Sustainable Arts & Crafts Showcase marks the 30th birthday of the Dulwich Festival
Blue Patch’s Sustainable Arts & Crafts Showcase proved a big hit for the Dulwich Festival with an emphasis on UK Sustainable crafts, painting, photography and sculpture.
We brought together some of the UK’s finest artists, crafters and designers in an exhibition which ran across the weekend of May 13-14 2023. Held at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (link), our show was busy from start to finish, in true festival spirit. Blue Patch was part of the ‘Artists Open House’ event.
What’s on at Dulwich Picture Gallery
Visitors could experience the broad range of talents within Blue Patch’s membership and see Dulwich Picture Gallery’s outstanding collection which includes masterpieces such as Poussin’s ‘The Nurture of Jupiter’ and Rembrandt’s ‘Girl at a Window’.
As if this wasn’t enough, there is Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism too. An unmissable show according to everyone who’s seen it! Runs to Sept 10th 2023).
Our event marked the celebration of the 30th year of the Dulwich Festival and as such we were part of a far larger enterprise, with events across several post codes, varying from ‘artists at home’ to art galleries, studios and many other cultural entertainments.
William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement
The title of the exhibition ‘Sustainable Arts & Crafts Showcase’ references thinkers William Morris* and John Ruskin, who believed that the divisions between the Arts & Crafts were wrong. They viewed the small workshops and artisan skills as significant as any art form. The collective movement Morris and Ruskin championed finds an echo in Blue Patch, also a collective, for UK and Irish businesses that value and journey towards being more sustainable in their materials and methods.
The crafts in the exhibition backs up this view as, for instance, in the work by Angela Cole, poised perfectly between art & crafts, she uses traditional methods in surprising new ways to create objects that is simultaneously art and craft.
The craft of making a painting is demonstrated too; Oliver Gosling, Carolyn Blake and Janet Tod’s works are effortlessly carried out with a confidence and fluency underpinned by lives dedicated to the practice of painting.
Blue Patch Sustainability Awards
On Saturday we took time out to toast the winners of the 2022 Blue Patch Sustainability Awards, Edward Blumer Natural Paint, Mr Bug and eco-action games were duly recognised. The Awards closed in December 2022 and were judged this spring. Meet the judges.
Celebrating Sustainable Business in the UK
Meet the exhibitors – how to get in touch!
If you would like to contact any of the exhibitors, all you need to is click the links in this text and land on their Blue Patch micro-sites where you’ll see a ‘contact’ button.
The Showcase was curated by Blue Patch’s founder, Jane Langley, and included the iconic Windsor Rocker by Katie Walker, a designer and maker whose pieces are in the Manchester Art Gallery, sculpture with a musical theme by Abdollah Nafisi, currently studying sculpture at the Royal College Of Art, London.
Finlay Taylor’s practice explores aspects of landscape and natural history, often focusing on specific species, locations, and habitats. Finlay is senior Tutor in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art.
Carolyn Blake trained at City & Guilds of London Art School and her oil paintings are from the Unchanging Traveller series. Scottish colourist Janet Tod exhibited still life paintings. Janet trained at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, and is a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute.
Continuing the natural theme, Jim Washburn‘s photographs of plants reference classical compositions, which can be seen in the main Gallery’s permanent collection. Jim trained as an Art Historian in the USA, Italy and France before becoming a journalist. Oliver Gosling, another graduate of the RCA, showed emotionally changed symbolic landscapes and Jason Shuttleworth, exhibited his painterly geometrics.
Coldharbour Lights hung her exquisitely decadent feather chandelier, alongside Angela Cole, currently studying for her City & Guilds Diploma in Basketry. Expert in glaze, potter Linda Bloomfield, exhibited her lichen series.
Laura’s Loom presented woven cushions and blankets reflecting the colours of the Yorkshire Dales. Her work is locally made from fleece, to loom, to blanket!
Madder Cutch & Co. presented handprinted textiles for home furnishings printed on sustainable linen and Beuzeval Furniture tidied things up with Boundary, an all-around practical and elegant handcrafted piece for the home, made from sustainable wood in East London.
The UK’s only leather marble artist Rachel O’Connell presented a range from ROCWORX and Pip & Henry showed their sustainable children’s shoes.
In the Cloisters were Dalston Dolls, Chloe Haywood‘s stylish recycled leather bolt bracelets, hats and hotties, leather-worker Wolfram Lohr had a range of products hand-made in his Sussex workshop, and Will Hamilton-Davies, author, signed copies of his book The Shrew With The Flu.
Everything in the Showcase is available to buy or commission.
If you want to get in touch email Blue Patch team, we’d be delighted to help.
How to join Blue Patch
If you would like to join us, please have a read!
We’re delighted to share that we’re launching a new membership for Buyers, Curators and Trade professionals.
If you would like to find out more please contact us or call +44 (0)207 738 7267 .
