Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair 2025 - Garden Museum

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Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair 2025

This festive season the Beautiful & Useful Craft Fair is returning to the Garden Museum with a curated collection of Britain’s best designer-makers selling bold, bohemian and thoroughly beautiful handmade ceramics, textiles, art prints, jewellery, and homewares.

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. Exhibitors will include The Curious Maker’s mechanical toys and velvet toadstool decorations; Claverton Cloche’s elegant and practical garden frames; Variegate’s hand-crafted wooden tools and utensils; and The Ceramic Botanist’s vases, jugs and plaques imprinted with the shapes of real plants.

Other makers taking inspiration from plants and nature include The Natural Dye Company’s delicately hued homewares and accessories; Seaside Moocher’s pressed seaweed pieces showcasing the diversity of underappreciated aquatic botanicals; Georgia Doherty’s Plants for Shade – convincing and exquisitely crafted paper plants complete with reclaimed pots; and Frank & Lusia’s colourful mixed media botanic prints adorning tea towels, cards and ornaments.

This boutique curated Christmas shopping experience is set in the beautiful surroundings of the Garden Museum, a medieval church building with a Dan Pearson-designed courtyard garden and light-filled contemporary extension housing the award-winning Garden Café.

The day will also include two craft workshops:

Straw decorations workshop with Penny Maltby

Penny Maltby from the Ministry of Straw will be leading this fun workshop in how to make a harvest trophy decoration. Using traditional corn dolly techniques and heritage wheat, you will learn how to tie the straw workers’ preferred knot and make a small item such as a love knot to practice your skills. Penny will then show you how to make your harvest trophy in a round or heart shape using the arrow plait and additional wheat heads, all adorned with a ribbon of your choice.

10.30am-12.30pm, £55 | Book tickets

Entry is included with workshop ticket

Embossed tin decorations with Clare Youngs

Join the artist Clare Youngs for a festive workshop. You will learn the fascinating craft of tin embossing. Taking inspiration from folk art designs and patterns, Clare will show you how to use an embossing tool on the foil with templates provided, or from ones that you create yourself. It is great fun to learn this craft and you will go home with some beautiful decorations to display, hang on the tree or to turn into unique greetings cards.

1.30pm-3.30pm, £55 | Book tickets

Entry is included with workshop ticket

Stalls

  • Ceramic Botanist

    Ceramic Botanist

    Ceramic Botanist by Louise Condon Designs is based purely on botanicals. Every piece she creates is unique using real plants to capture a moment in time. Louise works seasonally using skeletal forms in the winter and fuller blooms in summer. She creates vases from minis to large-scale statement pieces, jugs, wall plaques, splash backs, plates, garden-style sculptural pieces and lights. She works with stoneware clays, crank and porcelain firing up to 1260 degrees. Her ceramics are coloured using oxides and stains to highlight the imprints of the plants. Louise also works on a variety of personal commissions creating pieces using botanicals.

  • Claverton Cloches

    Claverton Cloches

    Claverton Cloches make garden tools and accessories inspired by heritage designs from historic kitchen gardens. Crafted in its Bath-based workshop, the pieces are made to last and are trusted by many of England’s finest gardens. Founded by Beth Gregg, the company reflects her passion for traditional craftsmanship, sustainability and the enduring beauty and romance of the English garden. Beth leads a small team of skilled craftspeople, reviving time-honoured techniques to produce elegant, practical items built for generational longevity. Claverton Cloches pieces will delight season after season.

  • Cotswold Knit

    Cotswold Knit

    Cotswold Knit is a slow fashion brand of artisan knitwear and accessories. Inspired by the seasonal colours of the British countryside, Cotswold Knit focuses on meticulous craftsmanship and playful creative design. Founder and designer Anna Wheeler’s exquisite jacquard patterns and colours make for unique and truly special accessories. Anna uses the finest natural yarns to create distinctive scarves, hats and snoods, all knitted in small batches in the UK. Having created beautiful designs for Missoni, Whistles, HIGH Everyday Couture, Top Shop, Marks and Spencer, Tait & Style, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and Alexander McQueen, Anna understands the power of unique design and unparalleled quality. These two principles are now found in her own collection. Always uplifting and original, Anna’s pieces are chic and sumptuous, and designed to be in your wardrobe forever.

