Festival Exhibition
2024
Our Festival 2024 Exhibition features artists from across the United Kingdom, delivering Ceramics, Jewellery, stained glass, wood and engraved glass
Contact us directly if you would like to find out more about our artists featured below or purchase one of their pieces.
Alisha Davidson
Alisha is a designer maker of functional and artistic baskets made with predominantly willow which she grows herself or sources as locally as possible. She also enjoys incorporating materials she has foraged to add colour and texture to her work. The materials she uses are produced with as little negative impact to the natural world as possible to ensure that what she creates is sustainable. Heritage techniques are used throughout her work to create pieces that will stand the test of time whilst also incorporating innovative ideas to push the boundaries of tradition.
Rebecca
Halstead
Rebecca’s designs are bold and individual, and each piece made by hand in her Edinburgh studio with an emphasis on quality workmanship. Traditional skills are used such as riveting, roll printing and stone setting. Colour, decorative pattern and movement have always featured in Rebecca’s work and her current collection brings together designs inspired ny nature and geometry. She works in eco/recycled sterling silver, often with 14ct gold filled metal ( which is similar to rolled gold ), plus high quality semi-precious stones and pearls.
Harriet
Love
Harriet’s designs are primarily inspired by nature, drawn from the world around her, either illustratively, symbolically, or for pattern. She has a large collection of botanical books, which serve as an important source of inspiration. Images from the history of graphics and illustration also inspire her. Harriet incorporates symbols into her work to create personal meaning and connection.
Working with coloured glass she says is a beautiful experience, and the techniques she uses enable her to explore opportunities to play with light and pattern. By applying fired-on paint to its surface, she can manipulate colours and light. The variety of coloured sheets and textures offers endless possibilities. Each design requires Harriet to first cut and shape every glass element. Several layers of glass paint are applied using various painting techniques. At this stage, the glass is fired in a kiln, permanently bonding the paint to the glass. The design pieces are then assembled using lead that is cut to wrap around the glass shapes and carefully soldered at the joints. Finally, the panel is cemented and polished in a series of stages to create a jewel-like collage.
Zsuzsi
Morrison
Zsuzsi combines painting, reworked icons and marks, fine silver, 22ct gold and glass, through fire, to create modern relics. The processes and skills for producing enamel work are exacting, requiring technical expertise in the design and construction of a piece, an understanding of chemistry and the exactitude of firing of enamel. In essence, enamelling is glass bonded to metal by the action of fire. Firing transforms the enamel and gives the entire process a feeling of alchemy. She uses traditional techniques of enamelling in a contemporary context, and Zsuzsi is fascinated by blurring the boundaries between materials, styles, times and thinking, values and perceptions.
Through the precision and complexity of the handmade object, Zsuzsi aims to balance opposing elements: the deliberate drawn quality of her lines in tension with the more fluid and unpredictable aspects of enamelling, such as the subtle shifts and flow of colour emerging as it vitrifies, and by playing with and re-inventing symbols imbued with meaning for the modern wearer. It is in the variability and eccentricities of making pieces in series that things become exciting. For her, the maker’s hand is implicit in and essential to each piece, in contrast to the erasure of the individual mark so prevalent in the digital age.
Nancy
Sutcliffe
Nancy is inspired by the natural world and her work is a celebration of the intricate beauty found all around us. Each piece is an homage to the delicate creatures with whom we share this planet, and the detailed engravings are a surprising mixture of the actual and imagined world.
Nancy has an honours degree in Design and illustration, and works from her studio in rural Herefordshire. She exhibits in museums and galleries internationally, and her work can be found in private and public collections in Europe and North America. She has taught glass engraving in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the USA.
The gilding serves to draw attention to the fragile and precious nature of life, so it is important that the goldleaf used here is sourced from mines in certified conflict free countries.
Peter
Wills
The work of Peter Wills, a professional potter since 1989, has been evolving over the years within the context of attention to detail, balanced form/decoration, and passion – all of which he believes are crucial.
Of his numerous influences, Bernard Leach’s “A Potter’s Book”, and the whole ethos behind that work, was one of the first and strongest. Sung and Tang Dynasty Chinese pots have also been an inspiration, along with major 20th-century European potters such as Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and Michael Cardew. Profound and lasting early influences came from the artist-potter and early CPA member Derek Davis; and also tutor Sue Nichols.
Widely exhibited in Britain, his work has also been shown in Italy, Brussels, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, the UAE, Germany, and the USA. Commissions undertaken have included those from his local Council and The Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend. In the spring of 1998 he gained a particularly prestigious commission when being asked by HM Government to make bowls for them to present as gifts to the nineteen visiting European Heads of State attending a Summit in Cardiff.
When potting most work is one-off bowls and vases, generally thrown on a potter’s wheel. Until recently this would have been raw-glazed when bone dry and once fired; now however most work is bisque fired before glazing and fired to 1280°C. or more. The lure of new glazes he finds irresistible and he is constantly experimenting with and developing new glaze recipes.
Ben Casson, Lynn Hodgson and Molly Casson Hodgson
Ben, Lynn and Molly’s designs are responsive to the timber they are using; each piece is unique as every tree grows slightly differently. They use native, locally sourced wood, often from wind-fallen trees.
With over 30 years experience in wood-carving and furniture making respectively, Lynn and Ben create individual works as well as collaborating on their kitchen and home wares range with daughter Molly.
Ben, Lynn and Molly make at Wobage Farm Craft Workshops in the idyllic south Herefordshire hills, selling their work along with five other talented craftspeople in Wobage Makers Gallery.