To paraphrase the great Victorian poet Robert Bridges ‘We love all beauteous things, we seek and adore them.’ Every Friday we’ll share some of the stunning handmade pieces we’ve been discovering across the UK. From unique handcrafted jewellery to stunning handmade gift ideas, why not take a moment, lose yourself in their beauty and find out a little more about the people behind them, their passion and inspiration.
See this week’s choices here
We have made ceramic items for millennia: taking rough clay and shaping it into useful vessels and objects of devotion. Ceramics appear all over the world – at least where there is a raw material to utilise! – and they have played an integral part in our lives for countless generations.
The art of the ceramicist is truly ancient and also ongoing, a skill passed down, reinvigorated and renewed as each generation learns, takes the baton and passes it on. And this journey, this continual progression, is apparent in every home in the country. You don’t have to look far to see the all-encompassing nature of ceramics, in the pieces we utilise every day and in those we treasure. And as we use and appreciate our vessels we can see very easily the functional and decorative items of our forebears not only in our display cabinets and in antique shops but by simply digging in our own back gardens and when walking along the beaches and river banks of the UK. Here you can see the fragments of the once functional and prized items of the past slowly being denuded, beaten by the spade and the plough, the wave and the pebble, returned to the earth from which they sprang.
Ceramics used to be very much site-specific, the styles of pot created dictated by the clay available in the vicinity of the potter and the fuel to fire it to sufficient temperatures, although pots of course were traded across ancient borders and seas. Nowadays a potter has access to every kind of raw material and this is immediately apparent when you see the range of work produced by the ceramicists on Seek & Adore. Stoneware, earthenware and porcelain all joyfully and fully represented by our talented makers.
What we have lost in the old-fashioned locally sourced materials we have gained in the explosion of creativity forged by makers having the opportunity to work in the medium that suits them best. This is a fantastic breakthrough. And with our modern global community makers can source, discover and learn techniques pioneered and perfected anywhere in the globe. At every UK ceramics event or craft fair you will find Oriental inspired pottery being produced in the Cotswolds, South American inspired ceramics produced in Cornwall or the finest porcelain produced in Hackney!
With this development there is now a style of pottery, a style of ceramic to suit all tastes and all purses and we can easily eschew the cheap and uninspiring mass-produced piece for the handmade, artisan item. My home is full of them and I love every one!
Here is a glimpse of what Seek & Adore offers the die-hard collector, the ‘newby’ and the simply inquisitive.
Lisa Katzenstein – Small Twist Vase – Bluebells, £65.00
Lisa Katzenstein‘s earthenware pieces are so distinctive! When I first saw her work on a stand at one of the many UK craft fairs I stopped in my tracks. I was stunned. It is Lisa’s graphic style and her bold use of colour that makes her work so appealing and immediately recognisable. This piece shows bluebells yet seen through Lisa’s very keen eye the sky to me is as vivid and livid as any I saw in my travels in Australia a few years ago. Lisa makes the ordinary look immediately exotic.
Lucy Burley – Small Violet Blue Bottle, £25.00
It is Lucy Burley’s simplicity of form and colour that appeals to me about her work. No extraneous decoration here, these white earthenware pieces succeed or fail on their purity. This is risky! Lucy has a wonderful eye for coloured glazes and for form however and all her pieces co-ordinate both in tone and shape. Lucy’s work is universal and utterly timeless.
Georgina Fowler – Medium Wide Blue Cage Butterfly Vessel, £68.00
Georgina Fowler‘s earthenware creations are slip-cast and then decorated with her very distinctive designs. Georgina’s world is inspired by the story and the fairy tale and it is not unusual to see horses in silhouette running around the inside of her pieces, butterflies flying in great swarms, and black cats surrounded by cages or clocks. Alongside this her forms are sometimes slightly twisted, a step beyond ‘true’, expressing her very unique and magical view of the world.
Alan Birchall – Oblong Dish, £60.00
Alan Birchall works with the most extraordinary precision. Each of his stoneware pieces is carefully constructed and his quality of finish is exquisite. Here is work reminiscent of ancient Chinese forms but there is also a hint in this piece of classic Chinese roofs with the up-turned corners of the rim. Alan’s work has an innate power borne of its simplicity and its quiet, unassuming, contemplative quality.
Alison Jones – Tripot Wall Vase, £92.00
Alison Jones‘ pieces are utterly striking, shapely, vari-coloured, sinuous and asymmetric. This is difficult to achieve, Alison builds all these vessels by hand, each section rolled separately and then combined – or should I say constructed – to create these carefully balanced and unusual forms. But the work doesn’t stop there, she then colours and decorates them by hand with the utmost care. White stoneware is manipulated by Alison and rendered unrecognisable by her intense and time-consuming techniques.
