OLD CRAFTS, NEW ENERGY Meet the young artisans discovering and reinventing traditional craft techniques
Young makers are breathing life into ancient traditions, forging a promising future for handmade arts
LAST YEAR, when the cutting-edge Frieze London art fair included a special section dedicated to female weavers in its programme, one thing was clear: craft, long dismissed by the art world as folksy and inferior, was finally in a league of its own. Certainly investment in craft is now big business – in its recent report The Market for Craft, the Crafts Council estimated it to be worth £3 billion in the UK.
What’s surprising, perhaps, about this boom in old techniques is the demographic attracted to them. ‘The biggest growth in the craft-buying market is the under 35s. As their tastes and incomes expand, they’re going to be investing more frequently and at higher levels, which bodes very well for the future,’ says Natalie Melton, the Craft Council’s creative director. And it’s not just younger consumers flocking to the area. There is also host of young designers discovering and reinventing artisanship, bringing with them an energy that craft hasn’t seen in years.
Take Sophie Graney, a 25-year-old textile artist and Royal College of Art master’s graduate, who makes candy-hued wall hangings, cushions and rugs. Her palette and materials are modern – rubber-coated yarns, electric cable tubing, patterns inspired by ‘urban wanderings’ – but her techniques are old, combining lace-making and embroidery with handweaving on a traditional loom. ‘I use methods that can only be done by hand, not mass produced, but the loom is like a canvas for my work. I don’t let it limit me.’
Freya Bramble-carter, a star contestant in Channel 4’s The Great Pottery Throw Down last year, has lived and breathed the potter’s life, learning alongside her father Chris Bramble in the west London studio the pair now share for making and teaching. The 27-year-old Chelsea College of Arts fine arts graduate throws every plate, jug and vessel individually before washing it with glazes in hues inspired by the sea and mountains. ‘I go wild, putting on lots of colours and textures – it’s exciting because you never know how a glaze will come out. Every piece is a new experiment; that’s the magic,’ she enthuses.
For Christopher Cox, co-founder of Cox London with his wife Nicola: ‘Just about every skill we use – whether it be hand-cast, forged, welded, soldered or patinated – could be lost in a generation if we’re not careful.’ Consequently, the couple are keen to foster young talent, among them Jasmine Bradbury. Already an expert in lost wax casting at 26, she worked for Cox London before joining London Bronze Casting earlier this year.
‘I left art school wanting to learn a craft to help my own art,’ Jasmine explains. A three-year internship at sculptor Brian Alabaster’s foundry in Suffolk, as artist’s assistant and technician, fuelled her with a wealth of knowledge. ‘It is one of the most ancient crafts – and being a young woman working in a traditionally male-dominated foundry also spurred me on. I like getting my hands dirty, especially with →
“THIS AESTHETIC HAS BECOME A
HUGE PART OF OUR VISUAL LANGUAGE, SO IT’S EXCITING TO
SEE YOUNG MAKERS TAKING TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUES AND DOING SOMETHING REALLY NEW
AND EXCITING WITH THEM”
NATALIE MELTON, creative director, Crafts Council
“THERE’S SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT IN THE WORLD AND SO MUCH LIFE TO EXPRESS THAT
I WANT TO SHOW THAT IN EVERY NUANCE OF MY WORK”
FREYA BRAMBLE-CARTER, ceramics artist
mould-making and the challenge of working out how to transform a work from clay to bronze,’ she says.
Others have turned to craft through instinct. Samuel Collins, 30, working out of a renovated cattle shed on the edge of Dungeness, wanted to bring stone into his 3D design crafts studies at Plymouth University. With encouragement and advice from stone sculptors Guy Stevens and Jason Mulligan, Samuel has taught himself the fundamentals using offcuts of native stone sourced from Ancaster, Sussex and the Isle of Portland. ‘Stone does what it wants, and you just have to work around it,’ he laughs.
‘Working with stone feels very primitive. It’s slow and meditative,’ he adds. From curvaceous abstract tabletop sculptures and paperweights, his next aim is to make stone seating for private gardens and public spaces: ‘Something very abstract, that you wouldn’t necessarily think you could sit on, but it works.’
Similarly, Fflur Owen is pushing leather to new limits, having first fallen in love with it while studying for her first degree in fashion design. ‘I didn’t have a clue how to approach it, but my father, a carpenter, taught me all kinds of skills as a child, so I soon realised I could manipulate it by embossing, moulding, puncturing and laser-cutting in lots of different ways,’ she explains. For her small, intricately layered sculptural objects, dotted or overlaid with leather inside and out, Fflur moulds the material over shapes that she has created in wood or clay. ‘It is in fact a very old way of working, like a cordwainer pulling leather over a shoe last,’ she says.
Devon-based furniture maker Ambrose Vevers – one of Toast’s recently highlighted New Makers – harnesses old-school techniques such as steam bending, spokeshaving, blow-torching and handplaning for wood sourced from a nearby woodland, where he coppices, fells, planks and replants his own trees. The mainly self-taught 31-year-old brings a mid-century Scandinavian sensibility to chairs, benches and chopping boards, with hand-finished details such as dovetail joints and tenons. ‘I like choosing the perfect characterful piece of wood for a leg or seat, and the satisfaction of using sharp hand tools, feeling the wood as I work,’ Ambrose enthuses of his ‘simple, well considered’ pieces, which he also teaches how to make in classes at his workshop.
Sculptor Adam Watt, 33, recently founded Artists & Objects as an online showcase and hub for new makers, from weavers to printmakers. ‘It’s exciting to share the handcrafted small batch or one-off works from the best new talent coming out of UK studios and universities, especially as there’s a real buzz right now about craft and making things with our hands,’ says Adam (proof in point: Hobbycraft’s sales tripled during lockdown). ‘For this younger generation, wanting to keep history and traditional techniques alive but in response to the digital age, craft is beyond making money. It’s a way of life.’
See these young makersõ designs overleaf →
With their fascinating and beautiful designs, our featured young crafters are revitalising
age-old techniques, keeping traditions alive and regenerating the industry