Cockpit Winter Open Studios 2025 -Deptford
Exclusive Handmade Gifts At Cockpit Open Studios – A Must-Visit For Craft Collectors This Holiday Season
Cockpit’s celebrated Winter Open Studios returns this festive season, bringing you the opportunity to go behind the scenes with London’s finest craftspeople and purchase luxury handmade gifts direct from makers across two weekends in November and early December.
This annual shopping event provides an exclusive chance to meet some of London’s leading artist-makers, explore the studios where their incredible work is made, and support independent businesses with your holiday gifting.
Cockpit is a centre of excellence in contemporary craft, whose studios in Bloomsbury and Deptford are home to over 175 extraordinary makers practicing in more than twenty craft disciplines. This unique festive shopping destination is home to exceptional talents whose work is held in the collections of major institutions such as the V&A and recognised by the Homo Faber Guide, as well as emerging makers just starting their journey to become the stars of tomorrow.
From jewellery to homewares, ceramics to fashion accessories, discover unique and original handmade gifts that your loved ones will treasure – only available at Cockpit.
JEWELLERY
Alma Sophia (Alma Grønli Geller) – Minimalist Sculptural Jewellery
Alma Grønli Geller is a goldsmith known for her sculptural designs, minimalist aesthetic, and meticulous craftsmanship. Her ‘Hidden Treasure’ Collection was inspired by her grandmother’s jewellery collection, with two new pieces being released in time for the holidays – the delicate Beguette Cluster Bracelet and the Toi et Moi Engagement Ring both incorporate baguette-cut diamonds into the designer’s signature style, symbolising duality and unity with a touch of modern elegance.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/alma-geller
Bola Lyon – Precious Metal Meets Architecture
Bola Lyon explores the architecture of anatomy through precious metals, utilising traditional goldsmithing techniques while also experimenting with more contemporary aided design, 3D wax printing, and casting. Her work evokes the delicate stresses and strains found within the structures of the body. Gold twists and contracts, holding precious gems in place and creating striking sculptural pieces.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/bola-lyon
Castro Smith – Contemporary Hand Engraved Jewellery
Castro Smith is an award-winning goldsmith and engraver whose jeweller designs are inspired by history, myths, and biology. Having always been obsessed with creatures and their creations, he uses his knowledge of engraving to create contemporary pieces that experiment with European and Japanese engraving techniques. His latest collection of engraved studs features playful crab and apple core motifs.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/castro-smith
Chalk Jewellery (Malaika Carr) – Design-Led Statement Jewellery
Architectural designer-turned-jeweller Malaika Carr draws inspiration from the grandeur of sprawling cityscapes. The final chapter of her ‘Four Seasons’ Collection – aptly titled ‘Winter’ – features a new colourway capturing the stillness and quiet beauty of the season: crisp frosted tones, deep contrasts, and subtle elegance that mirror Japan’s serene winter landscapes. These new pieces will bring a sense of calm sophistication to any wardrobe — the perfect way to embrace the colder months in style.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/malaika-carr
Donna Brennan – Fine Art Jewellery with a Contemporary Twist
Donna Brennan is a fine art jeweller who crafts unique, sculptural pieces that she describes as ‘perfectly imperfect’. Featuring sinuous, sculptural forms hewn from 18ct Gold and clusters of precious or semi-precious stones, the cocktail rings from her ‘Gifted’ Collection would make the perfect gift to honour someone special this holiday season.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/donna-brennan
Jo Hayes Ward – Multi-faceted 3D Forms
Jo Hayes Ward celebrates shape and form in her designs, harnessing the power of light to dazzling effect in her spellbinding fine jewellery collections. This winter she presents a special collection of new silver pieces, exclusively available for the 2025 holiday season. Expect juicy cubes, shimmering hexagons, and large sculptural pieces, including brand-new designs and old favourites, most of which have never been created in silver before.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/jo-hayesward
Rachel Jones – Boundary Pushing Goldsmithing Artistry
Jeweller and silversmith Rachel Jones creates one-of-a-kind pieces made from her own alloyed gold combined with special hand-selected gemstones. Brimming with colour, each piece is a one-of-a-kind treasure, highlighting the joy of colour through artistry and craftsmanship. Her elegant Opal Spectrum
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Earrings, which subtly transform from one colour to another, and handmade Signet Rings, which boldly juxtapose different coloured metals, would make the perfect gift for the sustainably minded collector.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/rachel-jones
Ruby Taglight LDN – Wearable Art With a Hint of Kitsch
Ruby Taglight is a gemmologist and jewellery designer who creates sculptural wearable art and interiors pieces. Drawing on mythology, history, and religion, her work plays with combining traditional forms and materials with those less conventional in a celebration of the hyper-feminine, over-embellished, and the kitsch. Her ‘Posy’ Collection is a playful twist on the classic locket, while the ‘Dancing With Angels’ Collection of unique single earrings combines cherubs and pearls in the ultimate party statement piece.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/ruby-taglight
FASHION & ACCESSORIES
Amstein (Laura Amstein) – Small-Batch Leather Goods