Cressida Borrett – Allium Medium Sized Wonky Dish, £55.00
Cressida Borrett’s pieces are inspired by the natural world and her shapes and their finish evoke this organic quality. Using off-white stoneware, each piece is marked by very minimal, but striking natural forms and the use of empty space, the latter a nod to ‘Ma’ in Japanese art. These pieces are functional but would equally work on a dresser or wall to beautifully enhance a decorative scheme.
Debbie Barber – Bird with Circles, £27.00
Quirky, witty and charming, Debbie Barber‘s work brings a smile to your face and her subtle use of colour makes her pieces pretty and appealing. I met Debbie recently at The British Craft Fair and she has started to use lustre glazes, a really exciting development. This white stoneware slip-cast bird typifies Debbie’s lovely, life-enhancing work but don’t just buy one, they look even better in a flock!
Peter Willis – Tall Bottle with a Yellow Shawl, £300.00
Peter Willis‘ work is vivid and uncompromising and in this vessel he has incorporated three different stoneware mixes to create this striking piece. I met Peter about twelve months ago and his work stood out immediately. He has a free, improvisatory style with his glazing, letting the colours drip and meet where they please, but don’t let that fool you, Peter’s work is anything but random.
Kate Schuricht – Miel – Small Lidded Sphere Pot, £60.00
Precision, subtlety, grace and peace: all words that describe the work of the brilliant Kate Schuricht. Kate’s pieces exude a confident calm, they are meditative but not shy, they stand out, they have presence. Stoneware allows for precision, it is a fine grained material and Kate takes full advantage of it. It is her use of colour too that is so appealing, a muted range reminiscent of egg shells. Kate produces work of great sophistication.
Jessica Jordan – Small Low Rimmed Vessel, £25.00
Topographical maps, tribal art, sheep paths around hills, cracks in parched earth, all these images spring to mind when I look at this piece by Jessica Jordan. This work has an elemental, organic quality that makes it instantly appealing and also unusual when you discover it is made from porcelain, that most pure and delicate of ceramic raw materials.
Adam Frew – Large Lidded Jar With Scribble Drawing, £90
I became a fan of Adam Frew’s beautiful work as soon as I saw it. This is a gifted maker if ever I saw one and I particularly admire his use of mark making to create his very distinctive decorative style. I suppose in the past he may have worked on paper and canvas, but Adam uses his porcelain in the same way. Adam’s forms are precise and fine and his mark making vivacious and energetic. Adam’s development as a maker is going to be fascinating.
Lisa Young – Arcane – Large Porcelain Bowl, £160
Lisa Young’s porcelain pieces are perfection. Beautifully thrown and then beautifully decorated with her very unique designs. Her style, to me, is very mid-century modern, her illustrative motifs evoking constellations, space travel, helixes with just a whiff of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis! Lisa’s work would add style and sophistication to any home.
Katharina Klug – Leaf Bowl, £36.00
Katharina Klug is a new addition to Seek & Adore, I saw her work only recently and was charmed. Like Adam Frew, Katharina explores mark-making on her beautiful porcelain pieces, utilising the porcelain very much as an artist might use a piece of paper or a canvas. Katharina’s lines are bold, like charcoal, and her lines have an immediacy and energy about them that give her pieces verve and a tangible energy. Katharina is a very welcome addition to the Seek & Adore designer-maker stable.
Janice Parker – Ding and the Grandfather Clock, £120.00
Janice Parker‘s work is entirely in the tradition I suppose of the figurative sculpture although she brings her own witty sensibility to the craft. Janice is a storyteller whose tales are told through the medium of porcelain and the immediacy of the line. Here is an illustrator who draws on her material and bakes and glazes it. She is also a mixed-media artist, incorporating metal elements to bring movement and contrast to her pieces. Janice is a one-off, a marvellous, creative maverick.
Timea Sido – Tangled Web Large Bowl, £74.00
Timea Sido’s technique is a mystery but she produces pieces of exquisite delicacy and complexity. These works are sculptural in the way they play with light and shade and positive and negative space. Placed in a window they subtly alter as the light changes, casting beautiful, intricate shadows. This is exciting, original work.
See Dan’s handmade ceramics selection here
There is nothing quite like a finely made handmade textile to excite the eyes and the fingers and there are so many kinds, so many techniques, so many colours and styles to choose from! There is a fabric for every person, for every interior, for every occasion.
