Handmade in Britain is collaborating with Arts Thread this year for the New Graduate Showcase at the Appreciating British Craftsmanship: The Annual Contemporary Crafts & Design Fair.
Arts Thread is a company that offers the opportunity to promote an individual's own artwork to a Global audience, so naturally this collaboration is perfect for the show and the designers who have recently graduated from university and are attempting to spread awareness of their work.
The New Graduate Showcase will display upcoming designer items in the show. It aims to celebrate new talent, and invites the viewer to meet designers at the very start of their career. The team at Arts Thread have carefully selected the brightest new talent in fashion and interiors to present their work in a dedicated gallery area in what for many will be their first professional show.
The New Graduates' work that will be displayed includes the following designers:
. Aimee Bollu ceramics
Aimee graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a First Class Honours degree in Decorative Arts and continues to work from her studio at Backlit in Nottingham. She is a collector, a gatherer, an arranger of the things people have discarded and forgotten. She seeks out objects that have fallen out of use, out of society, and revives them.
Through the creation of hybrid objects, incorporating these found elements and newly made vessel forms, the disregarded items become meaningful once more, and possess a new value.
. Boky Lee jewellery
BOKY is a jewellery designer and maker who grew up in Korea and is now based in London. She finished a MA in Jewellery and Metal at the Royal College of Art in 2015, having previously graduated from Seoul National University of Science and Technology in 2013 BA in Metal Art and Design.
She designs wearable, classy and witty jewellery and she also aims for her pieces to have different functions. She is mostly inspired by structural shapes such as architecture or organised objects.
. Cheryl Van Goethem metal
Through experimentation Cheryl has developed a method of enamelling onto industrial steel pipes using vitreous enamel in an original and contemporary style. She uses liquid enamel combined with mark-making to express the sounds of the natural environment and recreate a sense of place and the passage of time.
. Francesca Bea ACFD Designs textile design
ACFD Designs is a sustainable fashion and textiles brand creating one off luxury silk scarves.
Each lovingly made in Britain using an arduous natural rust dyeing method these luxurious pieces are impossible to create identically meaning every piece is completely unique and individual.
ACFD Designs is grounded in principals of high quality design, home grown British craftsmanship and a global responsibility from the fabric sourced to the natural dyeing process.
Established at the end of 2014, ACFD Designs is a British start up company established after Francesca completed a Masters in Textiles Design.
. Joanna Bury jewellery
Joanna studied for a BA in Fashion Design and went on to specialise as a Lingerie Designer; she worked in the industry for 7 years primarily based in the UK, China and New York. After discovering the Silversmithing and Jewellery degree Joanna relocated from New York to Cornwall to take up full time studies and complete the degree.
“I am currently working on the concept that a piece of jewellery can be treated like a removable tattoo, worn to adorn and easily removed. Most of the design details are inspired by tattoo designs and so the pattern is effectively projected onto the skin, or patterns can be projected through the reflection of light or a shadow cast”.
. Judy McKenzie ceramics
Judy describes herself as having a passion for ceramics as a medium for self-expression and creative fulfilment, and a love for the manipulation of the addictive raw material. Her studies have allowed her to refocus and discover a new direction to my making.
My hand-built forms are serene and still. They possess a contained energy, which contrasts dramatically with the dynamic force created by the sideways application of the porcelain slips and glazes, a process of decoration requiring further investigation and study. My current body of work is a collection of hand built, non-functional, porous vessels. I have concentrated on form and volume, and investigated methods of construction. I have experimented with surface treatment, and how the materiality of the clay can add an extra dimension and interest to a form. This is a work in progress. I continue to investigate and expand on my collection, working at a larger scale than I have previously achieved, employing untried techniques and processes.
. Laura Murphy ceramics
In October 2014, Laura completed her Masters in Design and Applied Art, specialising in Ceramics, at the University of Wolverhampton. Having left a career in medical publishing to pursue ceramics full-time, this period of study has been invaluable in honing my skills and developing the ideas and concepts behind the work.
A period working as an Artist in Residence and assisting in the gallery at Torquil Pottery in Henley-in-Arden has been hugely beneficial to my practice and she currently works from my own studio space near her home in Birmingham.
. Laura Scott Design jewellery
Laura describes herself as a maker and she is quite instinctive in her style of working. She chooses the materials and techniques to suit the work she is doing rather than sticking to one material or skill, so she is constantly learning.
Laura's work tends to be jewellery based because of the way jewellery can be a very diverse medium. There is no limit to the materials and forms it can take and it is perfect for communicating a story or message as it has been used for thousands of years in communicating something about the wearer.
. Sophie Warringham jewellery
Sophie is graduated jeweller from the Glasgow School of Art who finds her inspiration in colour and patterns, in particular shades of blue that have a light and translucent quality. She often looks to the sea and sky as she has an interest in the forms that they naturally produce. Sophie likes to manipulate the layers of these forms to build up textures and depth to both the colours and patterns within her work. Sophie’s interest in colour influences her use of enamel, using a combination of traditional and experimental ways of applying the enamel to metal to create her own style of contemporary enamelling. In order to create a light transparency to her work Sophie not only uses enamel on precious metals but she also combines this with resins and plastics to build up intensity to many layers to the depth of colour and pattern.
. Young-Ran Lee ceramics
Young's work represents to himself a way of reaching down into his ancestral origin. He transforms his inspiration into contemporary vision finding suggestions even in the degraded suburbia and metropolitan environments.
His work is a result of the synthesis between "Primitivism" intended as an immersion in his ethnic origin and "Minimalism" that can be seen as a formal simplification which I express through the process of making in the gestural and intuitive way, focused on diversity, contrast and otherness adopting elemental shapes. Young's current work is based on wheel thrown and hand built using St.Thomas stoneware and Black textured stoneware clay.
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