Designer Crafts

This blog post is a little late - it was meant to follow on from my post about the lovely Quilted Jewels exhibition I went to during the Three Choirs Festival here in Gloucester a few weeks ago... but then I got sick and my blogging schedule got abandoned! Please forgive me :)

As well as the quilts exhibition I made it along to an exhibition and sale of "designer crafts" in a huge marquee outside the Cathedral. The exhibition featured work made by members of The Cotswold Craftsmen, The Guild of Herfordshire Craftsmen and The Worcestershire Guild of Designer Craftsmen.


The marquee was jam packed with lovely things - stained glass, pottery, woooden bowls and boxes, handmade furniture, leather bags and belts, paintings, photographs, woven textiles, metalwork and a whole assortment of jewellery.



I was particularly smitten by Rachel Padley's glazed bowls, the adorable wooden animals by John Johnson (we're big fans of these and are gradually building up our own mini wooden zoo - so far we've got an otter, an owl, a rat and a wonderful badger) and the totally stunning stained glass by Frans Wesselman. (Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take close-up photos of any of the individual stalls in the marquee, but please do follow the links to see lots of images on the designers' own websites).

Heritage Crafts

I blogged a few weeks ago about how excited I was to see the first episode of "Mastercrafts", a BBC series all about traditional British crafts. I've continued to enjoy this series as it's progressed and I really hope they make a second series!

Have you been watching it? Did you have a favourite episode? I found the episodes on stonemasonry and stained glass particularly fascinating as I used to work in a Cathedral. But as someone who works with textiles my favourite was (predictably) the weaving episode, not least because it's given me so much respect for weavers!

With traditional crafts on the brain, I was delighted to discover the Disappearing Acts series over on The Guardian. It's a series of articles and audio slideshows (slideshows with a voiceover reading the relevant article) featuring traditional trades which are nowadays rarely practised and in some cases are in serious risk of dying out.

The articles themselves are really interesting and some of the images are just wonderful. I'm really looking forward to working through them all during many tea breaks. If you want some serious jaw-dropping crafty eye candy start with this slideshow about stucco.

If you want to read more about British heritage crafts and how to support them, the Heritage Crafts Association is a great place to start.