Amstein makes playful bags and other functional yet eye-catching leather goods to keep your life in. Designed and developed by Laura Amstein, each piece is made from thoughtfully sourced materials and constructed in small batches. Made to be used and loved, Amstein bags are made from natural materials that change over time, wearing in and taking on a life of their own.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/laura-amstein
Ashley Jess Knight – Colour-Forward Sustainable Fashion
Ashley Jess Knight is a weaver, upcycler, and textile designer who creates handmade woven products and custom luxury handcrafted textiles. Her one-off upcycled denim jackets, featuring textured panels of handwoven fabric made using deadstock yarns from the UK textile industry and discarded bridesmaid and wedding dresses, are ideal for adding a bit of sparkle to any wardrobe, while her upcycled boucle bows are the perfect colourful adornment for hairstyles or bags.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/ashley-knight
Botanical Weaves (Kathryn Tomasetti) – Elegant Eco-Printed Accessories
Sustainable handweaver, natural dyer, and eco-printer Kathyrn Tomasetti initially founded Botanical Weaves to fill a niche for difficult-to-find high-end baby carriers, as well as one-of-a-kind scarves and blankets. Her latest collection of naturally dyed 100% silk scarves have all been dyed and eco-printed using organic homegrown or responsibly foraged dye plants, each with a unique and delicate pattern.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/kathryn-tomasetti
Hannah Refaat – Embroidered Luxury Fashion
Hannah Refaat is an award-winning textile designer and embroiderer whose work bridges the traditional and the contemporary. Inspired by the natural patterns and textures encountered while travelling, her ties, scarves, and pocket squares make elegant gifts for men and women. With the scarves in her ‘Fayoum’ Collection – designed following a visit to an oasis outside Cairo renowned for its distinctive landscape, wildlife, and ceramics – she captures the beauty of the environment in intricate detail.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/hannah-refaat
Karen Henriksen – Classic Meets Experimental Millinery
Milliner and artist Karen Henriksen’s hat design blends everyday elegance with innovation and practicality. Her new Autumn/Winter women's collection includes architectural-inspired pattern-cutting details, explorations into hybrid styles such as the cloche-cap, and experimental one-off pieces. With a colour palette featuring contrasting soft and sharp blues and greens, camel and grey, and black and navy, the collection combines sophisticated design with comfort.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/karen-henriksen
PAS-MAN (Joost Pasman) – Innovative Leather Design
PAS-MAN is built on the belief that function deserves beauty. Designer Joost Pasman applies technical Dutch design principles to the unique visual language of leather to create products that elegantly bond
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form to function. His latest made-to-order bag, titled ‘Becca’, combines elegance and durability and comes in two new perfect-for-winter colourways – mushroom and green.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/joost-pasman
CERAMICS
Ama Adansi-Pipim – Collectible Objects & Functional Wares
Designer-maker Ama Adansi-Pipim produces ceramic objects focused on cultural narratives, artefacts, and the importance of home. Her hand-thrown casserole dishes, crafted from a special blend of stoneware clay and finished with a rich tenmoku glaze, feature two separate, interchangeable pieces and are perfect for oven cooking, serving, or even enjoying a meal directly from the dish.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/ama-adansi-pipim
Lucille Lewin – Fine Art Sculpture
Lucille Lewin is an award-winning sculptor working in porcelain, metal, and glass. Her captivating sculptures are fractured metaphors for the human experience through time, where porcelain clay is modelled, dipped, slipped, cast, thrown, cut up, pressed, and extruded – with elements broken and reassembled over months of handmaking. Her snow white wall and table-based pieces present compelling imagined landscapes.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/lucille-lewin
Tessa Eastman – Colourful Contemporary Sculpture
Tessa Eastman is an award-winning ceramic artist whose dynamic sculpture sits at the vanguard of the contemporary ceramic art scene, offering originality, skill, and a daring approach to the art form. Her hand-built ‘Miniature Cloud Bundles in Pollinating Creatures’ would make a charming addition to any home, while her ‘High & Low Density Red Clouds’ are perfect for serious ceramophiles.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/tessa-eastman
GLASS
Michèle Oberdieck – Contemporary Blown Glass Art
Blown glass artist Michèle Oberdieck is inspired by natural forms and organic processes, exploring balance, asymmetry, and the experience of light through shape, surface, and colour. Her work combines gradations of transparency and tone with more opaque elements to capture a sense of movement and fluidity. For the holiday season, she has released a series of small glass pods, ranging from barely-there pale pink sepia to golden sand-coloured vessels, each featuring her signature organic sculptural shape.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/michele-oberdieck
Theo Brooks – History Reimagined in Glass
Cockpit’s newest glass artist, Theo Brooks is a glassblower whose practice reinterprets ancient Cypriot artefacts an cultural rituals as contemporary sculptures and installations. Taking visual inspiration from the dynamic lines and scenery of his home town of South London, his playful, textured vessels and expressive masks employ a combination of hot and cold glass techniques to explore themes of heritage, culture, and lineage.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/theo-brooks
WOOD
Inthegrain (Darren Appiagyei) – Bespoke Wood Vessels