  • Crafty Basketry

    Crafty Basketry

    Marianne, founder of Crafty Basketry, has been making traditional and contemporary baskets since 2006, initially having learnt the craft from a woodsman. She discovered the calming, meditative rhythm of weaving, as well as the potential of materials and shapes, and finds the process of growing willow and creating as important as the finished product. She creates unique, functional pieces that range from rustic to refined. With over 300 willow varieties, each basket becomes a one-of-a-kind expression of colour and texture. When not weaving for commissions or stock, she shares this therapeutic craft through workshops, helping others find balance, creativity and connection with nature.

  • Frank and Lusia

    Frank and Lusia

    Zara Huddlestone, owner of Frank and Lusia, has been a graphic designer all her life. When she stopped working full time, she started experimenting with collage, something she had always wanted to do but never had the time. She uses both found pieces of paper, from chocolate wrappers to tea bag sachets, or paints papers with acrylic and then cuts them into shapes. Recently she has made printed tea towels and greetings cards from them. Zara lived in Poland for over 18 years so is very influenced by the folk art there, painting wooden horses and other animals in this style.

  • Deco22 by Jasmine Carey

    Deco22 by Jasmine Carey

    Deco 22 is a craft-based label producing timeless handcrafted leather accessories. The label was founded by award-winning creative Jasmine Carey. All Deco 22 pieces are handcrafted by Jasmine in her studio based in Deptford, Southeast London. Designs are often influenced by the Art Deco movement with an emphasis on simple clean lines. At the heart of Deco22’s work is a desire to celebrate fine craftsmanship, creating quality pieces that are not for a season, but for many years to come.

  • Jill Pargeter

    Jill Pargeter

    Jill Pargeter has been working as a print maker and designer for over 30 years. After studying printed textiles at Manchester Polytechnic she worked in a textile design studio in London and then started her own greetings cards and gift wrap design business. She now enjoys creating a range of decorative objects for the home including cushions, linen figures, keepsakes, printed panels and lampshades which combine her love of history, nature and poetic verse. Her work is inspired by folk art and the Arts and Crafts movement and is made by her own hands from original designs to hand screen printing, stitching and finishing.

  • Kate Sampson Ceramics

    Kate Sampson Ceramics

    Kate's work combines traditional ceramic forms with uplifting decoration. A rural upbringing in the heart of the Kentish countryside, alongside her background in illustration and a love of historic folk art, have inspired longstanding themes of antique florals, animals and the natural world. Working in hand thrown or slab moulded earthenware and stoneware, she employs a decorative technique involving the layering of fine brushwork with sgraffito and wax resist in order to create depth and character. Colour is of great importance in Kate's work, with warm earthy tones featuring heavily to mimic nature’s pallet.

  • Keeley Traae

    Keeley Traae

    Keeley is a design consultant, maker and lecturer. She designs tableware and homewares for global clients and creates her own 3D-printed collections from her Staffordshire studio. Her vessels begin as sketches, developed into digital 3D files, and printed using fused deposition modelling. Influenced by mid-century design and natural geometry, her pieces feature ribbed, faceted forms with tactile finishes. Sustainability is key using compostable PLA from renewable sources and recyclable packaging. With a focus on colourful decorative objects, Keeley designs vases, decorations and trays. Her latest collection explores connectivity through material, colour, and form, and includes recent collaborations across design disciplines.

  • Melanie Ostler Jewellery

    Melanie Ostler Jewellery

    Melanie Ostler creates contemporary gold and silver jewellery, handcrafted in the heart of the South Downs. Her work blends luxury with everyday elegance, drawing inspiration from the intricate textures of seed pods and organic forms found in nature. Each piece reflects her passion for craftsmanship and storytelling. Last year, Melanie designed a collection for Charleston, celebrating the artistic legacy of the Bloomsbury Group’s Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. This collaboration beautifully fused modernist influences with the timeless beauty of the natural world, a theme that continues to shape her distinctive, limited-edition designs.

  • Penny Maltby of Ministry of Straw

    Penny Maltby of Ministry of Straw

    Penny Maltby is a designer-maker and strawworker based in Oxford. She teaches traditional straw work skills to arts organisations, individuals, corporate clients and works to commission for film and TV. Drawing on her interest in heritage crafts, straw techniques and stories from rural customs and traditions, she has designed a range of contemporary textiles. These celebrate the shapes and aesthetics of her craft with modern and wearable interpretations. She describes her work as ‘looking both ways’: to the past for the techniques and traditions, and to the future using sustainable digital production methods for her luxury silk scarf designs. Wherever possible her materials and production are UK-based.

