Based in Tokyo, ARKO is a self-described ‘straw artist’ who has been applying her creative approach to traditional craft since 2002. Represented by the Somewhere Tokyo design gallery, her use of natural materials and age-old techniques re-insert fading customs back into modern life.

An agglomeration of rice straw, this wall-mounted artwork harks back to a more traditional era. Once woven into everyday Japanese life – from footwear, to clothes and blankets – the material is now mainly used in the holy ornaments for the Shimenawa New Year ceremony. Using unique stitching patterns

to create beautiful undulating forms, ARKO seeks
to re-forge the fading bond between countryside and contemporary living. Emanating a natural scent, the rice straw provides an organic reminder of ethnic identity and natural providence.

A late-blooming artisan, Van Hoey traded a career in economics to study ceramics at the Institute for Arts and Craft in Mechelen before creating her own independent studio. Perfecting a special folding technique has seen her pieces proliferate into galleries around the world, and in 2011, earned her a place as member of the International Academy of Ceramics.

Infused with ideas about time-honoured materiality and industrial innovation, this vessel is inspired by the geometry and precision of Japanese origami. After meticulously folding sheets of clay, Van Hoey glazes the surface with the ashy gloss of Ferrari car paint. The collision of the old metier of making earthenware vessels with one of modern society’s most luxurious status symbols creates a dialogue between pure craftsmanship and the pinnacle of capitalist consumerism. It is a juxtaposition which rouses spectators to re ect upon the tension between tradition
and progress.

A sculptor ever since she rst touched clay in 1972, McLoughlin spent her early years between studios in Dublin and Amsterdam and in uential stints in China and Japan. Her work has been exhibited in the UK, France, and the US, and she has been permanently based in the Netherlands since 1988.

Striving to infuse ideas into the colours applied to her clay, the dark surface of this voluminous vessel captures the depths of a vast body of water. Inspired by Amsterdam’s Ij Waterway, which is the backdrop for McLoughlin’s daily commute, the dark clay has been coiled, smoothed, polished and glazed into an expertly balanced expression of volumetric form. Heightened by deep colour, the effect is reminiscent of the late evening light re ections that give Amsterdam’s greatest waterway its allure. The undulating interior glaze also gives off a soft glow – a gleaming reminder of the earth’s enigmatic core.

One of Scandinavia’s most meditative ceramicists, Åkesson combines her love of clay with a penchant for slowly-realised processes. Represented by some of Norway and Sweden’s nest galleries, her handmade pieces have been exhibited in Europe, the United States and Asia. In 2012, she was awarded the World Craft Council’s European prize.

Åkesson savours the slow passing of time as a refuge to ripen her own ideas and impulses. The smooth surface of this cylindrical vessel, one of the largest in a series of twelve unique pieces, is indicative of the serenity she infuses into her creations. Using a coiling technique to build Container by 5 cm each day, the hollow interior is a contained symbol of why empty space is essential for artists to ponder and create.

A master of the ottchil Korean lacquer technique, Chung honed his traditional craft in Japan and Vietnam. Awarded with the prestigious Okgwan Order of Cultural Merit by the Korean president in 2015, his creations are exhibited in the British, Victoria & Albert, and Philadelphia Museums.

Radiating the rhythm of each brushstroke, this collection of multi-hued vessels is an ode to the age-old ottchil technique. Realised by applying multiple layers of hemp cloth, rice-glue paste,
and coats of ottchil lacquer, the composite effect is resplendent with dense, dark colour that seems to glow deep within. The name Rhythm of Luster refers to the surfeit of free- owing gestural strokes – from the measured to the vigorous – that render the singular radiance of each piece.

A student at the Kustodiev Art School since the age of ve, Razumovskaya gained her Masters in Ceramics and Glass in 2017 at London’s Royal Academy of Art. Accruing an array of awards, her distinctively Soviet-inspired style is often on show in the world’s leading biennales, and Edinburgh, where she now resides.

