DNNW X MCDC

DNNW X MCDC is an exhibition in collaboration with Design-Nation, showcasing a collection of their North West members. Design-Nation is a National Network that has connected and championed UK Craft and Design since 1999: Working together with leading industry partners, they deliver a national programme of activities, tailored guidance, and unique opportunities that support Britain’s leading designers and makers.

We are delighted to present work by the 14 exhibiting artists from the North West Hub: Nerissa Cargill Thompson, Toby Cotterill, Helen Foot, Juliette Hamilton, Anne Haworth, Tone von Krogh, Dan Morrison, Rachel Peters, Elizabeth Sinkova, Beverley Sommerville, Aneliya Stoyanova, Alison Waters, Emma Westmacott, and Jean White.

This collaboration represents the importance of offering inclusive opportunities for contemporary design and craft throughout the sector. We are honoured to display the work of these future thinkers and showcase a snapshot of innovation in the North West.

EXHIBITION DETAILS
16th January – 21st March 2026
Free entrance
Opening Hours:
Monday – Saturday, 10am – 5.30pm
2nd Sunday of the Month, excluding January, 11am – 5pm

ACCESS
We welcome Guide and Support dogs and kindly ask that all dogs are kept on leads.
The exhibition space is currently raised and not directly accessible for wheelchair or mobility aid users. However, the open layout allows the exhibition to be viewed comfortably from a distance.

The exhibition will include Easier Read and Dyslexia-friendly interpretations, with plans to expand accessibility features after it opens to the public.

ARTIST BIOS

Nerissa Cargill Thompson
Nerissa Cargill Thompson explores environmental issues, including the climate crisis, plastic pollution, and waste, through textile-based art using recycled materials, particularly discarded clothing. She also creates mixed-media sculptures combining textiles and concrete, cast in the plastic packaging we use and discard on a daily basis. She aims to make people consider the world around them and their responsibility to the environment. Her work explores juxtapositions of structure, texture and colour, particularly where nature meets man. She creates her signature textiles using a combination of embellishing and embroidery. The embellisher blends the fabrics together to create subtle variations in texture and tone to mimic lichens and moss. The concrete captures the embossed patterns of the plastics representing manmade structures and gives a weight and presence more in-line with its legacy. The naturally inspired textures of the textiles emphasise the way our waste becomes subsumed into the environment but also how nature fights back.

Toby Cotterill
Toby creates empowering, articulated jewellery and sculptural silverware, inspired by the natural world and the process of making. Toby grew up on a farm near the coast in West Wales, and spent most of his childhood immersed in nature, playing in the fields and barn with his brothers and making things. These early experiences continue to influence his practice, distilling into organic forms and ideas which evolve on the workbench, guided by process. This collection is inspired by beetles and includes a life-size Stag beetle hand forged using traditional silversmithing skills, and Metamorphosis, a range of solid silver objects depicting the life cycle of a Stag beetle, from Larva and pupa to adult. The pieces reflect Toby’s love for the natural world, and act both as personal talismans and wearable playthings. 

Helen Foot
Helen’s playful style has been described as ‘Rebellious Nostalgia’. With a strong sense of colour and a passion for keeping traditional skills alive, Helen creates beautiful fabrics in harmony with the loom. Using a 24-shaft computerised AVL loom, Helen handweaves her collection of scarves and other goods from her home studio in Shrewsbury. Helen’s inspiration is drawn from traditional handcrafts such as patchwork and cross-stitch, which she merges with contemporary geometric patterns and bold colour combinations. Helen trained at the Royal College of Art and since graduation has designed fashion fabrics for Paul Smith and Alexander McQueen.

Juliette Hamilton
Juliette works from her garden studio in South Manchester making willow sculptures of mainly animal form and the natural world. She uses different varieties and colours of English willow, some homegrown and some from Somerset. Her use of multiple rods and random weave suggests movement, weight and muscle tone and results in something beautiful and life-like but with character. As well as taking commissions she runs workshops around the North West and sells at events around the country.

