The Contemporary Craft Festival 2016 - Favourites Part 2

Here is part 2 of my favourite artists and designers that I discovered at the Contemporary Craft Festival, in Bovey Tracey. In my last post I covered Ceramics and printmaking, today I have Homeware, Fashion, Art and Jewellery. You can find out more about the festival and all the artists here. 
I also visited last year and you can find that post here.
  

Jewellery 

Coyosa Design

Sayoko Kobayashi hand crafts her lovely jewellery using ethically-sourced materials, and features natural ordinary things like poppy seeds, wood and washi paper, her work's focus is on "the expression of wabi sabi, the understanding that the nature of things is transient, imperfect, and incomplete." I particularly liked her items that had seeds suspended in resin.

 

Libby Ward Contemporary Jewellery

Libby also uses a lot of natural materials within her jewellery work, combining unexpected materials to make thought provoking pieces. She uses loads of different processes like etching, coating, layering, stretching, heating and breaking. The unusual colours and textures attracted me to her work, it's very different to most of the jewellery I saw.

 

Art 

Little Burrow Designs

Claire Read uses unloved or unused objects to make her unusual mixed media artistic creations. I loved the techniques she's used to make these objects into something attractive and that you'd want to keep and display, instead of them ending up in the bin! I admire her imagination and ability to sew and assemble these tiny objects.

 

Anya Keeley

Anya's cute characters are made from wire and paper and various other vintage bits and bobs. They're so sweet and carefully made and so obviously unique they really caught my eye! It must be a lot of fun making these little beauties.

Hen's Teeth Art

Hen's Teeth Art is Viv Sliwka. Viv's work is somewhat similar to Little Burrow Designs', in that she uses lots of recycled materials and stitching to create tiny works of art and tell stories, though her pieces do look very different. I love the tiny story boxes like the one below, they are so delicate and beautiful.

 Homewares

Twool
Twool are a company that make lovely woollen bags and twine. "Twool® products are made in Devon from the ‘lustre’ long wool of the rare breed Whiteface Dartmoor sheep." Apparently these sheep are quite rare but their wool is really strong and soft which means it's great for making bags! I bought a brown one and I'm really enjoying using it. The straps are made from off-cuts of leather from a westcountry handbag company, and they smell lovely.

Tess Wakeling
Tess makes beautiful handmade lampshades from layers of paper, into which she cuts geometric patterns to create beautiful effects , both when the lights are on and when they're not. Each lampshade is hand cut and so no two will ever be the same.  

 

 Thanks for reading, definately worth a visit to the show if you're in Devon next June!

The Contemporary Craft Festival 2015

On Saturday I visited The Contemporary Craft Festival in Bovey Tracey, Devon. The weather was lovely and there were so many beautiful items by some talented designers and makers. Here is a rundown of some of my favourites:

Suzanne Breakwell

I loved Suzanne's adorable sculptures of birds and animals, you can tell that she really loves her subject, which is the natural world & all its glorious flora & fauna. Her pieces are constructed from wire, paper mache, pages from books and cotton rag papers.

Liz Willis Jewellery
Liz makes beautiful jewellery using tiny knots in silk thread, over gold and silver wire.

Emma Cocker
Emma creates fabric sculptures, characters & illustrations using knitting and stitching, combining antique, vintage and reclaimed textiles, and British wool. So cute!

 

Helen Round

Helen uses traditional hand screen printing techniques to create limited edition collections from her sketchbook drawings inspired by the Cornish landscape. She prints on to linen and hemp, and then carefully stitches to create beautiful pieces for you and your home. Also a very nice lady!

Benton's Menagerie

Tracey Benton sculpts these wonderful British birds and beasts by hand from 100% wool.

Emily Kidson

Emily uses old samples of colourful laminate (formica) to make this unique and imaginitive jewellery.

 

Vinegar and brown paper

Andy Poplar designs and etches onto all sorts of different glassware, including vintage items, apothecary bottles and laboratory glass.

Olive Rose

Emma of Olive Rose uses a Victorian lace craft called “Tatting” to manipulate a single line of thread into a complex structure, creating some unique jewellery.

Helaina Sharpley

Helaina creates 2d and 3d wirework pieces which feature all sorts of things from kitchenalia to iconic architecture, I was really impressed by her unique technique.

Miriam Jones

Miriam uses different types of wood which she sources and recycles and turns into beautiful bowls and other items, adding colourful cotton thread, which symbolises the concept of make do and mend.

Emily Notman

Emily creates a great range of fabric items, on her work: "I create bespoke textile installations and accessories mixing media and building up tactile delicate surfaces. I work and rework my pieces with paint, dyes, bleach and ink, burning and layering until finishing it with hand stitch."

The Store Hus

I was really impressed with this pair of printmakers, whose designs are simple yet bold and eye catching. They have produced range of hand printed practical and decorative items for the home.