Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair 2014 Part 2

Welcome back to part two of my visit to this years Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair last week.

One of my ‘favourite stand awards’ goes to my first entrant, Ceramist Penny Withers. Her beautiful studio ceramics are first thrown on the wheel, leaving the ridges as a feature and later reformed to a different shape when a new base is also added. They are then fired and glazed and finally re-fired to reach their finished forms. Lovely crackle glazes and subtle colours made these firm winners in my mind. Penny was lovely to chat to and also runs pottery courses in Sheffield too.

How well these chinese lanterns compliment the shape and colours in this piece. Wow !

Elizabeth Terzza has taken the seeds of nature as the inspiration for her delicate silver jewellery. Her tiny cones and sycamore seed necklace, are stunning pieces.

Detailed and friendly animals on Julia Smith’s Ceramics.

I discovered two familiar faces from the stands of Fiona McIntosh of Tessuti Printed Textiles and James Donald of Pick One, both of whom I know from selling my work through their boutique gift shop in Edinburgh called Concrete Wardrobe. I loved these new scottie dogs in fiona’s fabric, they work very well. A fab and colourful stand full of soft woolen weaves from James too, hope you both had a good show.

Manchester based Willow weaver Cherry Chung has made some lovely baskets and bowls that combined her stoneware bases and the dyed or natural willow surround. She has been commissioned to make huge storytelling tree or magic tree puppet theatre like the one below. Cherry also runs local courses (info on her site), if anyone fancies trying this out for themselves.

Lovely to see how Tone Von Krogh‘s new work is getting larger and larger. Look at these stunning vases, what a centrepiece they would make.

Lastly I spotted the felt work of fibre artist Valerie Wartelle. Her textile landscapes with their dyed and embroidered surfaces were like textural snapshots of the countryside. Sadly I didn’t get to speak to Valerie in person as she was busy with a potential customer but I wanted to include her beautiful work in my post.

A fab and busy show, congratulations to the organisers and to everyone who took part and made the exhibition the event it was.

Thanks again to everyone who generously gave of their time and let me take photographs to show you all. Here’s to the next one !