DE S IGN CENTRE
ON FORM
Contemporary craft is making its mark in the world of interior design. Grant Gibson reports on why unique handmade objects are on the radar
I’m writing this the day after Artefact, the new contemporary craft fair held by Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, closed its doors. Having hosted the talks programme, I am obviously more than a little biased but it appears to have been an enormous success. On the opening evening’s private view there was a discernible sense of joy in the air, engendered, I suspect, both by the quality of work (which was high) and the fact, after months spent on Zoom, here were physical objects, in a physical space, on display in front of actual people. The show, which took place at the end of June, ran
a gamut of materials and techniques, ranging from the tapestries of Caron Penney with their references to city streetscapes, via Annette Townsend’s extraordinarily
delicate floral sculptures painstakingly created from beeswax. En route, there were also ceramics and glass created by some of the field’s leading artists such as Jochen Holz, Su Xianzhong and Bethany Wood, while a personal favourite of mine was the Metal Collective stand with work from the likes of Juliette Bigley and Simone ten Hompel. Importantly too, the fair chimed beautifully with the Design Centre’s surrounding showrooms – the work on display was different but obviously related. It’s strange to think that not so long ago ‘craft’ was
a difficult word for designers. For many, it (wrongly) seemed to contain connotations of amateurism and provincial car boot sales. It was homespun and deeply
ABOVE: Artefact, the Design Centre’s first contemporary craft fair, launched in June 2021. Participants at the selling show included Cube Gallery, which showed Myung Nam An’s Eye series of delicate ceramics, each piece slightly different
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