In my first post for Whip Up I thought I would tell you about some of the work I saw at Origin this year. In this and my next few posts I hope to reveal a little about traditional crafts and unusual materials, mainly by British makers. I’m a textile designer, but I trained to be a museum curator and have a long-standing interest in historical crafts. Origin is Britain’s biggest and best contemporary craft fair, so those selected by the Crafts Council are not traditional as such. Some of them use traditional techniques or materials in new and contemporary ways. I wont be covering ceramics as that is done beautifully by Karin Ericksson, and will only touch on jewellery because Abigail Percy has already picked some lovely examples.
It was a pleasure to be exhibiting alongside many wonderful makers. I was showing as part of an exhibition of emerging makers called Springboard. Two of my fellow exhibitors really caught my eye.

Jo Pond makes jewellery using unconventional materials and non-traditional jewellery shapes. She showed a quirky collection of pieces mostly made from animal skin. It was amazing how she had made this unlikely material look so delicate and exquisite.

Kate Brightman’s bold and striking pieces were a complete contrast. She works in metals, plastics and resin, but I particularly liked her wooden collection, made from turned rosewood with gilding. The simplicity of the shapes was really effective and the richness of the wood with the yellow gold was really appealing, and somehow wintery.

Among the other exhibitors, Lizzie Farey caught my eye. Her modern basketry was delightful, particularly the pieces with catkins and pussy willow still attached.

Su Blackwell makes beautiful paper sculptures from old books, with the characters or scenes literally leaping from the page.

Gesso-work is something you don’t see often. It is the application of a type of plaster onto wood or other surfaces, which is then painted and gilded. It was used as the base for medieval decorative carvings and paintings. Adam Wahby uses gesso with pewter inlay to create stunning decorative pieces.

Papier-mache deserves a revival and Magie Hollingworth is leading the way with her moulded spoons, garden implements and bowls. I loved her use of old children’s book pages as decoration and adored the glossy black mini bowls.

Maiko Dawson is an amazing shoemaker, using traditional techniques to create bespoke shoes with great style. I love the ones with circles on – one of my friends has them and swears by their comfort.

More next week from week two.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 4:15 am and is filed under jewellery+accessories, paper+mixed media+book arts. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.