Reminiscent of a time-worn tree, the cracked-surface of this porcelain column also captures the essence of Soviet-era architectural relics. Using complex ring techniques to create a dilapidated texture, Razumovskaya recreates the effect of decay which has overtaken so many of the USSR’s once futuristic buildings. Built with uncompromising visual grammar, the passage of time has stripped away their prestige, revealing unadorned forms that become lyrical in their decline. With its similarity to cracked tree bark, this ceramic structure suggests that all things – both natural and manmade – are at the mercy of age and abandon.

Present in over forty public collections around the globe, this Scottish ceramist studied at both the Edinburgh and Royal College of Art. A preference for traditional techniques elaborated by hand, Lee developed her own method of colouring by mixing metallic oxides into clay.

This hand-coiled vessel utilises planetary bands of oxidised pigments – some coloured decades prior to creation – to capture a sense of frozen time within its delicately poised proportions. Using ancient techniques of pinching and coiling, a eeting sense of discovery is intertwined into the surface, evident in the bands, haloes, and ellipses that circumnavigate the vessel with varying intensity. Lee wants to remind us of nature’s intractable march of change, yet by preserving this particular concoction of colour and clay in the res of her kiln, she creates a lasting image of a moment already passed.

The colours of Hogan’s native landscape around his homeland of Loch na Fooey have profoundly impacted his natural style. Weaving baskets since 1978, Hogan embraces established traditions as a starting point to explore new techniques and designs. Exhibited across Europe, his creations are resonant with both environmental and artistic concerns.

Deliberating on an innate desire to deepen his connection to the natural world, Hogan sourced wood from a storm-felled beech tree to create this rounded basket. The reclaimed beech serves as the central core, guiding the uneven lines of the wicker basketry to augment the asymmetry of nature. The resulting pattern expands upon the artisan’s rumination that environmental responsibility must go beyond the mere realm of rational thought; a better understanding of the earth can be attained through
art too.

A pioneering artist in South Korea’s emerging glass scene, Kim is mesmerised by the colour palette of the natural world. Winning silver in the 2013 edition of Kanazawa’s International Exhibition of Glass, his vibrant work is exhibited in Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Laced with the artist’s endless fascination with the malleability of glass, polychromatic colour, and the juxtaposition between opacity and translucency, this ethereal bowl is a portrait of time and place. A series of wing-like spines imbue the traditional form with more modern ourishes. Using the gradation method to effect a dusk-like colour that emanates from deep within the glass, Kim captures the celestial tones of twilight. The fragility of this gleaming, hollow bowl reveals Kim’s skeletal imaginings about excavation and exposure.

A woodcarver who learnt his craft apprenticing for San Franciscan furniture makers, Julian Watts combines contemporary art with traditional woodcraft. Schooled in contemporary installation art at Oregon University, he has since turned his hand to sculpture inside his own studio in Oakland, California.

This playful reinterpretation of the utilitarian bench explores the poetic history of shared seating. Watts is mysti ed by the way the bench has been central to spiritual gatherings, shared meals, and communal intimacy, and by turns, an iconic xture of waiting and introspection. Carved from maple wood, the irregular surface is spotted with pink-coloured cavities inviting the touch of investigative ngers. His use of anatomical contours gives the bench an abstract human-like appearance, encouraging visceral inquiry. Creating a place of contemplative interaction illuminates the strain between the hyper- connectivity, isolation, and intimacy that de ne our modern age.

A trained metalworker, Stockner delved into jewellery design while studying in Florence and worked alongside goldsmiths in South Tuscany. He established his own workshop in 2003 in South Tyrol and became a master blacksmith in 2012.  In 2015 he was the winner of the Art Aurea Award.

