Speaker Biographies

MATERIAL LIVES

Guest speakers: Sean Sutcliffe, co-founder Benchmark; Richard McVetis, artist and hand embroiderer; Juliette Bigley, artist-metalsmith

Chair: Grant Gibson

An artist, sculptor and designer each discuss how and why they alighted upon the materials that shaped their lives and careers.

Juliette makes abstract metal sculptures based on composite geometric forms that explore how our internal experiences interact with the world.

Juliette has exhibited at Design Miami, ArtGeneve, Tresor, London Art Fair, Scottish Gallery and Collect. She has work in the V&A and the Irish State collections and has received funding from Arts Council England.

She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She produced her first publication, Material Perspectives, in 2018. She collaborates with Simone ten Hompel as Mixed Metals.

MATERIAL LIVES

Guest speakers: Sean Sutcliffe, co-founder Benchmark; Richard McVetis, artist and hand embroiderer; Juliette Bigley, artist-metalsmith

Chair: Grant Gibson

An artist, sculptor and designer each discuss how and why they alighted upon the materials that shaped their lives and careers.

Artist Richard McVetis is preoccupied with the repetitive nature of process. For over a decade he has used hand embroidery to explore the subtle differences that emerge through ritualistic and habitual making. The inscribed stitches mark the rhythms of the hand, a delicate performance of obsessive intricacy. Meticulously stitched multiples of dots, lines and crosses record time and map space. Each stitch is an embodiment of thought and patience; a record of human presence, of time and decay.

McVetis uses making to understand the world, to give material form to abstract ideas, making the intangible tangible.

MATERIAL LIVES

Guest speakers: Sean Sutcliffe, co-founder Benchmark; Richard McVetis, artist and hand embroiderer; Juliette Bigley, artist-metalsmith

Chair: Grant Gibson

An artist, sculptor and designer each discuss how and why they alighted upon the materials that shaped their lives and careers.

Sean Sutcliffe is co-founder of Benchmark, one of the UK’s leading furniture-makers. Having started the company with Terence Conran in 1984, today Benchmark is a powerhouse of craft; with workshops in Berkshire and Dorset, and a client base that includes many of the world’s leading architects and designers.

Sean cares deeply about environmental sustainability and craftsmanship and has been a champion of the health and well-being benefits of using solid timber furniture in both commercial and residential settings for many years.

Over the last 10 years, Benchmark have pioneered and invested in Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) and Declare labelling to provide clear and unambiguous information about the materials used in their furniture and the impact it has on our environment and our health.

Benchmark runs an award-winning apprenticeship scheme and have twice won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development.

SATIRE AND CERAMICS

Guest speaker: Barnaby Barford

Chair: Grant Gibson

Barnaby Barford initially came to prominence with satirical ceramic pieces that turned a mirror on to contemporary society. Over the years, his practice has become increasingly difficult to define as he works across drawing, sculpture, film, installation and painting. However, more often than not, he returns to clay.

Working across drawing, sculpture, film, installation and painting, Barnaby uses familiar iconography to subvert the telling of ancient cautionary tales within a contemporary context. From the witty cultural critique that characterised the early porcelain figurines to the more recent social commentary of installations and drawings, his research explores the fundamental questions driving human nature in terms of morality, conflict between good or evil, lack of happiness, and society’s incessant need for growth.

Although Barford produces work in a wide variety of materials, he consistently returns to ceramics, utilising mass and industrial production processes. From the monumental sculptures composed of thousands of individual ceramic pieces to the large-scale energetic word drawings that repeat incessantly the same word, his pieces are a labour intensive accumulation of fragments that gain meaning in their totality.

Barnaby’s work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in many public and private collections, with major solo shows across Europe and the US, including a survey show at MOCA Virginia (2013). His work is part of many public and private collections including the V&A Museum, London, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas, and the National Libraries of France and the Netherlands.

GLASS ACTS

Guest speakers: Jahday Ford, Louis Thompson, Lena Bergstrom and Lulu Harrison

Chair: Grant Gibson

To celebrate the UN International Year of Glass, a quartet of glass artists, at different stages of their careers, discuss their respective practices and the reasons they find the material so alluring.

Jahday Ford is a glass artist and designer from Bermuda, currently based in Manchester, UK. He is a graduate from Manchester School of Art where he received his BA Degree in Three Dimensional Design, specialising in hot glass fabrication and mould design.

Using a combination of glass blowing and digitally programmed forms, Ford explores ways of drastically changing the materiality of his objects, effectively bonding these two diverse processes. His award-winning projects Breathe, Axle and most recent commissions have been exhibited in galleries including Corning Museum of Glass, New Designers, Collect, Jerwood Makers Open, London Design Junction, Manchester Craft & Design Centre and Yorkshire Sculpture Park

GLASS ACTS

Guest speakers: Jahday Ford, Louis Thompson, Lena Bergstrom and Lulu Harrison

Chair: Grant Gibson

To celebrate the UN International Year of Glass, a quartet of glass artists, at different stages of their careers, discuss their respective practices and the reasons they find the material so alluring.

