Material treats at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair

As interesting as ever, the Great Northern Contemporary Craft fair provided lots of material enjoyment.

The contemporary woodturner Kylie Coles was showing unique decorative pieces using layers of recycled magazine pages and died veneers combined with wood.  The conical forms had a very contemplative mood and beautiful colouration. "As a craftsperson I reveal the qualities of my chosen materials through the woodturning process, paying close attention to the fine balance between artistic control and serendipity".

Kylie Coles  www.kyliecoles.co.uk

Naomi Robinson's ceramics were pure pleasure, hugely sophisticated in terms of colour and form.  I loved the rawness of the removed sections and the discreet use of text.

Naomi Robinson  www.naomirobinsonceramics.co.uk

Naomi Robinson  www.naomirobinsonceramics.com

Naomi Robinson  www.naomirobinsonceramics.com

Anna Pullan uses the Dorset Button weaving technique to create textured porcelain forms.  She covers found items with a decorative woven structure which can take up to 30 hours of intricate knotting to complete. The form in the photo started life as a 1970s candlestick.  Having completed the textile stage, she then takes a mould with which to create porcelain forms.  She enjoys the unexpected shifting of threads that cause irregularities in the patterning and which are evident in the final porcelain pieces.  A very different combination of ceramic and textile processes to my Ceramic Patchwork, but another example of a traditional process adapted to make contemporary statements.  Loved them!

Anita Pullan Contemporary Ceramics

Anita Pullan Contemporary Ceramics

Finally, this playful reusing of chest-of-draws draws caught my eye and made me smile.  Kay Rudge's work focuses on the transformation of forgotten furniture into bespoke unique pieces.  Her playful approach is beautifully captured in her blog!

Kay Rudge  www.kayrudge.blogspot.co.uk

A Smashing Discovery

 

A smashing discovery!  Thank you to Angela Linforth, Editor of Homes & Antiques for selecting Ceramic Patchwork as an 'Antique of the Future' at the Contemporary Craft Festival at Bovey Tracey this summer.  It was such a pleasure to talk upcycling, vintage finds and Scottish island adventures with Mary Jane Baxter and spend another equally fun day photographing with Sarah Cuttle.   Thank you also to Marc Allum for his expert endorsement - I love that he has a collection of riveted ceramics...

The reach of Homes & Antiques is amazing... people far and wide have spotted me already... and its only been on the shelves for a day!

My Tent home highlights

A visit to Tent as part of the London Design Festival always recharges the creative batteries. 
These are the products I spyed this weekend that would feature in the home of my future...

A W&Q chair....Graphics, colour and pattern are the basic elements that Qiongjie Yu and Siwen Huang use to revive the Chinese tradition of bamboo handicraft.  Their collection shows "...the impact between the designer's creative ideas and folk craftsmen's wisdom."  Fresh, contemporary and playful.

www.cargocollective.com/wandq

 

www.cargocollective.com/wandq

 My desk would be an ADAPTable designed by Mami Kim.  "Conceived as a solution to working on a wide range of creative tasks within a small space, the playful design allows for a user's changing needs, maximising suitability from moment to moment."  The surface has 6 interchangeable A4 side panels which slide into position on a rail system.  There is a growing collection of panels incorporating cutting surfaces, steel rulers, classic enamel cup pencil holders to choose from...A quality piece that could grow with you and would get better with age.

www.mamikim.com

www.mamikim.com

On my desk..... would sit an Orée portable wireless keyboard in maple.  Crafted, polished and assembled by hand in Languedoc in southern France, Orée is the result of a unique partnership between a technology entrepreneur, a product designer and a master woodcraftsman.  A beautiful haptic experience.

www.oreedesign.com

My dining table would have to be a SEER table.  Refined, simple, clever.  Superb attention to detail and brilliantly innovative.  From 4 to 8 person seating with never the need to sit straddling a table leg.  Made with responsibly sourced materials I would go for the European oak timber option.

www.seertable.co.uk

My rug? ...a FRONT design by Jan Kath from his Erased Classic collection.  All rugs are hand-knotted in Nepal in line with centuries-old traditions using materials of the highest quality including Tibetan highland wool, the finest Chinese silk, cashmere and nettle fibres.    Its a toss up between the Tabriz Canal Aerial and Tabriz Lexington Sky designs at the moment... 

www.wearefront.com

A very lovely day of design dreaming!

Olympic Fragments

Carbooting

Thank you to the lady who sold me the scraps of her father's ties and cravats at the Maypole Carboot on Sunday.  She had made a patchwork quilt out of them and the left-over bits were safety-pinned into coloured bundles ready for sale.  She was really happy that they were going to a fellow patchworker.

