The creative excellence of Suffolk Craft Society will be on show this month as makers of everything from silversmithing to bespoke furniture, ceramics and printmaking return to to Bury St Edmunds for a major exhibition
Hidden behind the hedgerows of Suffolk, in barns and studios fashioned out of spare rooms or in old sheds at the bottom of the garden the county’s creative community are craftily making magic, turning wood, ceramics, glass and textiles into practical objects of great beauty and ingenious design.
They are the members of Suffolk Craft Society, a collective formed 50 years ago to represent the county’s makers and to give these easily isolated freelancers a support network. Until recently, the most visible aspect of the society’s work was its annual summer exhibition, held for many years at the former Peter Pears Gallery on Aldeburgh High Street, then transferred to the Longshed in Woodbridge last year.
Now, the society’s new chair, jewellery maker Juliet Bowmaker, wants to shine the spotlight on the autumn show which is being reintroduced in Bury St Edmunds. In the 1990s and early 2000s, SCS used to stage a Christmas exhibition to mirror the summer show at the Smith’s Row Gallery in Bury’s town centre, but it fell by the wayside after the gallery closed. Now, Juliet is determined to give the autumn exhibition the same profile as the well-regarded summer show.
“Last year, we had our first show in many years in The Guildhall and that proved quite successful, so I am looking at developing this further.” The lottery-funded restoration work on the 12th century building, deemed to be one of the oldest civic buildings in Britain, gives the handmade craft exhibition added atmosphere, she says.
“The Guildhall is a wonderful venue with some spectacular ground floor rooms. I think it’s good to have something in West Suffolk because that means we cover the whole of the county." The character of west Suffolk is also very different to nearer the coast, she points out. “Also, with Bury being so close to Cambridge, hopefully we can reach people with a love of exquisite handmade crafts living on the other side of the border.”
As with the Woodbridge summer exhibition, the Bury St Edmunds show will provide the county’s crafts people with a welcome shop window to demonstrate their world-class talents. However, it won’t strictly be a Christmas show. “I think the show will be nuanced towards Christmas without it being a full-on Christmas-themed show because if you are buying items for yourself or as gifts for others then you want them to be useful or on display all year round. There will some Christmas items on display but it won’t solely be just about Christmas.”
Juliet took over from long-standing chair Sarah Thane in May this year and although she has been a Suffolk resident, living in and around Bury St Edmunds since 2006, she has lived a very varied life, retraining several times, and even found herself locked down in Spain at the beginning of the pandemic. Life remains busy and interesting. Having just moved across town, she is trying to organise the craft society’s autumn show while unpacking boxes in her recently acquired Georgian townhouse in Bury town centre.
She's also trying to kit out her own jewellery studio in the basement - she is, after all, a maker in her own right, although a life in the art and craft world was not what she thought she would be devoted to when she first graduated from university. “I originally qualified as a solicitor and spent some years in practice before starting a family, and when it came time to go back to work, returning to a solicitor’s life was not terribly attractive, so instead I went back to college.
“I was living in Nottingham at the time and Trent Poly had an amazing art department. I spent a year studying art history." Juliet didn’t want to go back to the law, deciding instead that she wanted to have a gallery. "I was fortunate that I was married to a barrister at the time and he said, 'This is your time. Do it if you want to' - so I did.”
She established the well-regarded Byard Gallery in Nottingham’s lace market district. But when her marriage ended, she moved to Cambridge and set up a consultancy, mainly selling artworks to hospitals, the science park and corporate spaces. She also set up a loan scheme to hospitals.
Juliet also took on a gallery but when her parents became ill she returned to consultancy work becoming involved with the cutting-edge e-Luminate, the Cambridge Light Festival, as well as joining Gainsborough’s House exhibition committee in Sudbury. Among it all, Juliet decided she needed to get her hands dirty and make some work of her own, so, in 2016, she enrolled in the London college City Lit to train as a jeweller and silversmith.
“I had a fantastic year learning all sorts of new skills. My fellow students and I formed a creative collective and then went back for a second year of further training. Interestingly virtually the whole course was made up of mature students, so we had all done something else."
Life took another turn when she met her new husband. “I had started curating some exhibitions in London when James and I got together. He was retiring and we both wanted to experience living abroad for a longer period of time. James is a keen sailor, so we flew out to Corfu where his boat was moored, got it ready for sea and sailed it over to Spain.” Then Covid happened, and they returned home in June 2020, between lockdowns.
Juliet is now focused on raising the Suffolk Craft Society’s profile and is delighted that the group has recruited a wealth of new talent in recent months, as people have re-evaluated their priorities after the pandemic and decided to invest their time in creative endeavours. She's also hoping that a new payment scheme will help visitors invest in something special for their homes.
“We're hoping that our application to the Arts Council to join the Arts Scheme will be approved in time for the Christmas show, which will give people buying larger, more expensive items the opportunity to spread the cost over 10 months, interest free – which will be really wonderful.”
The Suffolk Craft Society autumn exhibition at The Guildhall, Bury St Edmunds, November 4-20. suffolkcraftsociety.org