Focus & elegance; dramatic sharp graphic shapes; fluid and sensuous curves – just some of the words that spring to mind when looking at the work of Lena Bergström.

Born in 1961 in the far northern town of Umeå, Lena followed a diverse training from window dressing to studying textiles at Stockholm’s prestigious Konstfack school and actually achieved her initial burst of fame for outstanding textile art, which is precisely why Orrefors Studio (Sweden’s most famous crystal company) headhunted her. The renowned glass company has perfected its quest for gathering artists from different fields into a sensational science through out its 100 year old history. “Perhaps because I haven’t worked with glass half my life I dare to make the shapes I have done”, she says.

In the past few years of being at Orrefors, Lena has certainly pushed the boundaries of what can be done with glass, developing her own distinct language, and earning a staggering 10 ‘Excellent Swedish Design’ awards in the process. Lena expresses herself in many colours combined with the crispest of clear glass but always with a tailor’s eye for balance, composition and detail. Thick and thin, matt and glossy are harmoniously brought together. “I am building up a library of colours and forms with personal symbolic value. My design idiom is emotional and physical. The greatest beauty must balance on the brink of failure.”

From her famous Squeeze range, when an over-talkative glass blower allowed a vase to stay in the furnace just a second too long – with stunning results – to the iconic Slitz forms which reinvent the flower vase, one theme runs through out – Lena’s vision of a new basic elegance with no extraneous details.

Lena has designed several prize-winning products and received numerous awards. She is represented by Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, The Rohsska Museum of Fashion, Design & Decorative Arts in Gothenburg, Cleveland Museum of Art in the United States and the V&A Museum in London.

GLASS ACTS

Guest speakers: Jahday Ford, Louis Thompson, Lena Bergstrom and Lulu Harrison

Chair: Grant Gibson

To celebrate the UN International Year of Glass, a quartet of glass artists, at different stages of their careers, discuss their respective practices and the reasons they find the material so alluring.

Louis completed his Masters degree at the Royal College of Art in 2011. He was awarded two prestigious awards in 2012, the Jerwood Makers Prize and the Best Exhibit Prize at the British Glass Biennale. He has exhibited work extensively in the UK, Europe, Japan and the USA and has completed residencies in Belgium, USA and the Maldives. He lives and works in London where he runs a small studio.

GLASS ACTS

Guest speakers: Jahday Ford, Louis Thompson, Lena Bergstrom and Lulu Harrison

Chair: Grant Gibson

To celebrate the UN International Year of Glass, a quartet of glass artists, at different stages of their careers, discuss their respective practices and the reasons they find the material so alluring.

Lulu Harrison is a 28 year old MA student at Central Saint Martins, currently in her final year of Material Futures. She is a self taught glass artist, and specialises in glass alchemy. Inspired by ancient glass making processes and techniques, she has been creating unique batch recipes from local and waste materials. With extraction of raw materials becoming a pressing environmental issue, Lulu is interested in finding alternatives for the future of glass making.

PROSE AND POTS

Guest speaker: Julian Stair

Chair: Grant Gibson

Julian Stair is a potter and historian, who was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List for services to ceramics. He discusses his practice with Grant Gibson, host of award-winning podcast Material Matters.

Julian Stair is one of the UK’s leading potters and writers on ceramics. He has exhibited internationally over the last 35 years and his work is in over 30 public collections.

Recent solo exhibitions include Equivalence / Equivalenze (Corvi-Mora gallery, London, ICA Milano, Italy), Quotidian (Corvi-Mora gallery, London) and Quietus: The Vessel, Death and the Human Body which toured the UK. From common rituals surrounding rites of passage to the daily touch of a cup his work celebrates the dynamics of use and the way that pots are integral to human experience.

Grant Gibson curated all the Conversations in Craft talks, and will chair the sessions.

Grant Gibson is a UK-based design, craft and architecture writer and podcaster whose work has been published in places like The Observer, New Statesman, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, FRAME, Dwell, House & Garden and quite a few others.

Grant has been editor of Blueprint, deputy editor of FX, and acting executive editor of the RIBA Journal. More recently, he was editor of Crafts and a contributing editor to the Dutch architecture title MARK. In 2019, he launched the award-winning podcast Material Matters with Grant Gibson.

