Crafts Council: the 10 makers of the Miami Edit

– words by Anthony 

Next month, the Crafts Council and The New Craftsmen will land on Florida’s sunny shores for FORM Miami – the all-new applied arts fair taking place during the creative bonanza of Miami Art Week. With them, they’ll have 10 specially selected works by the crème de la crème of contemporary British craft.

This is The Miami Edit: an exclusive showcase designed to introduce the makers, materials, methods and ideas currently shaping the direction of UK craft – and especially ceramics – to the US art world. Needless to say, given the international attention the show is set to attract, hundreds of makers applied to exhibit (including the newly crowned winner of the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize, Phoebe Cummings). These are the final 10…

Name Phoebe Cummings
Discipline Unfired ceramic sculpture
Work A framed photograph of her 2016 temporary wall sculpture Antediluvian Swag made at the New Art Centre, Roche Court, along with a collection of fired fragments from the piece. Phoebe’s works are designed to disintegrate over time – this is the first occasion that she has attempted to document a piece that no longer exists, and a new dimension to her work.

Name  Katie Spragg
Discipline  Ceramics
Work  Three compositions in porcelain and Somerset Hamstone, depicting wild flora encountered on her residency at Forde Abbey earlier this year.

Name Sue Paraskeva + Sebastian Cox
Discipline  Ceramics + Wood
Work  A contemporary version of a traditional Welsh dresser in English elm and chestnut, adorned with suspended, hand-thrown porcelain vessels.

Name Leah Jensen
Discipline  Ceramics
Work The Tribute Money – a clay vessel bearing an interpretation of Masaccio’s eponymous fresco on its surface.

Name Charlotte Kingsnorth
Discipline  Industrial design/art
Work My Big Fat Sofa – an organically bulging, flesh-like seat inspired by the bond between a person and their sofa.

Name  Lauren Nauman
Discipline Ceramics
Work Lines – a series of experiment-driven porcelain works, sculpted from cured strands of clay.

Name  Ashraf Hanna
Discipline Ceramics and glass
Work A series of four large, elegant and hand-formed ceramic vessels from his recent collections.

Name  Anna Ray
Discipline Textiles
Work Bloom (Marguerite) – a 3D textile recreation of the centre of a daisy, inspired by Maureen Hodge’s 1976 tapestry Hill for my Friend.

Name  James Rigler
Discipline Ceramics
Work  A retrospective of recent experimental work: ambiguous, playful renditions of familiar forms, with wood-like surface finishes created by the use of gold leaf.