Melding the strength of metal with the ostensible fragility of shells, this copper bowl exudes an almost paradoxical allure. A masterful command of the material produces a perfectly proportioned hemisphere, but the remarkably thin structure has an elastic quality that allows the bowl to bend. The faint ssures that adorn the surface add to the bowl’s understated sophistication, hinting at the artisan’s playful approach and ephemeral ideas. His embrace of an oscillating effect explores the fragile balance between beauty and utility, rif ng on the impermanence of all forms. 

In uenced by her mother’s traditionally tiled stoves, Janssen fascination with the gravity of the furnace in the European home was ignited from a young age. A graduate in Fine Arts, she received a scholarship for Design and Architecture from the Federal Chancellery of Austria in 2017, and fuses European history and customs into her creations.

After researching the prominence of the domestic furnace throughout European history, Janssen captures its almost animistic character with this concealed object. The smouldering heart of the home has long been the object of superstitions and mysterious customs; leading to a status tantamount to a living creature. Her shrouded furnace concept updates these age-old tomes, highlighting the modern stove’s often hidden place in the home. Swathed in ceramic drapery, her still-functioning stove retains its symbolic value as a source of warmth but becomes an embodiment of the mystery that has surrounded re since the dawn of time.

Painting from a young age amidst the vastly different landscapes of her childhood in Galicia and the Canary Islands, Mercedes Vicente matured by nding her nesse as a sculpture artist. Her work has been exhibited across Spain, most notably in Galicia’s Museo de Lugo and the Eugenio Granell Foundation.

The contorted form of this canvass sits as a poetic reversal of the way this ubiquitous material is used in art. Spiralling the canvass from the inside out, Vicente creates a dynamic, coiled structure that powerfully expresses the movement and tension inherent to her creative process. The contoured surface is a reflection of the shell-like shape’s internal order, which develops and dictates the way the object is grown. Evoking imagery of a tensely wound accordion or expanding human tissue, the twisted structure straddles a delicate line between strength and vulnerability.

Striving to articulate the Chinese language of design, Chen’s fascination with traditional Chinese art arose from an early training in calligraphy and painting. After studying at Milan’s Domus Academy, his eponymous practice has sought to forge a bond between East and West, while addressing the ux between tradition and modernity.

Chen has always considered design as a language rooted to a singular starting point and crafted by both history and culture. Inspired by the slow pace and tranquil atmosphere of his home city of Hangzhou, he channels this more relaxed rhythm into the creation of a concave bamboo stool. Blurring the line between old and new, the sum
of these strati ed bamboo veneers produces a compact piece of furniture, alluding
to the countless layers of in uences that shape contemporary design.

This young Scottish jeweller has a natural af nity for telluric symbols. After rst moving to Spain as a translator, he studied contemporary jewellery design at Barcelona’s Escola Massana before being invited back to his homeland as Artist in Residence at the Glasgow School of Art. He is currently completing his studies at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts.

Inspired by terrestrial contours and ideas about our connection to the land, Searching for Solid Ground is part of a collection of three elegantly-welded steel pendants. Encapsulations of the illusive integrity of the earth’s surface, each piece is a reminder of the ground’s potential to crack, transform, or dissolve under our feet. For Adie, the earth’s surface is a deceptive dichotomy between stability and dramatic shifts; a metaphor for the uctuating physical and emotional forces that affect us all.

A member of the distinguished 62 Group of Textile Artists, McVetis is renowned for his exquisitely embroidered drawings and sculptures. A student of constructed textiles, McVetis is captivated by the repetitive nature of process, driving his exploration of the similarities between pen on paper and thread on fabric.

By embroidering sixty cubes over the space of sixty hours, McVetis materialises multiple stitches in time, creating a tactile, tangible moment. Ideas are often the instantaneous answer to an unexpected question. Stitching one cube every hour until all sixty were embroidered, the aggregate work converts the ever-present invisible force of time into a comprehensive, coherent but purposefully playful material object. Through creation, our hands bear witness to the passing of time. With Variations of a Stitched cube, McVetis weaves together his own enquiry into the way this dimension is felt, experienced and constructed.

