Costa Lucio
Joe Wentworth www.joewentworth.co.uk
Jon Harrison www.jon-harrison.com
Julia Lohman www.julialohmann.co.uk
Lucinda Barnes
Martino Gamper www.gampermartino.com
Michael Marriott www.michaelmarriott.com
Offcut Design www.offcutdesign.co.uk
Out of Office www.oofcollective.com
Robert Archard www.robertarchard.com
*pipless jam www.piplessjam.etsy.com
Sarah Colson
Sena Gu www.sena-gu.com
Simon Donald www.simondonald.co.uk
Simon Jones
Tim Parsons www.timparsons.info

Open Friday 19 December, 18.00-21.00, Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 December, 10.00-18.00.

Click Here to Read More..

Egg Mercantile

Wandering around the 7 Streets area of Amsterdam on Leliegracht we came across Egg Mercantile a lovely design boutique run by Steven and Joshua - 2 Americans who have settled in this international city and opened the shop in 2006.


The stock is suitably eclectic and international including Heather Louise's exuberant and often downright weird one off dolls made from felt, wool, glass beads, vintage buttons and quartz fish charms.
This beautiful horned cup by Karin Erikkson is just part of Egg Mercantile's extensive stock of Karins work

Not sure who's these prints are by but they are quirky and original.


Large Fancy Avian Platters from ibride, can be used as 'framed pictures' on the wall or actually used as trays.


And ceramics from Lola Goldstein. The shop is packed with lovely items from loads of the best makers from Holland Europe and beyond.

The best thing is that if you don't find yourself in Amsterdam before Christmas (and I think you should) then they have a great website where you can order direct!

Click Here to Read More..

Rob Ryan at Castor and Pollux- Private view 12th September

Papercuts and prints by



Please join us for drinks and a preview of our September exhibition, featuring limited edition prints and large papercuts by Mister Rob Ryan.
*Friday 12th September, 6-9pm*

and showing from 13th September - 20th October, daily 10-5



Swirling, intricate bells, birds, trees and stars fill the prints and paper cuts of silhouetted lovers surrounded by floating poetry. Rob Ryan shares his romantic thoughts with us at Castor and Pollux with an exhibition of screen prints, printed tiles and paper cuts. 'My work operates on an openly emotional level, and it's quite sentimental, which I don't think is a bad thing.'
You may not have visited Ryantown before, but you may recognise the work of Mister Rob through his many creative collaborations with Vogue, Paul Smith and Liberty.

Here are tales and poems to rival the darkest of Grimm's fairy-tales 'The actual germ of an idea is just a moment of thinking, maybe that's how things are, or how they should be, or how I want them to be.'

Rob Ryan's world is filled with dark as well as light, where love, hate, loss, pain, fear and death are to be found. All of which are very beautiful.



The simple and straightforward subjects of Robert Ryan's work are in marked contrast to the deceptively sophisticated manner in which they are made; painstakingly hand-cut with the smallest scalpels from the most delicate of papers.



Castor & Pollux is on the beach, halfway between the piers Opposite the bottom of Middle St
165 King's Road Arches, Lower Prom, Brighton Tel: 01273 773776
www.castorandpollux.co.uk

Click Here to Read More..

MAKER OF THE WEEK - Carys Davies

Carys Davies - 079 3376 1645 - CarysDavies@fastmail.fm

I make bowls, vases and beakers, thrown on the wheel in porcelain. They are smooth and white inside, but organic on the outside – rough with volcanic glazes, and sometimes sitting on flotsam as though washed up on the tide. I like very simple shapes, but ones that show the marks of their making – so oval from lifting them while wet, or curved in from the heat of the firing.

Recently I have started to re-fire pieces together: they look like cargoes of pots found at the bottom of the sea, worked on by sea and sand until they have become something half-organic, half-made.

Money spent on coffee is never wasted.
I know it's a vice but hey, you can't give up everything. My particular favourite for everyday is Lavazza Red label. I often think private views would do better to have wonderful coffee and chocolate rather than alcohol (or maybe as well as... )

What place in the world has inspired you
I love water: the sea, the beach, rivers. I recently noticed that all but one picture in my flat includes the sea or a lake (the other's an aquatint of a fish). I particularly love beaches with rockpools – especially as the tide comes in and the whole landscape changes.

Manorbier beach especially inspired me, with its green and red rocks and fantastic flotsam. The ebb and flow, the rhythms and repetitions, and the way the essential landscape remains throughout, I find strangely like life, and strangely comforting.


Being on the beach is about touch, smell and sound too: and I like my bowls to be picked up, and to make that scraping noise like walking on the beach. I haven't managed to reproduce the smell yet, though.