  • Penny Warren

    Penny Warren

    Based in her Brighton workshop, Penny has been making contemporary jewellery in hand-dyed aluminium and textured silver for over 20 years. Using a variety of printing and dying techniques to apply colour and pattern to anodised aluminium, she twins the metal with milled silver or brass, to create eye-catching pieces with bold shapes and simple lines. The serendipity of dyeing by hand, ensures each piece is completely unique. Contrasting colours and prints are riveted to flat silver or coiled and looped into 3D-designs that evoke fluidity and movement.

  • Plants for Shade

    Plants for Shade

    No watering. Very little attention required. Perfect for a dark corner. Plants for shade are inspired by a love of old glass conservatories and greenhouses, marbled paper and Victorian scrapbooking, but most of all by the natural world that flourishes in the garden but not so well indoors. Each plant is unique made by Georgia Doherty in her West London Garden Studio shed and potted from a collection of antique and vintage pots.

  • 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.

  • Seaside Moocher

    Seaside Moocher

    Sarah grew up on the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage site and hugely diverse landscape, and exploring its unique geology sparked a lifelong interest in the natural world. Following in the footsteps of Victorian seaweed hunters, Sarah collects a diverse range of specimens at low tide and hand-presses them in her Sussex studio. The process of foraging, identification and pressing is a joyous journey of discovery, and how seaweeds respond to this creative process is endlessly fascinating. 'Apart from the enjoyment of creating these truly unique pieces of artwork I am constantly amazed and in awe at the sheer diversity and beauty of seaweed,' she says.

  • Starsmead Bookbinding

    Starsmead Bookbinding

    In her Gloucestershire bindery, Ursula Jeakins makes stationery items using robust traditional methods, as well as doing book repairs and teaching. She loves to promote the use of albums, scrapbooks and commonplace books, and these are key areas of her bookbinding work. She imports hand-decorated papers from all over the world and uses papers by contemporary and vintage designers. In this 150th year of Liberty of London, Ursula's bindings are also featuring bookcloths made from Liberty’s beautiful fine Tana Lawn fabrics. These include floral patterns inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement and designs from the exciting anniversary collection.

  • The Curious Maker

    The Curious Maker

    The Curious Maker presents a collection of curious things. Inspired by nature, storytelling and times of old, she meticulously crafts mechanical toys and decorative objects to surprise and delight. Discover velvet strawberries that look good enought to eat and jewel-toned toadstools perfect for adorning the most beautiful of Christmas trees. The humble clothes peg magically makes mice nibble and birds fly. Turn a handle or push a lever and watch her work come to life!

  • The Natural Dye Works

    The Natural Dye Works

    The Natural Dyeworks was founded by Ros, a natural dyer living in the Kent countryside. It makes small batch, slow crafted, hand dyed accessories and homewares using the alchemy of 100% plant-based dyes, which are natural and non-toxic. Working exclusively with natural fibres, Ros crafts an ever-evolving palette of colours through the use of petals, leaves, bark, roots and seeds. Her palette changes continually with the seasons, and the spectrum of colours available is dependent on the ingredients available such as nettles in spring for cool greens, coreopsis in summer for wild oranges, hollyhocks in autumn for soft blues or alder cones in winter for burnished golds.

  • Treefall

    Treefall

    Treefall was created by British designer, Manda McGrory. Following an unusual career path that includes running away with the circus, training as a carpenter and working as a bank manager, Manda discovered her true passion for all things textile whilst expecting her first daughter in 2004. A love of modern quilting led Manda to start creating quilts, toys and clothing for her daughters. This led to the creation of Treefall, and for over 15 years now Manda has been designing and making soft toys and children’s clothing, that sell world wide via retail stockists, design shows, online at Holly&Co and her own website.

  • Variegate

    Variegate

    Harry and Johanna are the couple behind Variegate - a bespoke hardwood furniture and luxury kitchenware company with sustainability at its forefront. All of their products are handmade by them in their London workshop using wood which is mainly reclaimed or sourced from storm-fallen London trees. Many of the smaller kitchenware items are made from offcuts from their furniture projects. Because of the couple's cross-cultural background, British and Filipino respectively, their designs have European sillhouettes with an Asian influence. They incorporate a lot of hand carving and faceted textures into their work which give it an extremely tactile feel and a wabi sabi aesthetic.

  • WAX Atelier

    WAX Atelier

    WAX Atelier reimagines traditional techniques, from candle dipping to crafted textiles, using the natural beauty of wax. Founded in 2017 by multi-disciplinary designers Lola Lely and Yesenia Thibault-Picazo, WAX Atelier is a London-based studio specialising in unique, handcrafted wax creations. Sustainability is its core principle, materials are sourced locally and products manufactured in small batches using low-impact processes.

Image: Frank and Lusia