London Craft Week 2024 Highlights

The Crafts Council’s handsome classical gallery is hosting this show curated by Forest + Found, aka Max Bainbridge and Abigail Booth. The pair’s own work will be on show (Bainbridge works with timber, while Booth is a textile artist) alongside five other makers “who demonstrate deep commitment to their understanding of material traditions within contemporary and conceptual art practice”. The focus is on multiple cultural touchpoints, drawing on folklore, memory, rural traditions and subjective experiences. Look out for Kolkata-born, London-based Sayan Chanda’s woven wall hangings (pictured) made from deconstructed vintage quilts. The show is supported by the Korea Craft and Design Foundation, part of an ongoing collaboration with London Craft Week that looks to exchange craft cultures between Korea and the UK.

Ealing’s Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery is one of the most beautiful places in the capital to see art and craft, thanks to the sublime architectural backdrop of Sir John Soane’s early-19th-century home. A Fine Line, which kicks off just in time for the beginning of London Craft Week, is a celebration of contemporary ceramics and glass, and the many guises it can take. Curator Joanna Bird’s selection includes Joseph Harrington’s cast glass pieces, which resemble chunks of broken-off rocks or shards of ice; Hanne Heuch’s porcelain, inspired by Norwegian landscapes; and ceramicist Emmanuel Boos, whose glazing expertise has landed him a nomination for this year’s Loewe Craft Prize. Bird says that “I have chosen work that I think would amuse [Soane], were he alive today. One of his gifts was the element of surprise: this will be the theme running through ‘A Fine Line’.”

You don’t need to be myopic to enjoy these riotous reinventions of a simple pair of glasses at Cubitts’ Kings Cross branch. The British spectacle brand is a huge success story, but beyond its standard portfolio of designs, The Cubitts Workshop also designs and makes bespoke frames from scratch (including for film and TV). Here, its designers have been allowed to run riot, with their most avant-garde creations put on display for London Craft Week. Best of all – you can try them all on.

To celebrate the opening of its new Fulham Road showroom, bespoke, hand-made rug company Tai Ping will be unveiling a new piece that showcases the incredible skill of its makers. The tapestry aims to translate the ornament of London’s Victoria Memorial – specifically, the intricacy of the Queen’s deeply folded skirts – into a tufted wall-hanging: its name, Photorealism, suggests that the result will be an uncannily detailed rendition of the Carrara marble of the real thing. On Tuesday 14 May, Design Anthology UK will be hosting a special breakfast (9.30am–11.30am) at the new showroom, where the piece will be on show in all its glory. RSVP at events@designanthologyuk.com

Art, craft and design consultancy Future Icons is a trusted name when it comes to spotting the next big thing, with a roster of great names on its books and an aim to grow the careers of emerging and established makers in an affordable way. This show, back for a second year, puts those makers centre stage (with some other names in the mix, too) in the bricks-and-mortar setting of Oxo Tower Wharf’s bare-brick, artfully dishevelled Bargehouse. More than 50 artists from around the world are taking part, including British sculptor Christopher Kelly, who is creating a new, bespoke creation from jute twine that encases a piece of discarded furniture, fusing crochet, macrame and weaving; and Sophie Ambelas, whose wonkily layered amphoras draw on her Greek heritage.

British fashion and homeware retailer Toast’s commitment to craft is impressive, and its annual New Makers programme, now in its sixth year, aims to take that commitment up a gear. A handful of craftspeople are picked each year to get business advice plus the opportunity to sell their work via Toast (they get to keep all the profits), with this accompanying show at the brand’s Mayfair shop offering the chance for the public to see their work in person. The makers this year include Catskills-based basket-maker Amy Krone, Falmouth furniture maker Will Nock, and Peckham-based ceramicist Polly Liu. Each piece in the New Makers collection is handmade to order.

You never know what you might find at South Kensington network of galleries-for-hire Cromwell Place – including this show mounted by the Michelangelo Foundation, whose Homo Faber Fellowship pairs student makers with masters in their field, to encourage skills to be passed on to the next generation. Each collaboration has resulted in a finished product that be be on show, including Stephen O’Briain and Richard Butler’s handsome Eventus cabinet; French master featherworker Julien Vermeulen’s gilded silver and feather marquetry ear-cuff; and a huge woven dome by Portuguese basketweaver Isabel Martins and Spanish fellow Alba Fernandez Castro, made from traditional bracejo, woven in a spiral with gold thread. The loose overarching theme of art deco inspiration is the suggestion of Swiss watchmaker and commercial partner Jaeger-LeCoultre.

Sensual, sculptural and tactile, it’s easy to draw parallels between the human body and ceramics, not least because some of the earliest ceramics are ritualistic figures. Mayfair’s Sarah Mysercough Gallery is exploring that theme with Earthly Bodies, whose selection of works are “aware of a body in space: of figuration, reciprocity and of the myriad ways movement and transcendence become archived through bodies”. Julian Stair’s large abstracted figurative pots, Mella Shaw’s Unheard roped-together ceramics that speak of restricted bodily movement, and Jonathan Keep’s twisty intestinal vessels, coil-built with the aid of a computer, make for a compelling – and sometimes unsettling – mix.

Marking the opening of its new Soho flagship, and giving a behind-the-scenes look at creative processes, multibrand fashion and homeware retailer Wolf & Badger is hosting a series of ‘residencies’, with a different maker on hand every day. On the afternoon of 16 May, meet Sonali Raman of handcrafted, slow fashion brand SR by Sonali Raman; abstract artist Jessica Slack will give a live painting demonstration on 17 May; and homeware designer Rosanna Corfe will paint her signature ceramics in store on 19 May. Book a spot here.

Coinciding with The Design Museum’s flagship show highlighting the work of Italian designer Enzo Mari, this one-day workshop offers the chance to build one of his Sedia P chairs. The chair was always intended to be a self-assembly piece – it was published as part of his 1974 Autoprogettazione manual, a series of furniture projects that could be realised using simple, readily available tools and materials. Accompanied by a visit to the Design Museum’s show, it should provide a total immersion into Mari’s democratic approach to design – and give you something to sit on when you get home. Book here.

At this free drop-in, come and take a peek behind the scenes at a top milliner’s. Maison Michel was founded in Paris in 1936 by Auguste Michel, and currently works under the artistic direction of the innovative Priscilla Royer. Demonstrations throughout the day will uncover some of the secrets of hat-making, in many cases using age-old techniques of steam, brushes, sewing machines and tapping hammers.

And Objects, the product design studio set up by interior designer Martin Brudnizki and co-founder Nick Jeanes, opened its first showroom on Pimlico Road in October 2023, and for its first London Craft Week it will be giving a special focus to the art of scagliola – a mix of plaster, glue and pigments that are used to create almost hyper-real imitations of precious stone and marble. Drop in to hear Brudnizki, Jeanes and scagliola craftsman Simon Collins talk about this ancient technique. Collins will give live demonstrations and you will be first in line to see a new collection of scagliola lamps.