I was brought up in Wales, by the sea, and when I'm online I like to sneak a look through webcams
Snowdon − and see what the weather's like. It's really great when it snows.


What was the last art/craft/design thing you purchased? and what one product/item do you really covet? (and why?)
I've been on an economy drive recently, but managed to get a fantastic mask from my friend Claire Palfreyman through swapping some of my work for hers.

I really want a mask with gold antlers –I'm on the waiting list – I've always loved stories about Herne the Hunter leading the Wild Hunt, where the wildness of nature somehow spills over into our civilised world for a night or two.

I went to the Collect Craft fair at the V&A in 2007 and fell in love with the 'forever rings' of Bettina Dittlmann and Michael Jenk. They looked rough, but the second you put them on they just felt wonderful, as though made for your own particular hand, and with a fantastic solidity and weight. I can still remember the feeling... and one day I will have one (or even two..) It made me realise how powerful good jewelery is – I felt I could conquer the world while I was wearing it (I so shouldhave bought it...)

When and where did you first want to do what you do?
I was an engineer first. I loved the idea of design, of making things that really worked, that were surprising and ground breaking, and that were serious. And I suppose art wasn’t considered to be anything like that at my school, then.

Later I worked on designing organisations – designing conceptual structures, although very concretely grounded in how people feel at work, and about work. But this was in the new, virtual working world of conference calls and on-line communities, and I started to really miss ‘stuff’: real places, real people, fresh air.

So I decided to do what I do on 4th Feb 2004, in a basement office of a computer company on the SouthBank. I left my job and went back to college to study Ceramics.


Surprising hobby?
I love working in the countryside, conserving it through coppicing, hedgelaying, dry-stone walling, or stone-pitching (making stone paths). Winter working, with the sun slanting through the woods, the kettle on the fire, and a nice sharp axe in your hand, is just fantastic.

Unfortunately it means that when people show me their holiday photos - especially if they are walkers – I tend to think (if not say) - “Ooh, you shouldn't be walking there, look at that terrible path erosion, you should be mending that path not walking on it”. Which doesn't go down very well.

I also like the down-to-earth attitude people who work like this have. The sculptor Andy Goldsworthy has made it into the official dry-stone walling handbook but you would think he was a stone-waller, not a sculptor. Which is probably a compliment!

Do you think art and craft has any real importance?
Although I had really interesting jobs in engineering and in business, I definitely missed something: that’s what made me change. So it has a real importance to me.

And going to see art wasn’t what I wanted; it was to be making things – objects – that reminded me I was a “feeling” person – feeling emotion, feeling with my fingers, being able to engage with something – an object, as well as an idea – outside myself in the real world. And through those objects, connecting with other people too.

So, speaking very pragmatically, I think there is something in art and craft that we need in our lives, at a fundamental level. But I've always been a bit put off by 'high culture' – by the imposing doors of the museum or the 'white cube'. So although we need art and craft, I'm not sure we need the art and craft 'establishments', as they are today.


Can anything be ‘art’?
What I choose to think of as art says more about me than about 'art', I think. The definition of 'art' is a cultural construct, depending on the needs of people, their communities and their rulers (“We need to show those Commies that freedom is what they need – find me some Pollocks to take on tour”). It's very interesting, but not absolute; and you have to be very aware of what people are using the idea of 'art' (or 'craft') for.

But on the other hand, I went to the Peter Doig exhibition at Tate Britain recently.

It was really fantastic: his pictures are not like anything I’ve seen before, but seemed to me as accomplished and wonderful as any famous artist’s. While being modern, they also seemed to me to be ‘classics’: pictures you could imagine people looking at in 100 or 500 years’ time.

So I think although maybe anything can be ‘art’, some of it just won’t be remembered for very long, unlike Doig.

Click Here to Read More..

Goodies at Harrogate

I made the long trek up to Harrogate on Monday where the British Craft Trade Fair was taking place.

There were about 450 exhibitors spanning the handmade end of the Craft, Gift and Accessories sector, including a big contingent from Brighton and 'alumni' from Brighton Craft Fair along with 'freshers' for Made08 - Brighton's Design and Craft Fair

In no particular order I rather liked
Becky Crow's contemporary illustrative jewellery in silver with gold and copper details - some lovely work on her website too.



Lara Aldridge's panels, and bowls in kilnformed glass and metal foils.


Helaina Sharpley's tea obsessed wirework pictures, cups, teapots and teatrays. As well as large scale architectural wire sketches of buildings.