To me a textile has to have integrity and be well made. Handmade textiles have a completely different feel to those that are mass-produced. To sound ‘new-age’ for a brief moment, handmade fabrics have a living energy imbued by their maker’s imaginations and the energy of the making processes used to create them and they age beautifully. A handmade fabric is a decorative, beautiful, functional piece of art in all its many coloured, patterned and textured manifestations.
A cursory glimpse at the textile section on Seek & Adore will immediately reveal what a diverse craft this is. We have makers who weave their fabrics from single threads, knitters, those who take raw textiles and paint and dye them, and those who take existing fabrics to create new items. The list of techniques and applications is endless, and endlessly fascinating.
The textile trends this season are interesting and daring, in fashion there is an emphasis on neon brights, pastels, stripes and squares and in interiors yellow is the new pink (apparently!) and there is a move back to bold patterns on a white background and an enthusiasm for combining strong designs.
If you want your fashion and interior styles to be up-to-date but also entirely original then Seek & Adore is the place to visit. We are always ready to guide you to fantastic textile makers who happen to make work embodying the enthusiasms of the wider fashion and interior worlds. The work produced here is as original as any you will see on the Paris catwalks or the creations of the high-end interior designers because there is a unique creative mind behind every piece we sell. Be current, fashionable but ultimately unique this year by sporting or surrounding yourself with the best work of the finest UK designer-makers.
Interior Textiles
Heena Lad - Grey Long Pearl Square Cushion, £65.00
Heena Lad is hitting the ground running this year with the interior trend for mixing and matching patterns and her bold use of vertical and horizontal stripes would add sophistication and an understated elegance to any room. But Heena’s work contains a cheeky secret, look at her use of stripes on the reverse of the cushion as well! With Heena’s beautiful work you get two cushions for the price of one!
Sandy Powell - Felt Wall Flower, £35.00
Sandy Powell combines form and hue in her own very powerful and striking way. Here the colour of the season, yellow, and the demand for bold pattern are uniquely combined. Sandy’s work is 3D, tactile and ever-changing depending on the light. Here you can have a fashionable colour, a fashionable trend and a piece of fabric art all in one.
Isobel Anderson - Tudor Cushion, £52.00
Strong patterns against a white background, this is a massive trend in interiors this year so place yourself at the cutting edge of interior fashion in 2013 with this Tudor-inspired cushion. Isobel Anderson’s work is classic, dramatic, current and timeless. What I love about this cushion is how a design inspired by – and based on – a 16th Century Tudor building can be utterly current and contemporary!
Gabi Bolton - Sacre Coeur Cushion Yellow, £50.00
Yellow is big this year and has been described by many interior experts as ‘the new pink’. This cushion by Gabi Bolton encapsulates this trend but also another key theme for this season, the juxtaposition of bold patterns. This cushion is beautiful, fashionable and wonderfully quirky. With its combination of key colours your home will be on trend for a number of seasons and your style a talking point!
Zoe Acketts – Aqua Tufted-Squares Rug
Rugs are an underappreciated way of bringing drama to a room. We tend to concentrate on cushions, throws and curtains to achieve strong effects and accents but here is a way to bring bold patterning and confident and uncompromising design into your home. Zoe Acketts’ work is exquisitely made. I would be tempted to hang one of her rugs on a wall …
Deryn Relph – ‘Card’ Red/Pink/Green Square Cushion, £67.00
Deryn Relph has an irrepressible spirit and I couldn’t pass this opportunity to include her work in a blog about handcrafted textiles. We can always follow trends but we can also be mavericks, lovers of colour and glamour and retro style. Deryn encapsulates all these things. Brighten your home with one of her joyful and life enhancing pieces.
Wearable textiles
Ekta Kaul – HAIKU Multiway Scarf – Wide, £95.00
Ekta Kaul’s work is serene and exquisite. In this piece she hits a big trend for 2013, stripes, but her use of different gauges of stripe which on closer inspection turn out to be squiggly and not straight lines is a beautiful and original development. It is Ekta’s attention to detail that drew me to her work in the first place and here she hits the bulls-eye yet again with the addition of some vivid red detailing. Ekta’s work would lend any outfit a stylish and sophisticated elegance.
Gabrielle Vary – Locomotive Blue Knitted Lambswool Scarf, £89.00
Squares are another big trend for 2013 and there is still time to buy a beautiful knitted scarf by Gabrielle Vary to see out this winter and to ensure you will still be fashionable when next winter starts. It is Gabrielle’s very distinctive and daring using of colour that attracted me to her work and who wouldn’t be drawn to a scarf like this? Be fashionable, colourful and unique as we wait for the cold weather to subside.