Darren Appiagyei is a wood artist specialising in bespoke pieces crafted from locally sourced materials. Inspired by Ghanaian wood carving and the rawness and exploration of texture, each of his creations tells a story inspired by personal experiences or everyday life. Recently shortlisted for the 2025 Wood Awards for his series exploring his late mother’s experience with fibroids through textures and tones, his work brings personal narratives to life in intricate detail.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/darren-appiagyei
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Randon Burns – Thoughtful Gifts Turned in Wood
Woodturner and craftsperson Randon Burns explores the transformation of thought into form, taking familiar ideas — a globe, a thorn, a piece of chocolate — and reimagining them as sculptural pieces that invite touch and reflection. For the holiday season, his delicately turned baubles make perfect stocking stuffers, while a bespoke globe will delight the world traveller in your life.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/randon-burns
HOMEWARE & GIFTS
Luna Lighting (Poppy Jacobs & Tom Jacobs) – Playful Porcelain Homewares
Luna Lighting is known for their collection of playful porcelain tea lights and striking sculptural table lamps in white stoneware. Their delicate pieces capture the purity of porcelain while also generating an atmosphere of warmth and sparkle that’s sure to leave a smile on your face. This year they will launch a new Christmas collection featuring 16 new designs of their Luna Mini and Luna Maxi Tealight Holders, all perfect for seasonal gifting.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/anna-perring
Marmor Paperie (Lucy McGrath) – Hand-Marbled Baubles
Marmor Paperie is one of the few remaining professional marblers in the UK, infusing traditional craft with a contemporary character across a diverse product range. Using methods that have barely changed for centuries, they breathe new life into marbling through experiments with bold colour. Their Marbled Baubles are always a crowd pleaser for Christmas gift lists.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/lucy-mcgrath
Sofía Barbé – Bespoke Sculpture Portraits
Sofía Barbé is a textile artist and maker whose practice explores visual expression and craft through the technique of needle felting. She creates joyful, playful soft pieces, mainly wall hangings, drawing inspiration from nature, childhood memories, daily life, and play. This year for the holidays, you can commission a custom ‘Creature Portrait’ of a loved one – sculptures crafted from wood and fibre elements that are sure to bring a smile to your face.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/sofia-barbe
Studio Bartheidel (Melanie Bartheidel) – Graphic Prints Inspired by Memory
Melanie Bartheidel aims to emulate and re-contextualise the principles of graphic design using thread, wood cut, silk screen, and giclee printing to explore colour theory, print processes, and pattern. Her project ‘The Colour of M’ explores the connection between memories and colours through commissioned one-off prints that serve as a collaborative conversation between the memory holder and the artist. From the California coast to family trips to MacDonald’s, each bespoke print is a truly unique gift.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/melanie-bartheidel
CRAFT EXPERIENCES
Eva the Weaver (Eva Dennis) – Hand Weaving Workshops
Textile designer and weaver Eva Dennis specialises in bespoke wall hangings, custom clothing, and woven Jewellery, handcrafted with fabric remnants from the weaving process. This festive season, treat your loved one with a Gift Card for her beginners full-day weaving workshop delving into the whole process of weaving, from design to warp to weave.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/eva-dennis
Richard McVetis – The Art of Hand Embroidery
Loewe Craft Prize shortlisted embroidery artist Richard McVetis explores themes of time, geology, and cosmology in his textile-based work, and this festive season he will launch a new intimate workshop programme exploring the art of traditional hand embroidery. Treat a loved one to a weekend of creativity, learning, and connection where they’ll have the chance to experiment with textures and patterns, play with stitch scale and spacing, and discover how different threads can achieve beautiful results.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/richard-mcvetis
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Studio Candice Lau – Leathercraft Courses
Master craftswoman Candice Lau is not only a celebrated ceramic sculptor, but she is also an award-winning leather worker. Ideal for beginners or aspiring makers, her one-to-one leathercraft courses offer a fully customised experience tailored around what each participant hopes to learn and make, equipping attendees with the skills and knowledge to continue leatherworking independently in their own studios. Her book The Leathercraft Handbook is the perfect stocking stuffer.
https://cockpitstudios.org/makers/candice-lau
Cockpit is a centre of excellence in contemporary craft. For nearly 40 years, the award-winning charity and social enterprise has nurtured and supported craftspeople at the fragile, early stages of their careers, equipping talented makers with the tools they need to succeed creatively and commercially.
The UK’s only incubator for craft businesses, Cockpit’s studios in Bloomsbury and Deptford are home to over 175 makers united by their extraordinary skill and imagination. Thanks to funded studio space and in-house business support and coaching, Cockpit makers thrive, with many going on to become international leaders in their fields.
Bridging the gap between talent and opportunity, Cockpit’s education and careers programmes open pathways into creative employment for young Londoners from all backgrounds.
Cockpit works with hundreds more makers through careers programmes, outreach, training, and consultancy in the UK and internationally.
Bloomsbury
27-30 November
Cockpit Yard, WC1N 2NP
Deptford
5-7 December
18-22 Creekside, SE8 3DZ
www.cockpitstudios.org
@cockpitstudios
Lucy Martin, Tsavorite Garnet Curved Edges Ring. Photo: Jamie Trounce.