Janie - Jane Withers' Knitted Textiles , and tea cosies


Rowena Gilbert's Ceramics



Make (Nicola Caines') blown glass.


Sarah Lindsay's handmade Acrylic Jewellery, she calls them 'dust necklaces' but they look to me like exptically coloured 'geodes' - we're very glad that Sarah will be exhibiting her original and innovative acrylic jewellery at MADE08. for the first time.


Lynn Muir's painted driftwood and recycled wooden painted figures.


Folk Fanny's large scale stitched and appliqued and embroidered pictures.

After all this I still had time for my tea at Betty's tearoom for a pot of Lapsang and a Hazelnut and meringue Engadine Torte before getting the train back to the South Coast!

Click Here to Read More..

MANOS - Karin Erikssons New Shop

Good luck to Swedish ceramicist Karin Eriksson who has opened a new shop 'Manos' at her studio an old glasshouse at the Overjarva Country Estate near Stockholm.


(Karin's Tealight holders and notebooks)

Of course we haven't managed to get there (or to Sweden) yet but I do feel a little envious by the look of Karin's fantastic studio, the setting and glimpses of the Swedish lifestyle one gets from her blog.


Karin in addition to stocking shops and galleries throughout Europe, and selling from Manos also has her own Etsy site where she sells one offs, trials, seconds and other work.

Good luck with the new shop.

(Daniel Reynolds Ceramics)

Click Here to Read More..

Xmas Presents 1

You've all taken the pledge (no doubt) to only buy handmade this Christmas as a gesture of support for designers and makers struggling against the hegemony of the chainstores! (or you just want something unique)
We'll be posting ideas for inexpensive christmas presents over the next few weeks. Here are a few ideas from Brighton Craft Fair makers


CATHERINE AITKEN
Large Gent's Toilet Bag Hunting Macleod £35.
Good strong grab bag with waterproof lining, fabulous for travel, in Harris Tweed Hunting Macleod. Strong zip closure and velvet pull tabs at either end for ease of opening and closing. 30cms long, 16cms wide and 5 cms high.
Buy on line from www.catherineaitken.com


LUCIE PRITCHARD

'to nellie from daisie' - purse £20 and can be bought at www.notonthehighstreet.com/luciepritchard


ALEXIS DOVE

Wild Rose stud earrings oxidised silver(also available in polished silver) £35 - to order contact Alexis Dove


SASKIA SHUTT

Solid silver cube earrings on hoops £30.
Order through www.saskiashutt.com
or email jewellery@saskiashutt.com


SYLPH BAIER


Hand-thrown - Blue Spiral Mug from Sylphs 'Lift range'. Dishwasher proof
£17 + 6.50 p& p

To Order ring - 01273 540552
or email - ceramics@sylphbaier.co.uk

Click Here to Read More..

MAKER OF THE WEEK - JONATHAN GARRATT

Jonathan Garratt FRSA

Jonathan Garratt concentrates on wood firing a locally dug clay (terracotta) for work ranging from unusual garden planters to slipware, decorative pots and garden art installations. Many of the influences derive from prehistoric pottery and other artefacts and from tribal arts.


Money spent on play is never wasted

Favourite living craft maker
Catherine Vanier (France) very highly skilled technically courageous imaginative (terre vernissee0

Favourite Artist
Alexander Calder - sharp, fluid, distinctive.

When and where did you first want to do what you do?
Age 16 at Eton College

What place in the world has inspired you?
European alps, wildlife, memories of embryonic ski industry. Holidays 1960, space, visual drama, botany photographs.

Do you work best on your own or in collaboration?
By myself

What one craft item do you really covet?
Amber Jade Chinese "Ear Cup" - Han Dynasty. Just too beautiful


At aged 15 who influenced your style?
Hans Coper

Was there any individual who helped you on your way?
Gordon Baldwin

Best read?
The night watch - Sarah Waters

How much do you bend your 'vision' to suit the marketplace?
Not much, different price levels.

Who buys your work?
Gardeners, outside eaters, people who think for themselves.

How do you set about starting a new project?
Stetches on the back of envelopes

What do you have on your pinboard?
African textiles


Where is your studio?
Its an ex milking parlour with north light . I work by myself. A wall of African CD's keeps me going

Surprising activity
Growing wild plants from seeds collected on holiday

What one word would descibe your feeling of doing your work
discovery

Do you think art and craft has any real importance?
Obviously, the whole new organic food industry is craft of a kind. If you want a civilised culture you need makers

Are there other (unusual) fields that you'd like to apply some facet of your work into?
New interest in Garden Design

Guilty secret
Drink too much


Can anything be art?
NO. Most current 'art' or 'craft' is too knowing vis a vis the marketplace not enough dreaming.