Learning her craft from her father, jewellery designer Rita Soto fuses her expertise in industrial design with her country’s age-old traditions to create her own artistic pieces. Currently serving as president of Chile’s Guild of Contemporary Chilean Jewellers, she founded jewellery school Lajoia Lab in 2012.

Exploring artisanal techniques and time-honoured wisdom, Soto weaves her ndings into this series
of brooches with the zeal of a rescue mission. Re-working traditional Chilean horsehair micro- basketry, the biomorphic forms are an expression of local identity, encompassing history, customs, materials and quotidian stories. The resulting forms resemble fragile external organs that cling to us like mementos. By interweaving memories with the imaginary, each brooch embodies a storied symbol of identity.

Earning his masters at Hiroshima City University in the Department of Design and Applied Arts in 2002, Ryuhei Sako uses the centuries-old Japanese Mokume-gane metal technique to create contemporary pieces. A member of the Japan Arts and Crafts Association, his work is characterised by extensive research and experimentation.

This multifaceted metallic vessel is a con uence of traditional and modern interpretation. Pushing the time-honoured Mokume-gane welding technique to its limit, the vessel consists of 26 layers of metal, including traditional Japanese alloys such as “shakudo” (an alloy of copper and gold) and “shibuichi” (an alloy of silver and copper). Shining with immensely pure light, the surface is embellished by dark curlicues that hint at its chemical complexity. The cross-section of materials underwrites this rippled effect, which rhythmically illustrate scarcity, density, stillness and movement in one singular piece

A Vietnamese refugee who found sanctuary in Germany, Duong studied jewellery design in Pforzheim where he continues to reside. His brooch and large-scale jewellery designs have earned him a raft of accolades including being named the German town of Hanau’s sixth honorary city goldsmith in 2015.

Hewn from gold-plated silver and freshwater pearls, this collection of jewellery is inspired by the undiscovered mysteries of the deep ocean. Using delicate textures to create the allure of fossilised frost, moss or fungi, the elements of each necklace can be re-arranged, imbuing each piece with a free-form quality of interpretation. The surfaces of each of these pearl, coral and shell-like shapes speak to the often otherworldly expressions of mother nature.

A graduate of the Design institute in Koszalin, Gackowska completed her Masters at Poland’s Academy of Fine Arts in Poland and Finland’s Saimaa University. Her bold, unconventional approach transforms materials such as stone and bio-resin into strikingly mature pieces.

The shattered surfaces of this four-part series of hematite brooches hold up a mirror to their creator’s unpredictable stream of thought. Traditionally a place for small painted portraits, each oval cameo is fractured, creating a condensed picture of sublime ruin instead. The use of blood-like iron oxide is a transcendental intimation of human frailty, but by experimenting with her materials, Gackowska allows each unique piece to speak their own language.

A graduate of Craft and Glassmaking at Osaka University, Yokoyama’s work is the result of intricate processes realised in the same place that his glass is made. Living and working in the Japanese coastal city of Toyama, he constantly nds new ways to capture the delicate power of his materials.

This in ated bubble of glassware is formed from its creator’s own ‘breath of life’. Hewn from glass melted at 1200°C and then reeled and blown, the work swells to over a metre in diameter for a eeting second, before distorting and cracking as it cools. Blowing into the glass releases a primitive feeling as the orb is shaped according to the controlled power of its maker.

The embryonic form is a symbol of nascent life, a silent idea that swells even further in the imagination of each beholder.

A self-taught textile sculptor, Pheulpin uses unbleached cotton to create forms inspired by the natural landscape. Her captivating use of countless folds within her patterns has seen her work exhibited across Europe and the United States, winning her accolades including the 2015 Laureate for the Fondation d’Ateliers d’Art’s Le Créateur prize.

