Meet The Maker – Jenny Tidman

Jenny Tidman – Textile Artist

Jenny has a lifelong love of textiles and a secret hankering for the good life which has led her to working in wool. Having had expert one to one tuition from a Gold Medal winning City and Guilds felt artist Jenny has discovered the delights of scouring, carding, spinning and dyeing wool but the ancient art of wet felting is where her passion lies.

Felted bowl with red inner

Texture and shape is of the most importance to Jenny in her work.  She likes to work with natural coloured wool or wool that has been dyed using natural ingredients; having said that a blast of acid colour can be so good for the soul and Jenny loves the contrast it creates with a natural coloured wool.

Felted bowl with blue inner

Jenny likes to source her natural coloured wool in its raw state from around the UK and processes it herself. It is quite a thrill to work with wool when she has met and know the name of the sheep that it has come from.

Felted bowl with yellow inner

Jenny has attended felt workshops run by Amanda Warren, Frances Barker, Melanie Bermingham and Gretel Parker and admires many felt and textile artists and designers such as Alexander Pilin, Annemeike Mein, Kaffe Fassett, Stephanie Metz, Gretel Parker, Frances Barker, Elis Vermeulen and Annette Quentin-Stoll to name but a few.

Felted bowl with pink inner

Jenny is a member of The International Felt Makers Association, The Eastern Region Textile Forum and a local textile group called Chain Reaction. She has previously sold some pieces through the Hebden Spirit art auction to raise funds for the flooded town of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.

Set of three felted bowls

Heart Gallery is proud to be showcasing Jenny’s felted bowls as part of Kate Lycett’s TALL TREES AND WARM STONE Solo Exhibition as the colours compliment Kate’s paintings and the bowls are interesting and tactile and here we are showing them on display infront of Clare Caulfield’s pen and ink work!

Alison with Jenny Tidman and her fabulous felted bowls

Meet The Maker – Anna Baldwin

Anna Baldwin – Jeweller

Meet Anna – I think she’s a little shy so we are showing you a pic of her hands at the workbench. This photo in itself just hammers home how handmade our jewellery really is actually so we are really pleased with this notion that you don’t have to see what any of our makers looks like but you do have to know that they are in fact skilled craftspersons in the discipline they work in.

Dappled bangle

Based in Buckinghamshire, Anna has been designing and making jewellery for over 9 years.

Wrapped silver pendant

She makes all her jewellery by hand, working mainly in silver, gold, and semi-precious stones, and loves creating beautiful, contemporary, wearable pieces.

Dimpled silver ring

Anna loves working with natural forms and texture. Her designs have an organic, tactile feel, and share a sense of delicacy and movement.

Wrapped silver long earrings

 Anna gains inspiration from many different sources including light, texture, and natural and fluid forms. She also gains many ideas from simply working with the metal itself to develop new forms. 

Wrapped silver ring

 We adore Anna’s gemstone set rings that she can make to order using gorgeous faceted semi-precious stones such as smoky quartz, light amethyst, blue topaz, citrine or green quartz. You can order your birthstone and create a bespoke ring just for you. Anna loves making the Gem rings – the setting really shows off the stone and allows the light to filter through it. So pretty!

Gem ring stacked with a dappled ring

Anna’s recently developed the Dimpled range – its hammered finish is similar to the wrapped range, so they complement each other well.  She has made the rings and bangles in two different widths, which stack together easily. The gold highlights in the range add extra interest and colour.
The Gem rings go really well with Anna’s Dappled rings – it creates a bit more impact and is great if you like stacking rings. 

Meet The Makers – Emma Winterhalder and Clare Whitehead

Emma Winterhalder and Clare Whitehead

Emma and Clare are both jewellery designers; their work is contemporary and strong with clean lines but stylish and some items are chunky silver with delicate gold plated elements added.  Their inspiration started from their imaginations and sketch books of ideas drawn from objects from the world around them.

Eclipse Ring

Most of their inspiration is from a mutual love for travelling and shared experiences which allows things to evolve in precious metals and bring the patterns and designs to life. 

Dual Bubble Necklace

Precious metal is hammered, to create texture, and overlaid with delicate moving parts; silver is highlighted with details and elements of chain.   Free moving shapes are forged and soldered to make necklaces or earrings from hand pierced shapes. 

Ring of Feathers

It makes it all worthwhile when they see a ‘happy customer’ wear their creations and for there to be a longevity. They wish to create wearable objects with fragility that questions traditional notions of wear-ability. As an item worn close to the body, jewellery contains a strong emotional and physical relationship to the wearer and its small scale makes it the ideal collectible item.

Each piece is designed with creativity and made with passion and worn with pride.  In their own words – ‘Our Style, your way’.