Sallie Temple – Blossom Silk Scarf, £65.00
Pastels are a key trend this year and Sallie Temple manages to combine two trends in this beautiful ‘blossom’ scarf: pastels and stripes. This is a very pretty and delicate piece to wear on cool spring days or summer evening events or walks. Sallie loves weaving because every piece she produces is unique, so you can be certain if you invest in one of her scarves you will be sporting a true one-off!
Cally Booker – ‘Flow’ Merino/Silk scarf in Purple, Orange & Magenta
Neon colours are massive this year, the bold the bright and the brash! It is the year to go a bit crazy if you have the nerve, verve and personality. If you want a touch of the neon in the handmade but less garish and more approachable then I can think of no one better than Cally Booker and her wonderful range of hand woven scarves. The scarf I have chosen is a vibrant mix of orange, magenta and purple, perfect to brighten up the last restages of winter and to keep you warm in the still cool spring mornings and evenings.
Charlotte Grierson – Indian Summer Striped Crinkle Scarf, £140.00
As I have mentioned, stripes are key this season in the fashion world and here Charlotte Grierson effortlessly embodies the trend in her own unique way. Like all our makers Charlotte is not swayed by fashion, she makes pieces from what moves and inspires her but it just so happens that her combinations are hot at present in the wider world. With a piece by Charlotte however, you will be buying something current for 2013 but ultimately timeless as her work is not swayed by the constantly shifting sands of the fashion gurus.
Helen Chatterton – City of London Scarf, £75.00
Helen Chatterton takes extant pieces of tweed and also combines fabrics she has printed to create beautiful, wearable fashion statements.
A unique take on this season’s obsession with squares – a Helen Chatterton City of London scarf. Be ultra-fashionable in a left-field way … Who else will be wearing a city ‘square’ rather than a Louis Vuitton square? Wit and spring/summer 2013 fashion combined!
See Dan’s handmade textiles selection here
Spring fever always gives us the urge to make a change in our home or to even move house. But don’t worry, a breath of fresh air is much easier to achieve than that. We’ve brought together five of our designer-makers whose work simply transforms any room; making it easy to spruce up your home for spring. There’s also some great handmade gift ideas for Mother’s Day…
Meet the makers behind the work & see our suggestions for freshening your home for spring here
Glass is a most extraordinary material, delicate and strong, coloured or transparent, it has a chameleon-like quality, reflecting and refracting light depending on its density, composition and position. I can think of no other medium that captivates the imagination in such an all-consuming way.
As an art it is ancient and miraculously extant vessels millennia old have been discovered, their very fragility belying the years they have spent beneath the earth. However, as mechanisation has eased and quickened production, so glass has become more accessible and we have quickly forgotten the age-old craft of glass working that has been all but subsumed by our cheap drinking vessels, window glazing and domestic wares. Glass has become ‘every day’, part of the background of our lives and the idea of the artisan-made glass objet, treasured and revered for its intrinsic beauty, has receded, although still maintained and continued by a number of very fine practitioners.
So glasswork that appears in ancient buildings, stained and leaded as it is, flooding interiors with vary-coloured light and awe inspiring in its beauty or the glass vessel of perfect colour and form, fail to communicate to the modern sensibility the effort in their production. The alchemy required to turn a blown-glass tube and varying pigments into a flat sheet of brilliantly coloured glass before being clipped, trimmed and chipped to create a window, or the necessary materials and tools to make the perfect vase or art piece, lost on the modern imagination.
Glass in some ways has lost its currency and it is our mission through Seek & Adore to reawaken a love for a material and an intricate art through the celebration of our marvellous makers.
I must admit for me the most extraordinary glass production technique is that of blowing. Where else in making is it possible for the breath of a practitioner to be infused in the piece itself? The imagination and life of a maker combined effortlessly and in perpetuity with their creation. A hot, sweaty, intense creative process, producing at its conclusion an object of unimaginable delicacy.
With modern developments and techniques glass has become astonishingly versatile as a medium and the range of glasswork on Seek & Adore readily shows this. I would like to take this opportunity to take you on a tour of our wonderful glass makers through some of the pieces they have created.
Helen Slater - Environment Glass Sculpture, £450.00
Helen Slater manages to catch a fragment of a moment and crystallise it. Trees and architectural motifs are suspended and immortalised in clear or coloured glass blocks. This work makes an ideal and stately ‘conversation piece’ in any well designed interior. Quiet but nevertheless communicating a powerful integrity borne of its simplicity and purity. In addition to her statement pieces Helen also explores other glass techniques producing framed figurative scenes and wonderfully quirky objets using glass and other materials. Helen is a maker who pushes the boundaries of her craft.
