Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair 2023 - Garden Museum

The Garden Museum will be closed 21 December – 5 January | Book your visit

Home » Events » Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair 2023

Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair 2023

This festive season the Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair will gather Britain’s best designer-makers selling a botanically-inspired selection of handmade ceramics, textiles, art prints, jewellery, and homewares.

Walk-in admission available on the door!

Beautiful & Useful offers shoppers the chance to support small businesses, meet the makers and buy one-of-a-kind gifts for friends and family this Christmas. The Garden Museum will be filled with stalls taking inspiration from the shapes, colours and materials of gardens and the natural world, with environmentally friendly methods and sustainability at their heart.

Highlights to discover at the Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair will include small batch ceramics by Aeyglom, vessels and collages created from found natural materials such as feathers and acorn cups by Jane Bevan, sculptural botanical-inspired lighting and homewares cast in plaster, brass and bronze by designer Jess Wheeler (pictured), colourful embroidery kits and folk art inspired by world textiles from The Fabled Thread, and whimsical landscape paintings by Vanessa Bowman.

The day will also include a craft workshops hosted by one of our stallholders:

Embroidery workshop with The Fabled Thread: Book Tickets

Join passionate stitcher Eppie Thompson for this beginners’ workshop in which you’ll embroider a design from Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky. You will learn the two core embroidery stitches, chain stitch and satin stitch and, by the end of the session, will have learnt all you need to complete your picture, as well as having discovered the pleasures of sewing.

1.30pm-3.30pm, £50 | Book tickets

Stalls

  • Aeyglom

    Aeyglom

    The brand name - aeyglom - is a combination of the maker's Thai nickname Aey and the word Glom, meaning circle, the shape and form often reflected in her work. The collection is designed and made in Aey's garden studio at home in West Sussex. Each piece has been handmade in small batches, using an industrial technique called slip casting. This intricate process involves pouring liquid porcelain into plaster moulds to form a layer inside the mould. Each piece is cast with layers of both natural and coloured porcelain slip giving clean lines and bold colours. The individual pieces are carefully hand-finished, glazed inside and polished to give a soft tactile feel.

  • Alison Haddon

    Alison Haddon

    Alison's handmade storytelling silver jewellery collections are inspired by her walks in the countryside. These elegant snapshots accurately and beautifully depict the flora, fauna and birds in their natural habitat. Alison crafts the birds with glass enamel or anodised aluminium printed with her paintings. The birds are perched on silver branches, glass beads, gemstones become blossoms, leaves, nuts and berries. She built her business and skills after graduating from Brighton University, supplies galleries and shops in the UK and internationally and is particularly proud of having been commissioned to design three collections by The Met Store in New York.

  • Allison Sylvester

    Allison Sylvester

    Allison Sylvester is an artist print maker and tutor living and working in South Devon. Her delicately painted, jewel-like miniatures of moths, birds and flowers, inspired by the beautiful green lanes surrounding Totnes, will be available alongside original, botanical mono prints and stationery.

  • Botanique

    Botanique

    Botanique is bringing Antigua and Barbuda’s traditional craft of wild tamarind seedwork to the global stage. Not only to keep its intangible cultural history alive but to provide financial support and to link like-minded, wise entrepreneurial women of Antigua and Barbuda to their sisters in Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

  • Chalk Wovens

    Chalk Wovens

    Chalk Wovens offers a distinctive range of sustainable contemporary woven textiles made from sumptuous merino lambswool. Kerry creates the patterns on a handloom and the designs are then produced by skilled weavers in UK mills. The finished woven cloth is finally made into cushions, throws and other items by talented local makers. Richard, Kerry's partner, helps to keep everything running smoothly! Having met at Farnham Art College in the 80s, their careers have been running concurrently ever since. For many years Kerry ran a freelance textile design business, while also working as a visiting tutor at Central St. Martin's. Richard's background is in interiors.

