Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair 2015

Open from the evening of Thursday 8th till Sunday 11^th October, the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair (GNCCF) featured over 175 hand-selected designer-makers filling the Old Granada Studios in Manchester. Metal, textiles, ceramics, jewellery, wood, furniture, glass and print were well represented throughout the show.

Included in the Great Northern Graduates section were three newly qualified makers from the MMU Three-Dimensional Design programme. Ceramicist Verity Howard, jewellery designer-maker Mollie Paling and product designer Houda Kaddouh held their own with high quality and aspirational work.

The curated selling exhibition Ornament showcased seven makers and their impressive collectible pieces, a favourite of mine being Jane McKeating, whose illustrative textiles tell beautiful uneventful stories of the everyday (and were equally beautiful on the reverse of each fabric page).

Across the rest of the fair particular standouts in jewellery were Marion Lebouteiller, in ceramics Bridget Macklin, and for metal Emma-Jane Rule.

Lebouteiller has a background as a chaser and patinateur of bronze sculptures, this influences her treatment of silver and bronze to create a wide range of stunning jewellery referencing the natural and man-made world.

Green lichen ring – Sterling silver, bronze, patina, lacquer. Image taken from http://www.marion-lebouteiller.com/lichen-collection.html

Macklin’s fragile porcelain vessels are mixed in with site specific clay, allowing the clay to effect the vessels in unexpected ways. Their interiors tell a little more about the location of the found clay. It was fascinating and gorgeous to see how clay from the same place reacts so differently in the firing of the vessels depending on the quantity added and method of mixing.

Rule uses fold-forming and other traditional metalworking practices to explore the malleable properties of silver and copper. Her unique organic forms are beautiful to see and hold, especially the silver bowls shown below, which were my favourite in her collection.

The quality of work on display was as incredible as ever, and I hope makers across level 4, 5 and 6 were as inspired in their making as I was!

Written by Chelsey Roberts

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Manchester School of Art Three dimensional design

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