Siddy Langley - Lilac Paperweight, £38.00
I loved Siddy Langley’s work from the first moment I saw it and felt very keenly that here was someone who should be championed. Working in her studio in Devon, Siddy creates her wonderfully distinctive pieces which exude a quiet and meditative aura. Siddy’s love of nature is apparent in all her work, lending it a free, organic quality which is immediately appealing and accessible. With the flashes of jade and swathes of purple this piece to me is reminiscent of the waves on the Devon coastline and the heather on the high reaches of Dartmoor.
Cathryn Shilling – Blue Line Flower Perfume Bottle, £275.00
Cathryn Shilling’s blown glass is a joy to behold. Her marriage of form and colour is daring and contemporary and yet her pieces convey a timeless quality. Perfume bottles were at one time a key element of any lady’s dressing table but in recent years have been side-lined by mass-produced, commercial vessels. Here Cathryn takes an age-old form and turns it into an exquisite art piece to treasure. For a birthday, for Christmas or for a special anniversary, Cathryn’s perfume bottles would make an extraordinary and original gift.
Elliot Walker- Strata Vessel, £48.00
Elliot Walker is up and coming but already a man to watch. His forms are bold and concise and his use of colour distinctive and unusual. Here, in his strata vessel, he produces a staggering complexity and subtlety of colour whilst incorporating a dramatic clear glass ‘frill’. Why not start collecting pieces by this already accomplished maker? Elliot is Seek & Adore’s youngest proponent of the art of glass blowing but he is proving already that the future of the craft is in good hands!
Frans Wesselman – Cat Lady Stained Glass Panel, £165.00
At once charming, whimsical and quirky, Frans Wesselman has a beautifully idiosyncratic, illustrative world that is entirely his own. There is a presumption that stained and painted glass can only sit in a fixed setting, but why not enhance a window in your home with a piece inspired by storytelling, myth and legend? Frans produces pieces that are portable, allowing you to take his world from room to room and house to house.
Caroline Raffan – Cliffs Glasspainting, £75.00
Caroline Raffan’s pieces are gentle and thought-provoking. Here is glass used in a painterly way: panels representing light-infused figurative scenes. Her style is free and expressive and like the work of Frans Wesselman would enhance any window in your home or would look beautiful lit from behind by a lamp or simply framed. Caroline is notable because she combines various techniques and alongside her paintings produces beautiful glass homewares.
Melissa Nicholls – Large Amethyst Leaf Form, £80.00
Melissa Nicholls’ work is strong in colour and confident in form. Curvilinear, the pieces are sinuous and tactile, the glass appearing dense and substantial. Melissa’s work would be perfect as a statement piece in any well-constructed interior scheme and would look striking in a window setting or lit artificially from behind or below. Whilst not big, Melissa’s pieces exude confidence and they would look particularly striking if arranged in groups.
Caroline Rees – Bird on a Roof Carved Glass Panel, £75.00
I love Caroline Rees’ pieces for their apparent simplicity but also for their vibrant and spare use of the line. Caroline’s work brings a new dimension to decorate glassware: the equal importance given to the shadows the pieces cast. This is a wonderful development in the craft. Her vivid combination of clear and frosted glass lends her pieces a multi-dimensional quality and a vivacity and contemporary feel that would l look great in any home.
And finally, other uses for glass …
Dani Crompton – Geometrics Box No.1, £180.00
At Seek & Adore we are committed to finding the distinctive and unusual and we most definitely struck gold with Dani Crompton who takes existing glass beads of miniscule size and combines them to produce the most exquisite creations. Dani’s forms can look deceptively simple but like the best micro-mosaicists, Dani works on a minute scale weaving intricate and complex structures and forms. Dani’s work in any home, or worn in the case of her jewellery, would always be a talking point!
Grainne Morton – Glass Dome Ring, £250.00
And finally, Grainne Morton, who has her own unique and inspiringly individual take on the use of glass. Here Grainne creates a ring from found objects and turns them into a small and exquisite curiosity. Here is an imagination free and unfettered, taking inspiring from the most curious and wonderful of sources. Glass domes are associated with taxidermy, clocks and valuable ceramics, pieces often large, valuable or of morbid curiosity. By miniaturising all these associations Grainne has created a portable work of wearable art.
See Dan’s glasswork selection here