Fresh from a showcase at Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, we’re excited to be working with GNCCF to be bringing you the best of this year’s most talented graduate designer/makers. Come and be inspired by the latest in furniture design, jewellery making, contemporary ceramics with a twist and more from the best of this year’s ‘Great Northern Graduates’.

Kaylee Jenkinson, Curator of ‘Great Northern Graduates’ speaking on exhibition:

“Working in a range of disciplines including ceramics, furniture, metalwork and textiles, these graduates each show an innate understanding of their material and use their creative work to tell a story. There is more than meets the eye to all of the objects on display. As well as being visually striking, each object provokes discussion, conversation and contemplation, with makers taking inspiration from wide ranging sources from our built and natural environments, to explorations of living through trauma.”

The graduates featured in the show are:

Corinna Reynolds / Contemporary Design Craft Ceramics / University of Herfordshire

‘Time Between Time’ explores how a traumatic event fractures and reshapes us. Thrown vessels are cocooned within hand-built saggars that protect them during firing, becoming part of each piece as a metaphor for the support network crucial to coping with such an event.

@corinna_reynolds

 

Emily Hughes / Applied Art / Wrexham Glyndwr University

Emily’s collection of hand-built slab vessels and porcelain functional pieces are inspired by her early life growing up in a village between a quarry and the sea. She captures the landscapes’ textures and lines through mark making and her ceramic forms.

@ehughesceramics

 

 

 

 

 

Ryan Daniel Dilkes (RE:STRUCT) / Three-Dimensional Design / Manchester School of Art

As a society we crave change and new things. Ryan designs furniture that can facilitate this need for change through circular thinking; something that could turn our living and working spaces into constantly evolving environments without producing or buying anything new.

@ryandanieldesign

 

 

 

Lillie Tew / Three-Dimensional Design / Manchester School of Art

Unlike traditional slipcasting processes, Lillie uses fabric with liquid clay. She uses porcelain due to its transparency and the way it can capture intricate details – therefore showcasing the natural irregularities that emerge each time the mould is used.

@lillietewceramics

 

Jessica Maskery / Textiles for Fashion and Interiors / University for the Creative Arts

Farnham Jessica uses hand dying, screenprinting and painting to create textile pieces inspired by the shapes and colours of buildings and architecture from cities including Venice and Rhodes.

@byjessicamaskery

 

 

 

 

Lucy Kent / Textiles in Practice / Manchester School of Art

Lucy’s practice is focused on the environment, working repetitively and with predominately found and recycled materials. Her series ‘Eroding Time’ explores how humans interact with and impact the natural

@lucykent_art

 

Sam Petz / Furniture Design / Sheffield Hallam University

For this project Sam explored the aesthetic and functional versatility of found nitrous oxide canisters. The canisters were chosen due to their abundance, materiality and form. Additionally, the steel canisters aren’t recycled due to the risks involved in crushing pressurised gas.

@atelier_petz

 

Poppy Norton Jewellery / Certificate Level 2 / Morley College

Poppy makes design-led statement jewellery. Working in non-traditional materials such as brass, lino, acrylic and wood, she takes inspiration from her love and knowledge of product design and architecture and has a strong graphic identity.

@poppy_norton

 

 

 

 

Eleanor Whitworth / Silversmithing & Jewellery Design / Glasgow School of Art

Eleanor’s ‘Together Living’ collection is inspired by miniature natural curiosities. Her wearable objects celebrate intricate, unobserved or misunderstood relationships in nature. She uses diverse materials to balance tactility and light and invoke a curiosity that reveals more than initially meets the eye.

@eleanorwhitworth

 

Ceri Elliston / Ceramics Diploma CityLit

Ceri’s work is made intuitively with no fixed design, inspired by the physicality of clay and the diverse vocabulary of ceramics. Created by a process of intention, accident and the alchemy of the kiln, the objects feel familiar yet mysterious, graceful and absurd.

@ceri_elliston