About

The Art Workers’ Guild showcases the wide range of craft disciplines represented by their members with a series of talks, demonstrations and an exhibition.

Visit and gain insights into the specialist skills involved in bookbinding and artist books, furniture design, weaving and textiles, ceramics, jewellery and much more. The exhibition, which is free to enter, includes over 14 artists and makers, all showing, demonstrating and selling their work.

A series of talks given by Guild members also takes place over the two days, priced at £5 each.

Saturday 18 May

11.00 am

Sarah P Corbett | Craftivist Collective

Sarah P Corbett is the Founder of the global Craftivist Collective and an award-wining activist. Passionate about offering tools to deliver slow, quiet, kind, and attractive activism using handicrafts (mostly hand embroidery and paper crafts) as a tool to serve social justice. Sarah focuses on engaging apolitical and anxious people who have never taken part in activism before. Her TED talk ‘Activism needs Introverts’ was chosen as TED Talk of the Day and her work is currently exhibited in the Design Museum Denmark.

Sarah will discuss the power of handicrafts as a tool for critical thinking about the complexities of social change and how her unique ‘gentle protest’ methodology for craftivism (craft + activism) has led to changes in hearts, minds, policies, and laws around the world in a creative, respectful, and non-polarising way.

1.00 pm

Conrad Lindley-Thompson | Sculpture in film

Conrad will give a talk on the work of sculptors in the British motion picture industry. Heavily illustrated with work from various productions, in his talk he will discuss the different materials and techniques used, especially the use of polystyrene, in the manufacture of large-scale sculptures and landscapes for film sets.

Sunday 19 May

11.00 am

Eleanor Pritchard and Mick Sheridan | The Hayshovel Chair

Upholsterer Mick Sheridan and weaver Eleanor Pritchard chew the fat over The Hayshovel Chair. The latest addition in a series of Mick’s ‘Guerilla Upholstery’ re-imaginings of abandoned furniture pieces, the Hayshovel chair takes an esoteric ‘on-the-hoof’ approach to re-design. Informed by Eleanor’s suggested visual reference points – vernacular wooden shovels, hay-carts and beaten copper pub tables – Mick has re-worked the abandoned chair as an eccentric, irreverent piece of ‘outsider’ furniture. Re-constructed with studio off-cuts and found timber, the work explores questions of value and re-use in our throw-away culture and the importance of play-time in professional practice.

1.00 pm

Olivia Horsfall Turner | ‘Owen Jones: observing, designing, making’

This talk focuses on the ideas and practice of architect and designer Owen Jones (1812-1874). Best known as the author of The Grammar of Ornament (1856), which has never been out of print, Jones had strong opinions about the role of art and architecture in public life. This extensively illustrated talk will explore some of his ideas, including the creation of original ornament and mass art education. Drawing on research for Olivia’s recently published book Owen Jones and the V&A: Ornament for a Modern Age (Lund Humphries, 2023), the talk considers Jones’s ideas about the craft of design and his readiness to embrace industrial materials. 2024 will be the 150th anniversary of Jones’s death, offering an ideal moment to reflect on his theoretical and practical ideas as well as his legacy for contemporary makers.

Exhibition and Demonstrations

Fred Baier

Fred will take us on a journey through the development of a piece of work, Nesting Cylinders. He has been ‘re-visiting’ the nesting table; models have been made and prototyping has begun. Follow him through presenting to his client, gearing up to final prototyping, CAD modelling and developing CNC component machining pathways, to the realisation of the finished idea. He will be assembling parts during the exhibition.

Monica Boxley

Monica is a textile artist working with a variety of processes. She uses batik to create one off silk scarves; a technique she learned from a renowned Sri Lankan batik artist. She has developed a range of unique clothing with print and mark making using inks and dyes. More recently Monica has been experimenting using her sewing machine to make stitched portraits with free machine embroidery.

Sarah P Corbett

Sarah will be exhibiting some of her Craftivist projects including Mini Protest Banners and Heart for your Sleeve, alongside ‘crafterthought’ quotes. She will be demonstrating her Mini Fashion Statements – encouraging you to make your own craftivism project to gently encourage people to think about how their clothing is made.

Charlotte de Syllas

Artist jeweller Charlotte will be showing her original and distinctive jewellery, featuring an intricate combination of finely carved gemstones and precious metals. She will be bringing along hand tools to demonstrate how she cuts the stones she works with.

Penny Fowler

Penny is a ceramicist working in bone-china and semi porcelain clay slips. She casts her forms in layers of colour in moulds, which she has made from her original forms. Carving through layers of coloured clay slips, her decorations originate from her drawings from life. She will be demonstrating casting, inlay and carving and exhibiting a selection of her work.

Charlotte Grierson

Charlotte Grierson’s scarves, handwoven in mixes of silk and wool, elegant, timeless, and beautifully soft to wear, are suitable for men and women alike.
She will exhibit her series of woven canvas compositions which explore the way in which we read patterns, by weaving repeating shapes in the structure of the fabric and using stripe sequences in the warp and weft. She will be demonstrating using a table loom.

Angela James

Angela is a bookbinder, creating commissioned fine-bindings and artists books. Her work involves dyeing and colouring the leather she uses and using letterpress and drypoint etching. She will be demonstrating ‘headbands’ – which are both functional and decorative and offer an opportunity for a bookbinder to introduce colour in subtle ways. The original purpose of a headband is to strengthen the head and tail of the spine so that when a book is withdrawn from a shelf or a box, the leather on the spine is not pulled away, the headband taking the strain instead. She will show the making of the core over which the threads (usually silk) are worked, and the sewing of single and double headbands.

Bobbie Kociejowski

Bobbie will be exhibiting her scarves and shawls woven in fine silk and wool. Her work has a contemporary feel but is entirely hand-woven and hand-finished, continuing a tradition that has spanned many centuries in many different cultures. She will be demonstrating weaving on a table loom.

Catherine Mannheim

Catherine will exhibit a small selection of her contemporary and unique handmade silver and gold jewellery, with carefully chosen precious and semi-precious gemstones. She will also show a small selection of tools and some of the materials she uses when creating her jewellery.

Richard McVetis

Richard’s practice centres around drawing and process, specifically hand embroidery. He will exhibit a series of hand embroidered objects and sculptures which explore themes of geology, cosmology, the language of time, permanence, and impermanence. He will also show the potential of hand embroidery as a drawing and mark-making process through demonstrations and his archive of stitched drawings.

Ruth Martin

Ruth Martin creates limited edition hand printed artist books, small games, curios, and greetings cards. She prints with hand cut rubber stamps and a sense of fun. She will demonstrate the process of making her artist books, carving the rubber stamps and printing with them, and folding and assembling the pages.

Thuyha Nguyen

Thuyha creates fine jewellery inspired by animals and nature, handcrafted using traditional wax-carving techniques and reticulation. Every unique piece is a wearable sculpture that exudes originality, refined craftsmanship and attention to detail.

Jeremy Nichols

Jeremy Nichols, a saltglaze potter and former Chair of the Craft Potters Association, will be showing his open-handle teapot designs together with a selection of other drinking, pouring and lidded vessels. He will also demonstrate throwing and constructing teapots and other forms.

Jane Smith

Jane Smith is a historical hat maker and has worked on many period shows and costume films using modern materials alongside more traditional felt and straw. Recent films featuring her hats include Poor Things, Indiana Jones and Wonka. She makes the court dress hats for the House of Lords, University Chancellor’s mortar boards, and plumed bicorns worn by the Duke of Norfolk and the Garter King of Arms.Jane will be showing a range of new shapes in beautiful straws and some novelties too.