Quill Necklace

Their first collection arrives at Heart Gallery in March 2013 … are you as excited as we are?

Meet The Maker – Rowena Gilbert

Rowena Gilbert – Ceramicist

Searching for the perfect fusion of strong design, innovative style and spontaneous expression. The clay vessel is Rowena’s bold canvas; strong, simple and unfussy in form. Layers of clay echo periods of time, memories; slow, controlled, ordered. The surface evokes moods, tensions, actions and reactions.

Ceramic Stem Vases – Meadow Design

Rowena’s pots and bowls are slip-cast using a fine white clay body or adding metal oxides to produce coloured clay bodies. The coloured clay layers are brushed on or inlaid in incised lines and marks. The surface marks are created using various sgraffito tools when the clay pot is in a leather-hard state

Ceramic Small Bowls – Meadow Design

Rowena bisque fires to 1000C then masks areas on the outside of the pot/bowl using wax or paper resist, glazing the unmasked areas with a transparent gloss with its final firing at 1120C.

Dandelion Ceramic Curved Vases

Heart Gallery adores Rowena’s work and is proud to be one of her carefully chosen stockists for her latest range. Call in and see it soon x

Ceramic Deep Bowl – Meadow Design

Meet The Maker – Jill Govier

Jill Govier – textile artist

Jill is a lifelong avid seamstress and finds the tactile qualities of fabrics and thread lend themselves beautifully as a means to express herself.

Elderly couple with Ice Cream stitched canvas

Her work is heavily influenced by her passion for both textiles and words. She incorporates beautiful old fabrics and vintage finds alongside contemporary prints to create quirky textiles and practical home wares.

Cushion

Cushions, purses, peg bags, canvasses and more recently, handbags made from recycled tweet jackets are the mainstays of her designs.

Peg bags

Text features highly in her work in the form of quotes from famous people or children’s stories, sometimes motivational, sometimes with a sense of fun.

Key fobs

Jill clearly remembers tackling her mum`s treadle Singer sewing machine, making dolls clothes and stuffed creatures from whatever fabrics she could find around the house. She had an old book called `A 100 things a girl can make` and had a go at all of them!

Cushion

Jill believes she was born with an unabated obsession with textiles and what she could make out of them and now she gets to do it for a living! Recycling & reusing textiles has become something of a passion for her, some of the everyday vintage fabrics she comes across are amazing and have such potential!

Quote purse & key fobs

Jill is also drawn to the bright contemporary prints that are in the shops nowadays, mixing old with new and making beautiful things has become her favourite thing to do! Here at Heart Gallery we love the words and quotes Jill uses in her work as they often strike a chord with customers and we see them giggling whilst they choose that extra special gift or even end up treating themselves instead!

Make Up Bag

Meet The Maker – Becca Williams

Becca Williams – Jeweller

Becca graduated from the Birmingham School of Jewellery in 2008 with a BA in Jewellery and Silversmithing. She works across these disciplines to produce contemporary jewellery and silverware with an emphasis on texture and originality.

Becca Williams Seaside Stacking Rings

Her work is influenced by her memories of childhood holidays by the seaside in Wales.

Becca Williams Flotsam Peacock Pearl Pendant

She makes regular visits to the inspiring coastal landscape, always bringing home pockets full of pebbles and a camera full of pictures.

Becca Williams – silver stacking bangles

The seashore finds its way into all of her work, from the delicate patterning of her Flotsam collection to the soft textures of her seaside series.

Becca Williams – Silver pebble studs

We love Becca’s work and know that you will too.

Becca Williams Seaside Stacking Rings

GNCCF 2012

GNCCF 2012

Last week was the 5th GNCCF at Spinningfields and it’s always a joy to visit this great contemporary craft fair that’s more or less on my doorstep. This year I saw many familiar faces again as so many of the makers have exhibited with me in Hebden Bridge over the last 6 years and I also got to catch up with Suet Yi; the ceramicist I sponsored in 2011 and awarded an exhibition opportunity to. Suet’s work was so well received at Heart Gallery we only have a few pieces still available and she is hoping to send us a little top up of wall pieces for Christmas. My phone was playing up so not many pictures but here is a quick look at our visit:

GNCCF 2012

Julia and Lisa, Heart Gallery princesses, with Katie and Faye

It was a quick race around the stands as there was a train to catch but we managed to stop lots of times to catch up with previous makers and I also got to introduce myself to new makers who may be interested in our 2013 programme.