What do think are crimes against good taste and decency in art/craft/design?
Going for pretension and worthless aclaim/cash.


Most overated artist
D Hirst - trite

If you could exhibit in any gallery which would it be?
Haven't found it yet. Maureen Michaelson is an outstanding curator/host she takes the work seriously bothers to visit the artist andis effective on the sales front. Doesn't run a full time gallery as such but does shows.

Click Here to Read More..

MAKERS OF THE WEEK - Christiane Kersten and Alison Milner

Christiane Kersten and Alison Milner

Slip cast ceramics in various pastel colours, functional simple shapes with printed photographic transfer decoration by Alison Milner.

1 Money spent on… good food… i s never wasted.
It makes total sense to me to invest in good food, by that I mean mostly local, organic, home cooked and tasty food. It’s not just for my own obvious pleasure, enjoyment and health but also the bigger picture of how food is produced, where it comes from and how this affects the people, animals and the land it comes from.(CK)

Money spent on .materials and the right computer software......... is never wasted(AM)



2 Favourite living craft maker
I really love the ceramic installations by Gwyn Hanssen Pigott. Her bottles, cups, bowls and beakers are arranged in groups like a still life and she chooses very pale, subtle and similar colours. To me they emphasise something of the essence of ceramic aesthetics. They point out the subtleties of shape, profile, contour and volume. Her glazes are either matt or shiny, playing with the qualities of light, which is either reflected or models the shapes with shadows.(CK)

“unto this last’- computer generated furniture. I heard Olivier Geoffroy speak at the V and A and I like the way he sees his computer software as a tool of his trade , plus his ideas on local production and last but not least the look of his furniture. (AM)


3 Favourite historical artist
Constantin Brancusi, especially his later work – again for his beautiful forms, and for being able to represent the essence of things. But also for daring to think big, for believing in himself and for working hard. (CK)
Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699-, for his exquisite compositions and combinations of people and objects. (AM)

4 Favourite historical maker
Charles and Ray Eames (are they historical enough?) I love the way they cross disciplines (films, furniture, exhibitions…)plus their economy of means their forward looking approach and their curiosity and love of life (and each other!) (AM)


5 When and where did you first want to do what you do?
At school, having to choose a local craft business for a four week work experience.
I started liking the idea of rows and rows of thrown pots and suddenly noticed all kinds of ceramics everywhere around me. I was about thirteen and decided to learn to throw on the wheel.(CK)

I decided to do 3D design specifically after seeing an exhibition at the Crafts Council called “The Makers Eye” that included selections of objects chosen by Alison Brittain and David Pye among others.I was 23 at the time and doing a foundation course at Central school of Art. (AM)

6 Do you work best on your own or in collaboration ?
I enjoy my own company when I am working alone, getting stuck in and absorbed in what I am doing. I thought for a while this is best for me. But working with Alison for nearly three years now has been a pleasure and hugely rewarding. I am still making the pots but every other aspect of the work is shared, discussed and supported by Alison.
This has actually helped to move forward at a time when I had a baby and worried that I would have to slow down. It has opened up new areas of work like the recent commission from Royal Doulton, for which we are designing six large Flambé pieces. Alison has a very good eye for things, an intuitive and spontaneous way of working and she believes in the success of a project. Her positive attitude is contagious and inspiring. I believe working on your own is important but not all of the time.(CK)

I do seem to work well in collaboration, I have a lot of ideas and don’t always have the skills to carry them out, Christiane is very good at being realistic….
It makes sense to combine skills rather than doing everything yourself.(AM)


7 What was the last art/craft/design thing you purchased?
Whilst I was in Japan I was given a few pieces of ceramics by potters and gallery owners we visited. I have admired and treasured these pots ever since and they remind me of the incredible time I had during my three months exchange visit to Nagoya University, of the generosity and kindness of the people I have met and the rich and varied culture of ceramics I was able to see and experience.(CK)

A bought a fruit bowl by Gordon Murdoch with a crystalline glaze and a green jug by Arwyn Jones. I like functional pieces that I can enjoy using every day. Years ago I made some door handles with crafts people in India. I liked the idea of people touching them every day and coming to take them for granted, (My favorite scene in the film “Amelie” is when she takes revenge by changing a door knob). I would love to own a painting by Fiona Rae.(AM)


