Meet the makers

Craft is losing its frumpy image as inspirational artisans create museum-quality works for the Craft Council’s annual fair, Collect. By Jessica Doyle

Three emerging designers with boundarypushing techniques in wood, ceramic and glass

At first glance, the material from which Eleanor Lakelin makes her sculptural vessels is not immediately obvious. Some scorched to a dramatic, lustrous black, others bleached to white, their delicate, textural quality can resemble porcelain, bone or stone. They are, in fact, wood.

With over 20 years’ experience working in wood, Lakelin is particularly drawn to burr wood – a rounded growth with a circular grain, formed if a tree is injured in some way, by external damage, insect infestation or disease. ‘I find it fascinating that this actually exists in nature, that it can be formed by the tree reacting to something,’ she says. ‘It’s a way of healing.’

To create her vessels, Lakelin works with green, or recently cut, wood, hollowing it out and removing the bark using ‘a mixture of traditional tools, modern methods and whatever works’, which could be a lathe, a chisel or a dental pick. Her aim is to work with the natural shape of the burr, stripping its outer layers to uncover what lies beneath. ‘I pare it back to skeleton form,’ she says. ‘Up until quite close to the end I’m working in the dark, going by what I can read from the bark. Then there’s a moment when it reveals its secret, this landscape that is untouched and never before seen.’

At Collect, Lakelin will be exhibiting a collection of bleached vessels made from horse-chestnut burr, with a tactile, alabaster quality. ‘My work is about our relationship with the natural world,’ she says. ‘I’ve always been drawn to generous curves that you want to touch.’ eleanorlakelin.com

Above Voided Vessel, 2015, bleached horse-chestnut burr, planted in 1710, and Voided Vessel IV, Contours of Nature, ebonised horse-chestnut burr, planted in 1701. Right Eleanor Lakelin in her studio