(Originally published on the UMd.studio Journal, 9th May 2016)
Last week the capital came together to celebrate the wide range of exceptional UK craftsmanship for London Craft Week. Showcasing established designers alongside less well-known talents, a series of open studios and exhibitions took place across the city. Unmade followed the Craft Week trail and took in some of its treasures.
Our first stop was Black's private members club in Soho, where the rich gothic backdrop provided the stage for Georgina Goodman's A Shoe Story. Long-time collaborator of Alexander McQueen and two-time nominee for the British Fashion Council's Accessory Designer of the Year, Goodman's A Shoe Story told a tale of love, lust and loss through five pairs of shoes and a series of sketches. Our favourite pair, A Feathered Nest were inspired by the way a bower bird collects brightly-coloured 'found' objects to decorate their nest and attract a mate. The resulting shimmering shoes were fit to grace the finest of fairytale feet - although they're definitely more Maleficent than Cinderella.
Everyone wants peacock feathers for the eye, but the [naturally ] shed feathers are really beautiful - they shed like hair and fall to the floor. We gathered them up and threaded them with beads, then wove them onto tulle and included anything else we could find that was green. We've also taken the wings off bugs. We use all the body parts - the legs become sequins. The whole point is that the shoes are not durable - as you wear them they'll degrade. I wanted to make something that looked like it had already existed for hundreds of years. As it gets worn and it's worn out, the wearer is imbued in it and it becomes an object in its own right.
Onward to Fortnum and Mason where we met Peter Ting, ceramics designer and trustee of British Crafts Council and curator of Crafted, an exhibition featuring makers selected for the 2015 Walpole Crafted mentoring programme. The programme was established by the luxury brand to preserve British craft and encourage entrepreneurship.
Bower birds still on the brain, German designer Silvia Weidenbach's collection of brooches, Granny's Chips, immediately catch our eye. A reference to the Queen's jewels, they feature exquisite polished jewels set in bright, coral shapes.
Silvia is young in this field but she has the most incredible potential. She was trained as a classic trained jeweller and silversmith. Look at the lens mounted jewels, that's really hard to do so perfectly well. All the surrounding work [the 'virtual clay'] is created on a haptic 3D drawing program then printed in nylon. She has her own way of diffusing colour into the nylon so that it's in the body as it prints. It's a combination of making and non-making, very traditional methods and very new methods. All of the diamonds and precious stones are sponsored so Silvia has to invent ways of mounting them that don't harm the stones and could be unpicked afterwards - it's very clever and really exciting.
Across the exhibition lies another collection of objects with an aquatic feel. Eleanor Lakelin's forms have the sun-bleached look of driftwood.
Eleanor makes amazing things. For instance this tree [the raw material of one of her wooden sculptures] was registered as planted in 1710, and grew in an estate that the Duke of Wellington lived in. She's been selected by the Crafts Council to go to Design Miami / Basel. Eleanor was trained as a furniture maker and started to make these beautiful things. It starts as a big block of wood. She has to feel it, tap it, and listen to the sound it makes to know how thick it is, and then she carves into it.
Mark Tallowin is a fine artist and award-winning leather maker, and on display is one of his Core Collection of made-to-order bags, finished with 24-carat gold-plated fittings, a collection of wallets and a huge, black leather tassel. Peter explains, revealing the key-chain inside the tassel.
You wear it across your body, so you never lose your keys. The beautiful bag on display is made entirely by hand from Italian leather. Mark makes everything from beginning to end - one bag, made by one man. And inside the bag, sewn into the lining, is a private message from the designer.
For the last stop on our tour, we visited Eres, the masters of what lies beneath - lingerie. Originally a swimwear brand, Eres was established in France in 1968, by Irene Leroux. In the spirit of the age, Leroux set out to free women's bodies from traditionally rigid, underwired swimwear. Eres' swimsuits sculpted the female form using ingenious cuts, innovative fabrics and exquisite finishing, designed to fit the body like a second skin. In 1996 they extended this philosophy to lingerie, where their soft yet supportive triangle-shaped cup became the hallmark of their brand.
The lace used for Eres' lingerie is unique to the brand. The patterns and colours are developed in their Paris studio and are exclusive to their customers. It's made on Leavers machines, an English machine imported to Calais (the French city of lace) in the 19th Century. These 200 year-old machines produce lace as if made by hand - delicate and lightweight, in a 3-dimensional relief that can't be replicated by today's modern technology.
Although London Craft Week 2016 has come to an end for this year, we've no doubt it will be back. The high level of interest meant that many of the events sold out way ahead of time - great news for the luxury craft industry.
Follow London Craft Week on Twitter to get ahead of the pack for 2017.
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Photography: Sasha Zyryaev