Jennifer Collier and Louise Wilson

Adele Taylor

Lucy Anne Harding

Charlotte Verity

Katie Almond

Katie’s Best New Business Award

Ann-Marie and Angela, show directors, should be really proud of their achievements. I have watched GNCCF grow over the last 5 years into the premier destination it now is for high quality contemporary craft in the North of England. I know what it’s like to give birth to an idea that’s driven by desire and not greed and you can see their passion for championing craft in the North shining through…long may it continue.

GNCCF 2012

Meet The Maker – Charlie Trimm

Charlotte Trimm – papercut artist

Charlotte has continued her methodical approach to creation, which was the foundation of her painting and installation work, to produce a collection of hand-drawn and hand-cut papercuts.

Dandelion clock

These works now come under ‘By Charlie’s Hand’. Founded in 2011, By Charlie’s Hand is one girl armed with a scalpel, lots of patience and a touch of OCD, as well as a love of coloured paper and tea. Charlotte has been producing highly detailed and intricate works which often explore nature, repetitive motifs and symmetry.

Mr Stag

Charlotte’s papercuts have a unique style which echoes Charlotte’s previous structured approach, which often explored colour and repetitive patterns, bringing order to the natural elements while adding a contemporary twist to traditional rhymes and familiar motifs.  Birds, trees, plants and animals feature heavily in her work but the chaos of nature is given a distinctive shape, most often becoming contained within perfect circles and hearts.

Tweetheart in Kingfisher

Magpies

These original papercuts have also grown into a range of products that includes giclee prints, greeting cards and cushion covers. Joining forces with Scottish jewellery designer and maker Molly Ginnelly (a jeweller also showcasing her amazing work in Heart Gallery at the moment) on a continuing collaboration, Charlotte’s work has found new mediums that combine both artists’ styles, leading to the distinctive and highly wearable ‘When Molly met Charlie’ collection of earrings, necklaces and brooches made of formica and silver.

Collaboration between Charlie Trimm and Molly Ginnelly now at Heart Gallery

Meet The Maker – Miranda Sharpe

Miranda Sharpe – Jeweller

Miranda started her professional practice/business designing and making contemporary jewellery in 2001 and has exhibited and sold her work widely across the UK and ventured into the international market place.  She enjoys the challenges of designing and producing a unique range of jewellery that holds commercial possibilities, alongside opportunities to create one-off or commission specific piece’s that can be larger/ bolder in design.

Miranda Sharpe – Flourish necklace

 Miranda studied for a BA Hons degree in 3D design at Manchester Metropolitan University, followed by an MA specialising in jewellery design at the Birmingham School of Jewellery. Her latest work explores ideas of emotion and emotional responses. One strand is inspired heavily by microscopic images of disease and bacteria, translating images of matter that we find unpleasant and finding the beauty within it to evoke a contrasting response.

Miranda Sharpe – Thrive 6 piece necklace

For this work she is exploring scale by working on larger pieces for walls as well as pieces of jewellery.

Miranda Sharpe – Thrive 5 drop necklace

Miranda’s approach to jewellery is to express what interests her visually, drawing on shape and form from the natural world and presenting it an abstracted way. Through the design process she explores form through simple lines and how repeating or layering materials and components can change the effect of a piece. 

Miranda Sharpe – Flourish multi drop earrings

Heart Gallery loves Miranda’s work and our customers do too – add her to your ‘wish list’ before it sells out!

Miranda Sharpe – Flourish ring stack

Meet The Maker – Lucy Palmer

Lucy Palmer – jeweller

Lucy creates unique and beautiful jewellery inspired by myths, fairytales and folklore, with an emphasis on animals and the natural world. In her jewellery she escapes the mundane and creates a magical world of enchanted forests, mysterious creatures, and far away places. 

Lucy Palmer – Moongazing silver and Keum Boo necklace

The Intricate designs are cut by hand in precious metals and are often layered to give an amazing three dimensional, miniature stage set effect. 

Lucy Palmer – Little Mermaid silver and Keum Boo necklace

The design style is influenced by toy theatres, shadow puppets and paper cutting.  Decorative techniques are used to embellish the surface, including ‘Keum Boo’, an ancient Korean technique of fusing 24ct gold foil to silver.

Lucy Palmer – Golden Wandering Fox silver and Keum Boo necklace

After graduating from Nottingham Trent University with a degree in ‘Decorative Arts’, Lucy spent several years working as a Community Artist before setting up her Jewellery business in 2007. Each piece of jewellery is handmade by Lucy in her workshop in Derbyshire.

Lucy Palmer – Under The Sea silver and Keum Boo necklace

Heart Gallery has showcased Lucy’s work before as we absolutely adore her subject matter and admire her techniques and know that you will too so see you soon!

Lucy Palmer – Enchanted Forest silver and Keum Boo necklace