  • Chrissy Silver

    Chrissy Silver

    Chrissy Silver graduated from Goldsmiths College in Ceramics in 1989. She had previously been a printmaker. She now combines her interests in print, clay and plants to make her porcelain lamps, pendants and tea light holders. Over the last 18 years she has mastered working with porcelain. By pressing plants into the clay, this compresses the platelets, so that when fired and lit, the light shines through these prints like a ghost image in memory of the plant. The thinness of the clay makes the lamps wonderfully translucent and the plants leave a trace in bright light.

  • Folded Side Project

    Folded Side Project

    Folded Side Project is a small independent design studio in North East Essex making hand folded unique paper decorations, lampshades and lights for a customer who seeks beautiful objects with a hint of Scandi styling that enhance their home or space. All products are sustainable and elegant, crafted using beautiful high quality materials and FSC-certified papers. Taking inspiration from geometric forms and natural materials, the lamp shades have a delicate, simple, structural quality which play beautifully with the light once illuminated, creating a modern, cosy feel. Workshops and DIY kits are also available.

  • Frank Horn

    Frank Horn

    As a brand Frank Horn offers a selection of handcrafted leather accessories made right here in London. Using vegetable-tanned leather in an array of finishes, each creation is designed and made by me, produced in limited batches, helping to maintain its uniqueness, personality and quality.

  • Jane Bevan

    Jane Bevan

    Using familiar little treasures that she picks up on her daily walks in Derbyshire, Jane Bevan creates objects, vessels and collage from found natural materials. It's the tiny details, irregularities and unexpected beauty of the smallest things that catch her eye, be it feathers, twigs or acorn cups. These are then stitched, tied or assembled into a collection of artworks which embrace and celebrate the natural world.

  • Jess Wheeler

    Jess Wheeler

    Jess Wheeler is a designer and artist based between London and North Wales. Her cross disciplinary approach has a unified, nostalgic, nature driven narrative. Her work aims to remind the viewer the beauty and fragility of our natural world, it is therefore important to Jess that her pieces transcend seasonality and have a conscience. She specialises in sculptural, botanical-inspired lighting, candlesticks and decorative homewares. Sculpting and casting botanicals in plaster, brass and bronze.

  • Laslett England

    Laslett England

    Founded in 2014, Laslett England specialises in luxury hand-finished printed accessories including scarves, neckerchiefs and pocket squares. Working from her studio in Hastings, textile designer Melanie understands the power of a printed scarf not only as a beautiful accessory but a lasting piece of original design to cherish. Designs are inspired by art, architecture, found items and the natural world; each design invariably has a hint of vintage. Laslett England cares about a slow and sustainable approach to fashion by creating accessories with timeless appeal in limited numbers. Every product is made in England, using only the finest silks and wools.

  • Martine Jans

    Martine Jans

    Martine Jans trained as a goldsmith in the Netherlands and worked in London for a leading jewellery designer for 11 years, before opening her own business after moving to Brighton in 2001. She works in recycled silver, gold and platinum, and often uses fine gemstones in her delicate, feminine designs. All pieces are made by Martine in her Brighton studio, and she loves the fact that people come to her for a special piece that will be loved and treasured for years and, she hopes, generations to come.

  • Maude Made

    Maude Made

    Maude paints, designs and makes tea towels, aprons, bags and cushions. Inspired by the natural world around her; vegetables, flowers, fruit, birds and trees. She celebrates small details, the everyday, domestic comforts, God's creation, gardens, harvest, the changing seasons and the home

  • Nibu Letterpress

    Nibu Letterpress

    Nibu Letterpress is a sustainable letterpress printing studio based in London, committed to creating artisanal stationery for all occasions. Our respect for the endangered craft of letterpress lead us to create your dreams on paper. Ranging from thank you cards to gardening notebooks, from Christmas cards to bookmarks, from wedding suites to photo albums.

