We are open!

After a very long set up this weekend, Designed | Crafted is finally open for business!

The set up was slightly traumatic, involving a late night furniture set up on Saturday night, a towed car and a midnight trip to the Hackney car pound and then a fourteen hour styling session yesterday to get the space looking right.

I managed to get a few snaps of the space before we left at midnight, but it was looking lovely.

Come along to the Private View tomorrow night (Tuesday 16th December) from 7-9pm.

Society of Designer Craftsmen Gallery, 24 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3DU

See more details of our ten artists at www.designed-crafted.com

Designed | Crafted Christmas

We’re really delighted to announce a new Designed | Crafted show at the Society of Designer Craftsmen Gallery in December.

Designed Crafted E-invite

After the success of our show during London Design Week in September, we thought we must do another show for Christmas. Being in the festive season, the emphasis of this show would naturally be a little different. Whereas we curated our last show to include a range of large gallery pieces with a sharp design edge, the new Designed | Crafted incarnation will be more of a pop up shop with a myriad of handmade gifts.

My fellow curator, Brett Manley, and I absolutely loved the process of finding new makers for the new show. We wanted more artists this time to offer a wider range of products and I think we’ve achieved a really good balance of materials with some absolutely gorgeous pieces which fulfill our manifesto of curating objects which lie at the boundary of craft and design.

We have also brought together a pretty dynamic group of artists. We’ve discovered some exciting new makers whose graduation work has attracted a buzz and mixed them in with some well established artists with a loyal following. For the full list of artists, check out our new Designed | Crafted website.

The pop up show will launch on the 15th of December and it will stay open right until Christmas Eve for any last minute East London shoppers. We will have two late Christmas shopping evenings until 9pm, and we would cordially invite you to join us at the Private View between 7 and 9pm on 16th December.

Do get in contact if you would like to come along, we’d love to see you there.

Society of Designer Craftsmen Gallery, 24 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3DU
15-24 December, Mon-Sun 11am-7pm

Christmas Goodies

I hold an Open House in May every year, and I’ve always meant to do a Christmas Open Studio event. I was approached by a couple of local makers to hold a joint event, and so for the first time this November I will be opening my studio for a Christmas sale.

I will be open this Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th November from 11am-6pm at The Glass Studio, 47 Pymers Mead, London SE21 8NH.

In anticipation of the launch of my new online shop, I will be having a sale of small glass pieces which will make perfect Christmas presents. The studio and one floor of the house will be open to visitors who want to make an early start on Christmas shopping. I have easy parking and credit card facilities which will help make the experience easy and enjoyable, and of course I offer handmade glassware at reasonable prices. And as if this wasn’t incentive enough, my fellow off-Croxted Road residents are also opening that weekend and so you will have a mini trail of houses to visit.

Catherine Mitchell makes jewellery crafted in silver with semi-precious stones and pearls. Catherine’s Open House at 84 Croxted Road is also running for extended dates on Thursday 6th and Friday 7th November.

A little further down, five makers are selling their products at 21 Hawarden Grove.* Catherine Potter makes a host of decorative gift items from upcycled textiles and buttons. Handmade in Hammersmith recycles tweeds and other textiles made into beautiful new bags and pouches. One of a Kind Jewellery creates one-off designs combining rare vintage beads, Italian and Czech glass, ceramic, resin and amber. Alison Watt-Cooper produces drawings, prints and cards, inspired by local flora and fauna. Joy Fitzsimmons sells cards, notebooks, tea towels and prints all featuring her signature dachsund designs.

*At Hawarden Grove an entrance fee of £1 plus 10% of takings will go towards the local community charity 4ALL-Building Community in West Dulwich. Entrance includes a glass of mulled wine, coffee or tea and mince pie.

Wrapping the show

After a successful fortnight showing our Designed | Crafted exhibition at Rivington Street, we finally wrapped the show last night and today had the unenviable task of also wrapping the work and packing away the plinths to clear the space. Usually the final clear up is a little sad, taking down all the lovely work and seeing the empty space.

However there was one thing which brightened our day considerably this time. We were sent the link to a video piece on the FT website which featured some footage of our show. In all the craziness of London Design Week I had almost forgotten that I met the producer of the piece last Tuesday and showed him around our exhibition while a cameraman filmed inside and outside the gallery!

The hour that they spent in our space, and asking about our work, was reduced down to about seven seconds…. in fact just about as long as one of good old Terence Conran’s pauses, but it made us very happy!

Check us out between 1:46 and 1:53

Designed | Crafted

Our exhibition opened last week at the Society of Designer Craftsmen Gallery in Rivington Street, Shoreditch. Designed | Crafted is a showcase bringing together the best of British craft, with beautifully handmade objects which bridge the gap between craft and design.

We tried to represent the breadth of the show in the window with one piece from (almost) every artist. The gallery space was looking gorgeous with a row of Simon Yates‘ sculptural stands made from polished yew leading to the back space where Brett Manley‘s ‘Glass Forest’ comprised of a cluster of glass discs presented on plexiglass stands. Juliette Bigley‘s bowls in polished silver had a seductive warmth from the gilded interior which put me in mind of horse chestnuts and their shells.

From the arboreal to the underwater, my Coral Bowls have an organic undulation about them which invokes notions of deep sea coral as they project a frilly pattern of colour underneath. Myung Nam An‘s wall of sculptural ceramics continues the underwater theme with colourful anemone-like forms.

Set against these weird and wonderful shapes, Katie Snow‘s androgynous geometric jewellery is no less intriguing. in fact her collection is called ‘Pockets of Intrigue’ as the wearable angular containers open to reveal their secrets. Then we had beautifully contrasting work with the virtuoso blown glass vessels by Adam Aaronson, large and expressive, contrasting with a group of neat blown glass vases from The Edition Collection, exquisitely engraved with intricate patterns.

Private-View We are open late on Tuesday 16th September for a private view to which you are cordially invited. Please come along between 7pm and 10pm to see this exciting collection of contemporary craft work with a design edge.

See further images at my Pinterest page

London Design Festival

September is an exciting time as it is the London Design Festival which centres on East London. I have got together with couple of my fellow Teepee Glass artists to organise a special exhibition of high quality craft with a design edge.

We are thrilled to be presenting the work of eight makers including glass, silver, ceramics and furniture in the show Designed | Crafted which will be opened in a beautiful gallery space in Rivington Street in the heart of the Old Street design district during London Design Festival.

If you would like to attend one of the Private Views on Thursday 11th or Tuesday 16th September between 7pm and 10pm, please get in touch

And if you are on Twitter, please do follow us on @DesignedCrafted and spread the word!

Alex R | Glass Design

Musings on Glass and Life

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