Newcastle craft fair draws makers from far and wide
A first look at what's on offer
The second Great Northern Contemporary Craft & Art Fair opened with a Thursday preview evening that appeared to auger well for the weekend.
It was a sociable occasion – so many makers, all with a story to tell and seemingly eager to tell it – and if the weekend also proves profitable for the exhibitors then its long-term future could be assured.
For director Ann-Marie Franey, profit is not the name of the game. Her Great Northern Events is a not-for-profit company supported by Arts Council England (ACE) through the National Lottery.
But having mounted her first Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair in Manchester in 2008 (this October’s will be the 18th, one having been lost to Covid) she is keen to get the Newcastle fair just as firmly established.
Why Newcastle?
She has connections… and, like everyone I met on Thursday night, a story to tell, about how she was a student at Newcastle University but went every Wednesday night to a pottery class at Kenton School and got hooked.
“I got a job at Tyne Tees and then went to Granada and worked as a freelancer in TV but I took up pottery everywhere I went as therapy.
“I went to the Chelsea craft fair in London and thought: why is there nothing like this in the North? There was nothing at all, so in 2007 I started, with a friend, to work towards the first event in Manchester.”
Exhibitors must apply to book a stand and there’s a selection process, as also happens now in Newcastle.
Manchester’s event is regularly four times over-subscribed. You’ll find that some of those exhibiting this weekend in Newcastle have previously shown in Manchester while others have applied there and failed.
But as Ann-Marie stressed, all exhibitors are selected for the quality of their work.
With ACE funding currently in place for three years she is hoping her Newcastle event – already pencilled in for next year – will take hold, rather than being subsidised by Manchester’s success.
The Newcastle fair returns to Sports Central at Northumbria University (entrance on Northumberland Road) where it is comfortably accommodated.
There’s room to browse and wander and ample space for a sit down or some refreshments. A quiet room’s available for those who require it and there’s a craft activities table for kids.
There’s even a swimming pool somewhere in the building which is more than Manchester can offer, being happily housed in the old Victoria Baths where no public swimming has taken place since the early 1990s – although it is now a much loved cultural venue.
Not that swimming will be uppermost in visitors’ minds. What they’ll have come to see is the craft and (since it has been inserted into the Newcastle title) the art.
While there are North East exhibitors, others have come from far and wide… and perhaps none further than Véronique Belot who lives on the Ȋle d’Oléron, off the west coast of France, and trades as Joséfine K.
For 25 years she has been making jewellery out of the bits of plastic she finds washed up on the beach.
Very jolly it is, too, although it does invite rather mixed emotions, as she acknowledged with a smile: “My work is joyful but rooted in tragic.”
She began combing the beaches for sea glass, the gem-like fragments worn smooth by the waves that will be familiar to those who walk the shore at Seaham.
“Then I started seeing lots of plastic and thinking it was interesting. The first piece I made was as a joke, a huge necklace, but doing this I realised it was very light. I like wearing big earrings but metal is heavy.
“I started selling these pieces but I treat the material as if it’s precious metal. A lot of time goes into each one so they can seem expensive but I’d rather find a day job from time to time than sell them for less.”
She sells mostly through her own studio but also has a tie-up with a high end boutique in central France.
For several years she was a regular exhibitor at a fair in Amsterdam but it closed when the people running it retired.
She said she heard about the Newcastle event and thought: why not? Some 40 years ago she’d come to work as an assistant at a secondary school in York for nine months… and stayed three years.
She felt she knew a little of the north of England. She was accompanied at the preview evening by her former flatmate from York.
I caught the eye of Peter Griffen, maker of exquisite items out of wood, who set up Orchard House Designs four years ago but said he had been designing and making since he was about 19, “so 10 years ago”.
Based in Macclesfield, he had attended the Manchester craft fair for the past five years as a visitor but this year in Newcastle marked the first time he had applied.
“The standard is always exceptional at these events and it feels quite surreal to be able to exhibit myself for the first time.
“I’m a product designer at heart and what I try to create are everyday objects that are joyful to use and can last a lifetime because they’re made from really high quality materials.”
Rather than being ‘rooted in tragic’, Peter said every piece of timber he used represented carbon captured. “The longer you keep it in use, the longer you keep it out of the atmosphere.”
While basking in the eco-friendly nature of your purchase, you could leave Peter’s stand with one of his naturally striped wooden rolling pins, a dinky little jewellery case or even a small table made from the willow tree he used to climb as a boy and which came down in his parents’ garden.
Peter also educated me about the spalted silver birch he’d fashioned into some cool coat hooks, spalting being the patterned effect left by certain types of decaying fungus (it looks better than it sounds).
The weekend will feature workshops and demonstrations as well as selling and chatting.
Northern Print, which has a stand, set the ball rolling with Fenham-based printmaker Joanna Bourne showing the intricate steps required to make the print she called Out of the Valley when it was exhibited in Yorkshire but actually depicts the Cumberland Arms in Byker.
Northern Print director Anna Wilkinson said: “This is a new venture for us really because we haven’t done a fair for a very long them.
“Given the scale and ambition of this fair we thought it was something we wanted to be part of. It’s an opportunity to do something in Newcastle that might reach people who don’t get to our place in the Ouseburn.
“We’ve got ‘have a go’ activities on throughout the weekend.”
Up today (Friday, June 16) is the accomplished Anja Percival, from Durham.
If you want to know anything about fine art printing – a “resurgent” art form – then speak to Anna or one of her team.
She will tell you that the commonly held view of a print as a duplicate of a painting is hugely misplaced.
“We want people to understand that these prints are originals because this is the process the artist has chosen. Each one is an image they couldn’t have made any other way.”
Point taken, I wandered off to chat to a woman whose stand had caught my eye when I first arrived.
Julie Robertson, from Todmorden in West Yorkshire, trades as Watch Piece Jewellery which pretty much speaks for itself. She makes a range of jewellery from the tiny parts of broken wristwatches and it’s attractively laid out here on the open pages of classic novels – a neat touch.
She’d done the Manchester craft fair once. “They’re always very well run,” she said.
She said she’d studied jewellery in Loughborough and once found some old watches for sale at the market. “When they’re broken they often just go for scrap but when you look at they workings you’ll see they’re intriguing and beautiful.”
On her stand she’s displaying brooches, necklaces, cufflinks, rings and other trinkets, all made from those delicate watch components. Every piece catches the eye.
“They are fiddly to do,” she agreed. “I tend to work on quite a few at the same time and every piece is different because I never remember exactly what I did before.”
Worth checking those earrings, probably, if you’ve a thing about symmetry. They all looked pretty swanky to me, though.
As for the display backdrop courtesy of Dickens and Sir Walter Scott: “It was a chance thing. I use different kinds of backdrops. Sometimes I use old newspapers.”
It chimes, you might say, with the retro appeal of Julie’s jewellery.
The Great Northern Contemporary Craft & Art Fair runs until Sunday, June 21 (open 10am to 5pm, Friday and Saturday; until 4pm on Sunday) and admission prices and workshop details can be found on the website.