Anne Haworth
Anne’s ceramic artwork is connected with plant life above ground and underwater. Her work is inspired by both the strength and fragility of nature. Anne hand-builds ceramics related to the natural world, from the repetitive sequencing of patterns found in vegetables from her local market to the complex organisms of plants and lichen studied during visits to botanic gardens at Kew and Edinburgh. Often, a walk in the woods or along the seashore is the starting point for her inspiration. Anne is absorbed and fascinated by the recurring rhythms and details found in shells, leaves, buds, petals, seeds, pods and coral. The natural world provides endless possibilities. Working primarily with porcelain, Anne creates distinctive forms, experimenting with coloured slips and glazes while maintaining a minimal aesthetic that highlights fine details. Her work has been exhibited in art galleries throughout the UK as well as in Paris and Dubai. Anne completed a Master’s degree in Ceramics at the University of Central Lancashire in 2014 and more recently a Master’s in Fine Art and has worked on several ceramic art installations using porcelain for interior designers.

Tone von Krogh
Tone von Krogh has been a ceramic designer and maker for 30 years since graduating from Manchester School of Art in 1995. Her practice is mainly focused on making functional ceramics for the home with a strong design element. Tone’s Swiss-Norwegian heritage continues to be a strong source of inspiration – in particular, the impressions and memories of snow-covered landscapes. The wintery feeling of calm and softly undulated surfaces is reflected in a collection of hand-thrown tactile wavy vases and softly distorted vessels. Tone makes her own glazes inspired by the tones of snow, ice and winter skies. In 2021, Tone was awarded a grant from Arts Council England’s DYCP fund, which enabled her to develop new technical skills to upscale her work, focusing on large-scale one-off exhibition pieces. Her work has since been exhibited at Collect and Ceramic Art London.

Dan Morrison
Dan Morrison is an artist-engineer creating handcrafted lamps, clocks and kinetic sculptures that merge precision engineering with playful, sculptural design. Working from his workshop in the South Pennines, he combines machined aluminium, brass, steel and turned hardwoods to produce limited-edition pieces that invite touch, movement and curiosity. Dan’s work explores how balance, mechanics and interaction can transform functional objects into small moments of theatre, giving everyday items a distinctive character and presence. With a background spanning engineering design, the performing arts, software development and funeral directing, Dan brings a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective to his craft. Since establishing Blott Works in 2013, he has developed a body of work that is both technically refined and quietly whimsical, shaped by meticulous making and a fascination with how objects behave. His pieces are designed to be durable, repairable and engaging—functional sculptures that reward both use and contemplation.

Rachel Peters
Rachel creates abstract biomorphic sculptures, reminiscent of organic forms or human figures, with a focus on form and texture. Hand-built through coiling, each piece evolves naturally, balancing structure and fluidity. Inspired by both nature and the strength of the human form, her work reflects resilience and presence. Working with grogged stoneware, she embraces raw textures and organic shapes, clean lines and an earthy palette. Her work is about the balance between structure and fluidity, strength and softness, creating forms that feel both familiar and abstract, pieces that do not just take up space but hold a presence within it.

Elizabeth Sinkova
Elizabeth Sinkova is a West Yorkshire based stained glass artist creating bespoke glass art for architecture and interior spaces. With over 20 years of experience, she has worked on restoration and contemporary stained-glass projects for cathedrals, residential homes, and exhibitions across the UK and internationally. Elizabeth works with traditional and contemporary techniques and uses colour, texture, and light to create glass art that transforms spaces with a focus on aesthetics and function. Her passion for glass began in childhood in the Czech Republic, inspired by her parents who are both glass craftsmen. She studied glass painting at the world’s oldest glass school before completing a First-Class Honours Degree in Architectural Glass at Swansea University and receiving the Award for Excellence from the Worshipful Company of Glaziers. Elizabeth has exhibited at London Design Week at Chelsea Harbour, Decorex International, the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, the International Biennale of Glass in Sofia, and CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, and was awarded a Pilchuck Glass School Fellowship.