RADICAL CRAFT

Guest speakers: Celia Pym, knitting, darning and textile artist; Jane Marriott, trust director of Harewood House; Alice Kettle, textile artist; Jay Mistry, handbuilt sculptural activist

Chair: Grant Gibson

How is the craft world responding to some of the world’s most pressing issues – such as the pandemic, the Black Lives Matters movement, globalisation, and climate change? In this talk we meet craft makers and curators whose work reflects on our current state of flux.

Alice Kettle is a contemporary textile/fibre artist who makes monumental figurative works. Alice is currently Professor in Textile Arts at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work is represented in various international public collections. Her major exhibition Thread Bearing Witness 2019 at the Whitworth Art Gallery used stitch to address issues of migration and people displacement. She has co-authored various publications including Collaboration through Craft, The Erotic Cloth with Bloomsbury.

RADICAL CRAFT

Guest speakers: Celia Pym, knitting, darning and textile artist; Jane Marriott, trust director of Harewood House; Alice Kettle, textile artist; Jay Mistry, handbuilt sculptural activist

Chair: Grant Gibson

How is the craft world responding to some of the world’s most pressing issues – such as the pandemic, the Black Lives Matters movement, globalisation, and climate change? In this talk we meet craft makers and curators whose work reflects on our current state of flux.

Celia Pym is an artist living and working in London. She has been exploring damage and repair in textiles since 2007. Working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, she has extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage, from small moth holes to larger accidents with fire.

Her work has been exhibited most recently in Say Less, Herald St (2022) Radical Acts: Harewood Biennial (2022), Harewood House and Keep Being Amazing, Firstsite (2022). Pym was shortlisted for the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize and Loewe Craft Prize in 2017.

She is an associate lecturer in textiles at the Royal College of Art.

RADICAL CRAFT

Guest speakers: Celia Pym, knitting, darning and textile artist; Jane Marriott, trust director of Harewood House; Alice Kettle, textile artist; Jay Mistry, handbuilt sculptural activist

Chair: Grant Gibson

How is the craft world responding to some of the world’s most pressing issues – such as the pandemic, the Black Lives Matters movement, globalisation, and climate change? In this talk we meet craft makers and curators whose work reflects on our current state of flux.

Jane Marriott is director of Harewood House Trust, the charity responsible for the beautiful 18th-century house, grounds and outstanding art collections. Attracting over 250,000 visitors per annum, Harewood has a rich contemporary art programme, including the Harewood Craft Biennial.

Previously, Jane was MD of The Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield; director of the trust at the Royal Academy of Arts; and development manager at Tate. A History of Art graduate, qualified arts marketeer, and a Fellow of the RSA, Jane is also chair of the Treasure Houses of England.

RADICAL CRAFT

Guest speakers: Celia Pym, knitting, darning and textile artist; Jane Marriott, trust director of Harewood House; Alice Kettle, textile artist; Jay Mistry, handbuilt sculptural activist

Chair: Grant Gibson

How is the craft world responding to some of the world’s most pressing issues – such as the pandemic, the Black Lives Matters movement, globalisation, and climate change? In this talk we meet craft makers and curators whose work reflects on our current state of flux.

Jay Mistry is a potter, researcher and activist. Her work explores and challenges the dominant discourses that shape knowledge about places, peoples and objects, and her identity and personal experiences as a woman, of Asian heritage, environmentalist and activist academic. For the last three years, through the British Council Crafting Futures programme, she has collaborated with indigenous potters in Guyana to promote indigenous knowledge and rights and sustainable livelihoods through craft.

HANDMADE INTERIORS

Guest speakers: Juliana Cavaliero, co-founder Cavaliero Finn; Ptolemy Mann, artist and designer, Jo Le Gleud, co-founder Maddux Creative

Chair: Grant Gibson

Interior designers are becoming increasingly keen to work with makers on schemes. But why? And is this fascination with craft anything more than a passing fad?

Passionate and forward thinking, Jo Le Gleud started her professional career in fashion as an embroiderer working with many fashion houses and small designer makers. Happy when creating, Jo’s passion and flair was evident from the outset. An interest in craft and particularly British craft led Jo to work with Emily Jo Gibbs, milliner Philippa Eyland and fashion designers Stephen Fuller and IDOL whilst in parallel acquiring qualifications in silversmithing, hand tailoring and shoe making along the way.

After a spell working in the world of events, it seems that fate played a hand and Jo met Scott Maddux on a dance floor in 1996. A shared love for bold colour, a deep passion to articulate a story and a point of view led to the creation of Maddux Creative. Jo’s talent for sourcing the perfect pieces to complete a project and enhance a space, coupled with her extraordinary skill for making her own unique pieces adds an edge to every Maddux Creative project. Together Jo and Scott have created a studio which delivers multi-layered, stimulating sensory experiences in the interiors they create and which sits at the heart of their design philosophy and bears fruit in the collaborative design studio they have created.