  • Rosa Harradine

    Rosa Harradine

    Rosa Harradine makes brushes and brooms using natural materials: arenga, tampico and broomcorn, and aims to make pieces that are beautiful as well as useful. Rosa was chosen as a TOAST New Maker 2022 by the fashion and homewares brand who selected five makers demonstrating excellence in skill, originality and craftsmanship.

  • Sarah Rickard

    Sarah Rickard

    After gaining a B.A. Hons degree in Contemporary Craft where she specialised in ceramics and textiles, Sarah set up her first studio and has worked as an artist and ceramicist ever since. She now lives in rural East Sussex and creates her ceramics from her garden studio. Her range of decorative ceramics are inspired by a deep love of nature. She sees the natural world as magical and full of wonder and draws upon mythology, folklore and fairy tales to express her ideas. She works largely in earthenware and porcelain and hand builds and intricately decorates each piece, combining her love of drawing and painting with her ceramics.

  • Sophie Elm

    Sophie Elm

    Sophie Elm is a printmaker, designer and illustrator, creating botanical and horticulturally inspired linocut prints, printed homewares, and ephemera. Her work is driven by seasonal changes in the garden and countryside around her. As humans, we have celebrated nature and the changing of the seasons in all cultures. Sophie feels this is important to continue to do today and her work is her personal method of doing this. She uses vibrant colours, pattern and often combines typography too; an influence from her illustrative background. Although her work is predominately hand burnished linocuts, she likes to experiment with other forms of printmaking too, as well as hand drawn imagery and papercuts

  • Sophie Victoria Design

    Sophie Victoria Design

    Sophie handcrafts small scale metal forms and contemporary jewellery, adding texture and detail with playful enamel mark making. Her work explores the tactile quality of objects, creating beautiful yet unusual pieces that are designed to be handled. She gathers inspiration mostly from rugged rock forms and textures using photography as a reference, but also likes to allow the process of making to somewhat dictate the outcome.

  • The Curious Maker

    The Curious Maker

    The Curious Maker presents a collection of curious things. Sophie invites you to turn a handle and bring a mechanical toy to life, to marvel at miniature paintings incased in golden lockets or delight in a velvet toadstool! These, and other treasures, are to be found amongst Sophie's work, all made by hand with the greatest of care. With a lifelong love of nature and drawing inspiration from fairytales and make believe, Sophie's work is varied and inquisitive. She utilises a variety of different techniques and disciplines encompassing vintage and antique materials which add a sense of history and enhance the feeling of storytelling.

  • The Fabled Thread

    The Fabled Thread

    Eppie Thompson is the textile artist behind the embroidery kits business The Fabled Thread. Eppie's work takes inspiration from folk art and world textiles, with storytelling at the heart of each piece. She is passionate about teaching sewing and the powers of the craft beyond the piece you create. Through her vibrant and modern embroidery kits she hopes to encourage people to pick up a needle and fall in love with the process of stitching.

  • Vanessa Bowman

    Vanessa Bowman

    Vanessa's paintings observe the simple beauty of the everyday surroundings of her native Dorset. Captured in her richly detailed still lifes and her whimsical landscape paintings, she uses her innate sense of colour to jewel-like effect. A graduate of Winchester School of Art, she worked for 10 years in printed textile design, selling to worldwide markets whilst also supplying galleries with her paintings. Her work has been used for a number of illustration projects including House and Gardens magazine, Highgrove Estate, Oxfam, The Woodland Trust, Farrow & Ball and greetings card companies worldwide.

  • WAX Atelier

    WAX Atelier

    WAX Atelier re-visits traditional techniques ranging from candle dipping and paper making, to crafted textiles using natural wax. Making becomes a tool to experience the interconnection between the natural world and material culture. WAX Atelier was founded in 2017 by multi-disciplinary designers Lola Lely and Yesenia Thibault-Picazo, in London. Their products are manufactured in Poplar, East London, by a team of trained artisans, originating from the local community. Sustainability is at the core of their brand ethos. Most of their materials are locally sourced and the production is all done in-house, in small batches, using environmentally low-impact processes.

Image: Vanessa Bowman