If something good came out of the pandemic it was a surge in creativity. Suffolk Craft Society is emerging with a bounce in its step, more members and a flourishing summer exhibition in Woodbridge
One of the highlights of summer is Suffolk Craft Society’s annual exhibition – a dazzling showcase of homegrown talent and creativity. After many decades of exhibiting at the Peter Pears Gallery in Aldeburgh, last year the pandemic forced the exhibition to move to the Longshed near the Woodbridge Tide Mill, on the banks of the River Deben. This year’s event reveals that the association is in rude health with a wealth of new members displaying (and selling!) their work.
Outgoing chair Sarah Thane, who is overseeing her last summer show, is delighted. “Because of the extended period of enforced isolation, many people returned to old hobbies, refined and upgraded their skills or took on new challenges, and as a result we have 16 exciting new members which have come to us over the past two years and we have 10 of those new members taking part in the exhibition this July.” Sixteen may not seem a lot but Sarah reminds me of the high standards set by SCS.
The work of new members is assessed by a panel of craftspeople from the society including specialists in the prospective member’s field. “Membership of the society has always been a recommendation of quality and we will always maintain this assessment process before granting full admission. Even if an established member wishes to work in a different field, for example, say a glass artist wishes to move into tapestry-making, then the tapestries have to be assessed separately before the artist can add that skill to their society skillset.
READ: Keeping Suffolk's unique history and stories alive
“We want to make sure that people know that, when they buy from society members, they are getting work from some of the most talented and creative people in the country – not just here in Suffolk. We have some of the most creative and skilled craftspeople in the UK – and Europe – among our members.” The move to the Longshed, behind the Riverside Cinema and close to Woodbridge Tide Mill, proved so successful, says Sarah, that they have decided to return this year. “The fact that the Woodbridge Riverside Trust are supporting the building a replica of a Saxon longboat downstairs, using traditional woodworking skills, is a complementary attraction.
“We're using the upstairs gallery while the longboat is being assembled on the ground floor. The fact that they are using traditional skills, they are cleaving the planks by hand and creating the ship using the same methods that would have been used to construct the burial boat at Sutton Hoo is just perfect. Last year I stood there just watching those guys, hewing huge timbers with just hand axes. It really was very exciting. It struck me that many of the same skills and materials forge a link between the work being undertaken by the boatbuilders and the craftspeople whose work is on display upstairs.”
The new location for the exhibition has given the show and the society a shot in the arm, says Sarah, forcing them to look at how they showcase the work to the visitors. “We had a great team at Aldeburgh, but we were constrained by the limitations of the space. Here, we can lay out the work in new and very different ways. Each year the layout changes and is dictated by the size and the nature of the work which has been submitted. This is a very modern, very engaging space, that encourages people to come in and look around. Last year, despite lingering worries about Covid, we did attract a decent passing trade - people who came to Woodbridge to enjoy a walk by the river and this year we hope to build on that.
“We were the Longshed’s first significant booking and they really went to town on the gallery. They glazed it for us and put in air conditioning – originally it was just mezzanine floor overlooking the construction work on the longboat – and we had such a wonderful time there, we wanted to repay their support by going back and help make it a regular summer destination for visitors.”
As usual, the trick for the SCS display team is to show off members' work to its best advantage. “We always have too much work that we would like to show, so we have to be quite strict with ourselves, because you have to make the space navigable. You don’t want it to look too overcrowded or too overwhelming. You want people to feel that they are being invited in and can just browse and admire the work on display, and hopefully some people will fall in love with various items and buy them – knowing that they have got something original, something special that no-one else has.”
Such is the ingenuity of SCS members that the display has been kitted out with new display cases and bespoke folding panels to enable the exhibition area to look as inviting as the works they are displaying. “Two of our furniture-makers were a great help in preparing the new exhibition space in Woodbridge. We commissioned David Battrum to make us two new shelving units and Toby Winteringham came up with a wonderfully simple but highly effective way to help divide up the exhibition space. He went to B&Q, picked up a pair of doors and repurposed them as a hanging space divider which will allow us to create different exhibition areas, but it’s also versatile and we can take it wherever we need them unlike the previous display cases which were designed to work in the Aldeburgh Gallery.”
The pandemic prompted something of a mini-crisis within the society as members lost most of their opportunities to sell their work and money became extremely tight. Sarah said that the society responded by waiving membership fees for 2020 and then reducing them by half for 2021. As the pandemic produced an unexpected recruitment boom, the future for the Suffolk Craft Society looks very healthy. They are marking their 50th anniversary, which should have happened in 2020, with a new site-specific bench at Snape, which will be designed and constructed by society member Tim Germain.
New talent
Among new Suffolk Crafty Society members displaying their work are...
Elizabeth Williamson: A Woodbridge resident who has recently arrived in the town from the Shetlands where she had been knitting since the age of four. She is also an accomplished designer, which shapes the look of her shawls and scarves. Elizabeth now runs Shetland Lace workshops as well as designing her own lace patterns, and creates work that reflects her Shetland heritage and its rich culture.
Sheila Madder: Sheila is a ceramicist who demonstrates a very different way of working with porcelain. She makes her own moulds and slip casts the porcelain in vibrant colours. The work reflects her personality and is inspired by the Slow Movement and Emotionally Durable Design, a philosophy that advocates a cultural shift towards slowing down life’s pace.
Cathy Constable: This East Anglian glass artist is inspired by the light, muted colours and textures of the marshes, estuaries and landscape that give this region its distinctive nature. She says: “I use fused glass as a vehicle to express the ethereal qualities and feeling of the salt marshes, water channels and mudflats. As a medium the reflective properties of glass can be exploited to evoke the nature and patterns of water and land.”
Sarah Kay Waters: Sarah graduated in 2019 from Colchester School of Art with a First-Class Honours in 3D Design and Craft, specialising in ceramics. She loves to bridge the gap between fine art and craft. The foundation of her work focuses on colour and structure incorporating complex components, repeat patterns and building blocks that make up much of the natural world and human existence.
Moira Goodall: Moira creates individual handmade ceramic vessels inspired by coastal forms, colour and light reflected by the river and salt marshes that surround her studio. Moira is also fascinated by alternative firing methods and she combines contemporary styling with the ancient technique of sawdust and smoke firing.
The Suffolk Craft Society Summer Exhibition at the Longshed, Woodbridge, runs from July 16-31.
SCS announces a new chair
Jewellery-maker and former gallery owner Juliet Bowmaker was elected as the new Chair of the Suffolk Craft Society at the beginning of May. After an initial career in law, Juliet studied art history at Trent Polytechnic before opening a gallery in Nottingham with a rolling programme of fine and applied arts.
A move to Cambridge in the late ‘90s led to her setting up a consultancy providing artwork for display in hospitals and supplying the corporate sector. She opened another gallery which showed at the major London art fairs and further afield in Glasgow, Dublin and New York. Since then, she has worked with the Cambridge Light Festival, Gainsborough’s House on the exhibition committee, Ipswich Arts Association as its secretary and has her own consultancy managing projects in the public sector. She is also a practising jeweller. "I have worked in the creative industries for the past 30 years and am as passionate now about the applied arts as I am about Suffolk where I have lived since 2006," she says.