Regularly asked to speak by leading design publications and industry events Jo’s reputation as one of the leading voices of the UK design scene is indisputable.

Accolades include House & Garden’s Top 100 and the studio regularly features in leading international design publications. Over the past ten years Maddux Creative has built an impressive international portfolio of clients with current projects in London, New York, LA and Geneva.

HANDMADE INTERIORS

Guest speakers: Juliana Cavaliero, co-founder Cavaliero Finn; Ptolemy Mann, artist and designer

Chair: Grant Gibson

Interior designers are becoming increasingly keen to work with makers on schemes. But why? And is this fascination with craft anything more than a passing fad?

Since 1997 Ptolemy Mann has been running her own studio practice which she established after graduation from Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. Her unique approach to hand-dyeing and weaving wall-based art works has become the basis for a modern-day Bauhaus philosophy of art making underpinned with intelligent colour theory.

She is represented by the galleries Taste Contemporary in Geneva, Gallery Lau In Munich and Findaly Galleries in the USA.

HANDMADE INTERIORS

Guest speakers: Juliana Cavaliero, co-founder Cavaliero Finn; Ptolemy Mann, artist and designer

Chair: Grant Gibson

Interior designers are becoming increasingly keen to work with makers on schemes. But why? And is this fascination with craft anything more than a passing fad?

PAST AND PRESENT

Guest speakers: Deborah Pocock, CEO of Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST); Mary Lewis, endangered crafts manager, Heritage Crafts Association; Debika Ray, acting editor, Crafts; Chris Eckersley, artist, designer and co-founder of Bodging Milano

Chair: Grant Gibson

As the world becomes increasingly digital are we in danger of losing traditional hand skills? And, if we are, does it really matter?

Chris Eckersley originally studied fine art (sculpture) before embarking on a career in design and making. His practice includes drawing, research into measurement and proportion, 3D design, and furniture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a former tutor in Design Studies at Central Saint Martins.

Chris is co-founder of the experimental Bodging Milano project which has been instrumental in promoting links between contemporary design and traditional craft.

PAST AND PRESENT

Guest speakers: Deborah Pocock, CEO of Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST); Mary Lewis, endangered crafts manager, Heritage Crafts Association; Debika Ray, acting editor, Crafts; Chris Eckersley, artist, designer and co-founder of Bodging Milano

Chair: Grant Gibson

As the world becomes increasingly digital are we in danger of losing traditional hand skills? And, if we are, does it really matter?

Debika Ray is a writer and editor specialising in arts and culture, with a keen interest in the global south and diasporic communities. She has more than 15 years of experience at world-leading publications ranging from the Guardian, the Financial Times, The Independent and Al Jazeera, to Wallpaper, Kinfolk, ELLE Decoration and Architectural Digest. She has held roles including acting editor at Crafts and senior editor at Icon.

PAST AND PRESENT

Guest speakers: Deborah Pocock, CEO of Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST); Mary Lewis, endangered crafts manager, Heritage Crafts Association; Debika Ray, acting editor, Crafts; Chris Eckersley, artist, designer and co-founder of Bodging Milano

Chair: Grant Gibson

As the world becomes increasingly digital are we in danger of losing traditional hand skills? And, if we are, does it really matter?

Mary Lewis comes from a background steeped in craft. From an early age she could be found in a coracle or on a shave horse and is now a keen knitter and occasional basket maker. Her work experience includes fundraising, project management, and developing accredited training and apprenticeships for coppice crafts. After a few years of yurt life in the South Downs managing the Sustainability Centre, she took up the role of Heritage Crafts’ Endangered Crafts Officer, making interventions, raising funds and developing projects to prevent heritage crafts skills and knowledge from becoming extinct.

PAST AND PRESENT

Guest speakers: Deborah Pocock, CEO of Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST); Mary Lewis, endangered crafts manager, Heritage Crafts Association; Debika Ray, acting editor, Crafts; Chris Eckersley, artist, designer and co-founder of Bodging Milano

Chair: Grant Gibson

As the world becomes increasingly digital are we in danger of losing traditional hand skills? And, if we are, does it really matter?

WOOLY THINKING

Guest speaker: Freddie Robbins

Chair: Grant Gibson

The common perception of knitting is that it’s a gentle, mindful activity. A thing you can do quietly in front of the television to relax after a hard day. Freddie Robins’ work is the antithesis of all that. It’s frequently dark, often witty, and always provocative, challenging the perceived hierarchy of art and craft.

Freddie Robins (b.1965) is an artist who challenges our perception of knitting. Her work is internationally renowned, her practice crossing the boundaries of art, design and craft. Her work is held in private and public collections including the V&A Museum, Government Art Collection and Crafts Council. She is senior tutor and reader in textiles at the Royal College of Art and lives and works in Essex.