Beverley Sommerville
After receiving an MA in Ceramics from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2017, Beverley established a home-based ceramic studio in Helsby, Cheshire. Working as a studio potter and ceramic artist, her practice focuses on wheel-thrown ceramics inspired by landscapes, cityscapes, and storytelling. Her ‘Matter’ collection engages with ideas of material, place and nomad, gathering materials from places of inspiration, then combining these collected materials within the clay, creating unique pieces of still life, installation or one-off forms. The ‘Sandstone Stories’ collection is a conversation about the connection between place and herself, on both a physical and emotional level. Being in the local landscape, collecting matter, then processing these materials and finally making the pieces themselves, this work reflects upon that personal relationship between place and where we call home.

Aneliya Stoyanova
Aneliya, an MA Ceramics graduate from Staffordshire University, has found her place within the vibrant community of Acava Spode Works Studios in Stoke‑on‑Trent. Inspired by Gaudí’s organic forms and Frank Gehry’s striking lines, she blends nature’s elegance and digital innovation. Sculpting in Virtual Reality and using CAD and parametric tools, she transforms visions into 3D‑printed Parian porcelain, where light and material interplay evoke harmony between nature, humanity, and technology. A Green Grads UK member, she embeds sustainability throughout her practice, reflecting joy of making and bold curiosity. Beginning ceramics later in life, she embraced clay with fearless creative drive. Her work has been exhibited at the London Design Festival, Three Counties Open Art Exhibition, Layer Fest in Madrid and the National Centre for Craft & Design in Sleaford. In 2025, she co‑founded the MA Ceramics alumni network, curated Uncensored, and is represented in the Crafts Council Directory and Design‑Nation UK.

Alison Waters
Based at Grit Studios in Stockport, Alison Waters is a ceramic artist whose work is inspired by the urban landscape of her post-industrial northern hometown. Drawing inspiration from her immediate surroundings, Alison creates hand built ceramic sculptures that respond to the ever changing architectural environment around her. Her practice explores themes of regeneration, displacement, and memory, reflecting on how redevelopment transforms familiar spaces and disrupts communities’ sense of belonging and home. Through layered textures and digital transfers applied to industrial forms, Alison captures the tension between permanence and impermanence—telling stories of loss, adaptation, and an evolving sense of place.

Emma Westmacott
Emma’s work was born out of a love of mid-20th-century design aesthetics. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, she was surrounded by Modernist design – from the architecture and interior surfaces of her school to the prints on her grandmother’s clothes and the textured glassware used by her parents. She is particularly drawn to the béton brut concrete formwork found in Brutalist architecture, a fascination that strongly influences her work. Emma continually explores new ways of creating richly textured surfaces, pairing them with simple vase forms to heighten contrasts of colour and material. Her work centres on a slip-casting method she developed during her Master’s degree. By casting moulds in layers, she can reconfigure and interchange components, resulting in unique and distinctive pieces. Emma’s current collection is made using terracotta slip, a material she values for its deepening colour at higher firing temperatures and for the striking contrast between the clay’s earthy richness and her glassy glazes.

Jean White
Jean begins work by drawing, which she uses as the foundation for carving and modelling imagery in clay. She makes her own plaster moulds and slip casts in Parian porcelain clay. Her collections include mugs, lamps and vases, each created with careful attention to form, texture and finish. Her work reflects a deep interest in British bird life and the fragile balance of nature. Taking inspiration from the visual links between fossils and ceramic sprigs, she combines raised and recessed imagery that echo fossil forms. This connection between surface and meaning brings a thoughtful quality to her pieces while drawing attention to the vulnerability of endangered bird species. Jean’s work has been featured in Ceramic Review and the American magazine Ceramics Monthly. She was shortlisted as an Emerging Artist by the International Ceramics Festival in 2023, and her pieces are represented by several galleries across the UK.