Her father, John, had worked in the antiques trade and had apparently been quite a character!
As my ceramic patchwork is being talked about as being an 'Antique of the Future', it's good to think that John, through snip-bits of his fabrics, may rejoin the industry...

Fabric audit

I feel the need to organise and rationalise... a healthy pre-autumn wardrobe cleanse has led to a review of the fabrics I have gathered over the summer months for my ceramic patchworking.  Sourced from charity shops far and wide, it is always interesting to pause and see the overall flavour of what is catching my eye.  The oriental feel continues, as do geometrics, but I'm also loving the odd quirky conversational.  The print always is transformed when patchwoked back onto itself so it will be good to see what happens with these designs.
If any of these jump of out at you for a commissioned Ceramic Patchwork piece then do shout...

red pink oriental silk headscarf

burgundy blue floral headscarf

blue geometric silk hankie

liberty peacock silk scarf

black red geometric silk headscarf

black white silk dress

womad oxfam silk scarf

pleated green silk skirt

swiss silk headscarf

geometric grid headscarf

folk silk headscarf

bovey tracey silk horse headscarf

geometric suns silk top

grey dot geometric headscarf

lornas silk dress

shop front

 A chance encounter has reignited my passion for shop fronts....

Leh, Ladakh, India 2010

British Museum

The rest of London was strangely quiet during the Olympics...It was a perfect opportunity to see Shakespeare: Staging the World at the British Museum in relative calm and finally see the etching I have been working with over the last couple of months in the flesh- it didn't disappoint!  It was also great to see my latest ceramic patchwork pieces in the Grenville Room, beautifully displayed as ever.  It's such a thrill to see what were once charity shop rejects, make it into such an iconic venue!...and makes me wonder if there isn't still a chance of me winning a gold in Rio 2016?  Thank you to the excellent retail team who talk with such knowledge and understanding about all the artists' work.   The exhibition runs till the 25th November 2012.

Olympic Reunion

A special reunion was held in April 2012 for the 1972 (Munich) Olympic Canoe Slalom Team and other members of the National Team from that time.  The photo, taken by John Freeman, is of Geoff Dinsdale (front) and Mike Hillyard (dad, back) as they attack the London 2012 slalom course at the Lea Valley White Water centre.  They dusted off their orginal C2 boat, paddles, buoyancy aids, spray decks, cags and hats for the occasion.  Such an equipment, technique and material contrast to the sport of C2 today!  Fantastic to get gold and silver at London 2012, our first ever C2 Olympic gold.

Dad still has his racing-green, two-piece tracksuit with its Great Britain World Championships 1969 logo.  It is brilliantly nylon, with a zip ribbed roll-neck and thin tapered trousers with stirrups to keep them tensioned when on.  I remember as kids we weren't (rightly) allowed to borrow the tracksuit for a 70s fancy dress event...   The finishing time and penalty points for the run have not been disclosed.

Dad & Geoff, April 2012

Korean Eye 2012

It was hard tearing myself away from Olympic coverage, but Korean Eye 2012 at the Saatchi Gallery was well worth it.  It was Yeesookyung's ceramic sculptures that initially drew me there, but her approach to challenging the use of materials, fragmentation and transformation provided a link across many of the other artist's work.  The whole visit proved an inspiring visual treat.
To highlight just a few....Shin Meekyoung's soap-ceramic replicas contrasted beautifully against their raw lable-patched crates and resonated with my interest in material and cultural journeys and transformation.  Yeesookyung's ceramic fragment structures are the result of a slow process-led experience where she is interested in the way the undertaking changes her as a result.  Cho Duck Hyun has created a series of  multiple-canvassed compositions providing haunting glimpses into the lives of two Korean women in order to suggest narratives that involve history, identity, romance and family.  Lastly, Kim Hyuen Jun's work's makes comment on consumer culture and questions the notion of value placed on materials and objects.

Shin Meekyoung, Translation-vase series, 2011, Soap, pigment, fragrance, wooden crate

Shin Meekyoung, Translation-vase series, 2011, Soap, pigment, fragrance, wooden crate

Shin Meekyoung, Translation-vase series, 2011, Soap, pigment, fragrance, wooden crate

Yeesookyung, Translated Vase, 2007, Ceramic trash, aluminium bar, epoxy, 24k gold leaf

Yeesookyung, Translated Vase, 2007, Ceramic trash, aluminium bar, epoxy, 24k gold leaf

Cho duck Hyun, The Nora Collection, 2008, Graphite and charcoal on canvasses, frames, wall papers

Cho duck Hyun, The Nora Collection, 2008, Graphite and charcoal on canvasses, frames, wall papers

Cho duck Hyun, The Nora Collection, 2008, Graphite and charcoal on canvasses, frames, wall papers

 Kim Hyuen Jun, The Side up, 2009, Cardboard

Kim Hyuen Jun, Fragile, 2008, Cardboard