Sourcing densely wrapped cotton strips from reclaimed Vosges car tires, this impressive sculptural piece transforms humble cloth into something akin to prehistoric geology. Using strips of non-bleached muslin, Pheulpin evenly shapes, densely stacks, and seamlessly solidi es her material into a symbol of natural strength. Emulating crevices of rock and time-worn sediment, the large, compact piece conveys ideas about the enormity of the Earth’s past, prompting us to consider the fragility of our own existence.

A quali ed toolmaker turned glass artisan, Dam’s unique vision has emanated from his Danish studio for decades. A knack for using different materials and a sound knowledge of tools, casting, grinding, and mechanical construction techniques have elucidated a lifelong pursuit to make the intangible more understandable.

An alchemical mastery of glassware techniques frames this illuminated cabinet of curiosities. Fascinated by the existence of enigmatic storage rooms and cupboards for things that neither science nor the bible could explain, this collection of encased biological specimens is Dam’s comment on the ephemeral nature of healing. Since time immemorial, elements sourced from animals and plants have been applied to medicine. Conjuring a surfeit of specimens from his own imagination, Dam reminds us that there are still limits to our understanding of the natural world.

A master of porcelain clay, Yasuda trained at Japan’s prestigious Daisei-Gama Pottery school before setting up his own studio in Kita Mashiko. In 2010, he directed the Pottery Workshop in China, helping to develop the residence program. In 2011, he co-founded Red House Studio in Jingdezhen.

Ever since he began working with porcelain clay, Takeshi Yasuda has endeavoured to make peace with his material. His meditative musings are poured into this compressed vessel which gleams con dent with gold from within, suggesting a sense of ful lment and artisanal sagacity. A convergence of traditional Jingdezhen porcelain and Qingbai glaze combined with colloidal gold, the smooth veneer contrasts with the subtle ripples of the interior.

The final piece captures both uidity and permanence in a singular expressive form.

Kuwata’s reputation as a radical potter is born from his penchant for experimental procedures as he pushes the potential of materials. Known for his saturated and intense colour combinations, an underlying respect for his predecessors is evident in references to traditional forms and functionality.

An exploration of ideas conceived and developed during his handling of porcelain, platinum and steel, this container brims with the possibilities of chance. A preference for experimentation means Kuwata often adds elements such as stones or needles to the kiln or clay in order to puncture or perforate his vessels. The melted metal covering this tea bowl creates an initial impression of dysfunction, but this is merely an indication of Kuwata’s joyful approach to creation. Beneath the playful patina is an elegant vessel grounded in timeless tradition.

Trained at the London College of Furniture, Stutchbury spent eighteen years accruing skills and insights in some of London and Ireland’s best bespoke workshops. Returning to university to study 3D crafts, he went on to form Blue Monkey Studio which focuses on making intricate models of everyday objects.

A central branch of Stutchbury’s narratives is inspired by the way his specially-sourced wooden materials have responded to their surroundings. By naming his pieces after the location in which he procures his timber, he creates an intangible bond with
the birthplace of his natural material. This large-scale functional piece marks a departure for an artisan who typically crafts miniatures. Combining several woods to produce a three-panelled room divider, his minimalist intervention creates a softly-textured undulating shingled surface, which becomes a paragon of the interplay between light and shadow.

After majoring in textile arts in Seoul, Chang pursued a decades-long passion for contemporary bre art. Recurring themes of her work include time, space, and the myriad relationships that intertwine them. Receiving Korea’s 2008 Artist of the Year Award, her creations are featured in major museums around the world.

A paean to the historic labour of Korean women, this wall-mounted piece tells the multi-dimensional story of textiles. Dying indigo blue abaca fabric over thirty times, the tightly stiffened material pays homage to its disciplined creation. The chronology laid out by these three boxes effects a repetitive visual language that meditates on Eastern philosophy from beginning to end. Expanding at pieces of fabric into a three- dimensional object, produces a tting tribute to this historical craft – and a distillation of the human form.