On this last Friday before Christmas, we thought you might like a little festive entertainment so we’ve put together a special Christmas Video featuring our Acorn Candlesticks.
A gift from us to you!
Art & Industry
We’re returning to Hamburg this week to take part for a second time in the annual Art Fair at the Museum for Art & Industry. Traditional Christmas Markets will be opening up in the streets as the city switches on its festive cheer and we look forward to greeting the lively and engaged international visitors that this long-established Fair attracts every year.
Strutt your stuff
One of the questions we are most frequently asked when we demonstrate our XY Candlesticks at a show is, “Do they come with instructions?”
The truth is, the XYs have natural poise, natural rhythm and love to dance. Like all perfect dance partners, whatever arrangements you choose for them they will always compliment one another beautifully.
Look at that!
Goldsmiths’ Fair is coming up! We will be exhibiting during Week One this year, from Tuesday 26th September until Sunday 1st October. Come along to Stand 62 to see our new Vases and Carafes.
Before the Show
Over the next 4 months we will be exhibiting in Salisbury, London, Sevenoaks, Crowthorne, Edinburgh, Winchester and Hamburg. And BREATHE… Faced with such a busy calendar, preparation is key and in our workshop we have a tried-and-tested checklist of 4 basic but crucial things to do in the run-up to a show.
Making Your Own Tools
A craftsman would be nothing without his tools. Ask any maker and whatever material they work in, whether it’s wood, ceramics or textiles, they will tell you that they have a favourite tool. It goes without saying that different tools are suited to different techniques: in our case, a forging hammer is very different from a planishing hammer, for example. Sometimes, the only way to get a tool that fulfils a specific requirement is to make it yourself.
Portrait of a Workshop
Over a trillion photographs will have been taken worldwide before the end of this year. It’s never been easier to show others where you are and what you’re doing at any given moment of the day. The trick, it seems, is to remember to take the picture in the first place! All too often we get caught up in what we’re doing in the workshop and only once a task is completed does it occur to us that it might have made an interesting video or photo.
Over the last few weeks, photographer Ben Boswell and filmmaker Mathy Selvakumaran have photographed and filmed us on two separate ordinary days in the workshop. The resulting photographs (below) and short film (above) capture the day-to-day detail of our workshop – the things and the faces that aren’t usually the focus of our posts.
The Ultimate Indulgence
Silver, like good food, is all about indulgence. It gratifies, it satisfies and quality is key.
Choosing to cook in a silver pan is not a choice made out of neccessity – it’s an act of love. If you love your food and take the time to source the tastiest ingredients you can get your hands on, why not do them justice with a silver pan?
Inspired
Looking for somewhere to put your candlesticks?
We’re looking forward to exhibiting at Inspired again this year. Held at the Goldsmiths’ Centre in Clerkenwell, this event brings together silversmiths and furniture makers in a collaborative exhibition of hand-made, contemporary pieces.
In The Garden
There are only 3 days left to go before the start of this year’s Craft In Focus show at RHS Garden Wisley!
The Carafe
If you like a tipple then this is one for you.
Coming To A Craft Fair Near You!
At the Bovey Tracey Contemporary Craft Festival last summer we were quite taken with the Vintage Mobile Cinema that rocked up at Mill Marsh Park in Devon to entertain visitors to the show with Pathe films from the 1940s and ’50s about British craftspeople and their work.
Bringing a taste of something special and refreshing to town halls and village greens across the nation is something we share with the ice-cream vans and mobile cinemas of this world, and we wouldn’t have it any other way!
Our programme for 2017 is already packed with spring, summer and autumn events across 12 different counties, from Edinburgh to Devon, in marquees, grand halls and galleries. We’ve now updated the ‘Events‘ page on our website. We’re coming to a craft fair near you!
A Winter Show
This year we ended our tour of shows with a debut appearance at the MKG Messe in Hamburg. Held annually in the city’s impressive Museum for Arts and Craft, this event has been running for over 130 years and has only recently begun accepting applications from makers based outside Germany. We showcased a ‘capsule’ collection of our sterling silver candlesticks and tableware and received a warm welcome from the friendly Hamburgers, as they are known.
Fibonacci Vase
Those of you who visited our stand at Goldsmiths’ Fair this year will have noticed the three new pieces we have been making over the summer – a series of solid silver vases.
This summer project has allowed us to combine our signature sculptural hot-forgings with the technique of raising, a process that requires patience and precision and uses a more delicate hammer than Brett’s favourite 1.5 kilo forging tool.
Inspiraton for the larger of these three vases was drawn originally from the Fibonacci Curve, also known as the Golden Spiral (although we prefer silver!), a mathematical formular expressed in a curve that holds the key to some of nature’s most intricate patterns and sequences, including the fruitlets of a pineapple and the ancestry of honey bees!
Travelling in style
There are some things that every seasoned traveller knows you should never travel without – a toothbrush, a good book – and as silversmiths who are often on the move, silver candlesticks are our constant companions.
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