8 At age 15 who influenced your style? Was there any individual who very much helped you on your way?
After my work experience I carried on throwing pots for the couple who ran the pottery during my school holidays. They eventually supported me during a one-year raku project, helped me build my own kiln and generally integrated me into their life. For a time it was great - very different from home – a happy hippy kind of life style with good food, good music, good people and good work (and little money). I also very much respected the way the couple shared their time equally between family commitments of two small kids and work.(CK)

At 15 no style at all, I just liked sitting up trees or on rocks and daydreaming (AM)

9 Last best read ?
‘A Clockwork Orange’ for its crazy, clever and unique use of language and for being shocking, funny and so surprisingly different from anything else I have ever read.(CK)

I am just reading “The God Delusion “ by Richard Dawkins…So much sense and fascination.(AM)

10 How much do you bend your 'vision' to suit the marketplace?
I do to a certain extent in order to make a living. This makes my work more repetitive and less creative than I would like it to be. But I don’t make and sell anything I don’t actually like.(CK)

The work I do with Christiane is a combination of what we want and what the market wants we definitely get a buzz from getting that right and are always aware that we have to be continually evolving it; to keep up our own enthusiasm as much as anything else.(AM)

11 Who would you say buys your work?
Predominately females of all ages, including kids sometimes. (CK)
Because a lot of the images are natural objects it seems to appeal across a very broad range of people, old ladies in flowery frocks and indie art students.

I identify most with the buyers we get at the Mid Century Modern Shows, people who like slightly worn modernist design and not shiny new things, thing that you can keep for a long time.(AM)


12 Where and what is your studio?
A small bedroom upstairs with a view over the South Downs and a tiny room downstairs big enough for my kiln.
Working from home is just right at the moment, everything I need to do is in one place, I can look after our little daughter during the day, do whatever needs doing at home, answer the phone and use the internet, pack orders, take orders etc…but most of the work is done in the evening after Lina has gone to bed.
I do really like listening to music in the evening (Marc Lamarr’s ‘Shake Rattle and Roll’ is my all time favourite!). Sometimes I feel the need to stimulate my brain, listen to something interesting and catch up with what’s going on outside my four walls with Radio 4. (CK)

I work all over the house, including Steve and my bedroom, we have computers in 5 rooms of the house (there are 4 of us in the family) but we have had no TV since 1991. We have a large room overlooking the sea called “the Studio” which is kept empty (no computers) and can be converted into a photographic studio, a work shop, a sweat shop, a spare bedroom or whatever as the need arises. In the summer Steve and I take our tea breaks on the sea wall.(AM)

13 What is your favourite website ?
I came across this website not so long ago and thought it was just very nice. www.whippetgrey.co.uk (CK)

Wikipedia- everything is there and it has a great ethos and is exactly what the web should be. (AM


14 Surprising activity/hobby?
Cold sea water fish tank, with anemones, prawns,shannies,crabs etc collected on the beach.(AM)

15 Do you have a good work/life balance?
That’s an area I could definitely improve on. Working from home has the well-known downside of never being away from work. I do struggle to get all the work done in the little time that remains after a day with my daughter. Lots of things I fancy doing for myself or as a couple are put on hold for the time being. There does not seem to be a simple solution and it does become an issue now and again.(CK)

Children help, mine are teenagers now, which is great, small children are a lot more time consuming.(AM)


16 Do you think art and craft has any real importance?
Of course it has, for everybody that has an understanding and appreciation for it.(CK)

Yes contemplation: it helps people to slow down and look and think.(AM)

17 Are their other (unusual) fields that you'd like to apply some facet of your work into?
Design work is a relatively new thing for me and I am keen to pursue it. I have been relatively single-minded on hand made ceramics for so long. I am teaching myself to use a modelling programme at the moment and this is opening up new was of working that are exciting and relevant to the kind of work I am aiming to do in the future. I am keen to integrate new technologies into the way I work and can’t wait to see some of our current designs for industry in the flesh. (ck)


18 Guilty secret?
I sometimes think that if I had more money I might be less eco friendly, it’s easier to be poor and good.(AM)


19 If you could exhibit in any gallery which would it be?
Gallery Besson in London is a small, beautiful place. Alison pointed out that I would have 16 years to develop my work to reach the average age of the people exhibiting there. (CK)

This is pure fantasy I’d love to curate an exhibition at,the Serpentine, it’s self contained and has layers of memories for me. I worked at St Marys hospital as a student nurse at one side of the park and went to the Royal College at the other side. When I was 7 months pregnant I took part in a performance piece there doing yoga on the floor with lots of other pregnant women.
As I walk towards the gallery across the park I remember some of the past highlights, Anthony Caro, Alison Wilding, Bridget Riley, Gillian Wearing.(AM)

Click Here to Read More..