Take a tour of London Craft Week 2018

The week-long event promises endless opportunities to network and share innovative ideas for anyone involved in designing, making or simply buying and wearing contemporary British jewellery.

Throughout the five days, events will be hosted across a series of iconic venues across London by some of industry's most revered brands, including the Goldsmith Company which has teamed up with Fortnum & Mason to showcase some of the best precious metal jewellers and contemporary silversmiths working in the UK today, the Natural History Museum, where some of the 185,000-strong mineral and gem collection will be on show plus a host of galleries, studios and workshop spaces.

Among the most talked about items is the Workshop Tour and Talk at the Shaun Leane Atelier where visitors will gain an insight into how he comes up with his unique and innovative designs and how he has been at the vanguard of British jewellery design for more than two decades. 

A chance to hear Shaun Leane talk about his cutting edge designs

Also popular is likely to be Ben Day’s spotlight on ‘How to Commission Jewellery’ which will take place at his Columbia Road Studio and shop in Hackney. Guests can learn a little more about the creative process that goes into designing and making his jewellery.

Ben Day will share his secrets on designing and making one-of-a- kind fine jewellery

In Fortnum & Mason’s second floor jewellery department, the Goldsmiths’ Company will highlight the work of 12 jewellers who have been singled out for combining high levels of creativity with exceptional making skills. There will be four Meet the Maker talks with Disa Allsopp, Tomasz Donocik, Sarah Straussberg and Mark Nuell.

On the gentleman’s third floor, there will be precious metal items for men including jewelled cufflinks, architecturally inspired boxes, and wine bottle coasters combining silver and leather, textured cufflinks in silver and gold by Gill Galloway-Whitehead; silver boxes with innovative corrugated glass lids by James Dougall; and men’s rings with precious stones by Chris Boland. 

A fully interactive craft and design experience will be hosted by Rebus at their new workshop in Hatton Garden where visitors can learn more about the making process, creative elements and heritage of signet rings. There will be live engraving from award-winning team of skilled goldsmiths and hand engravers.

Rebus' world-renowned engraving tools

Engravers will also be hard at work at Audley House where Purdey ‘Best’ shotguns, which take two years to build, will be on show. On each and every gun, the engraving alone accounts for approximately 150 hours of handcrafting by engravers who are apprenticed for five years.

A series of events with Afghan and Myanmarese artisans has been organized and supported by British jeweler Pippa Small in collaboration with the Turquoise Mountain Foundation with the focus on sustainable urban regeneration projects across the regions as well as Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Turquoise Mountain supports young artisans, small businesses and refugees through training, mentoring and sales support to connect them to international markets and visitrs will be able to find out more about their work and see some of the craftmanship from jewellery to miniature painting that apprentices are encouraged to develop.

Other highlights include an in-store exploration of the art of gilding at Rose Uniacke in Pimlico, a vitreous enamel demonstration at Deakin and Francis where visitors are urged to have a go at hand enamel their own piece of jewellery plus a panel discussion, led by designer Tessa Packard on jewellery as art and the place of the maker in history. She will be joined by renowned experts including jeweller to the stars Andrew Prince, Elisabetta Cipriani, founder of the eponymous ‘Wearable Art’ gallery in Mayfair and the former European Jewellery Director at Christie’s, Raymond Sancroft-Baker. 

At the V&A in South Kensington, two leading female silversmiths, Jane Short and Miriam Hanid will demonstrate their exceptional craft in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act, which granted some women the right to vote in British parliamentary elections for the first time.

And not forgetting watch making, Bremont co-founder Nick English and Toby Bateman of MR PORTER will host a talk on craftsmanship, manufacturing and the revival of British watchmaking while eight of the world’s most exclusive artisan watch brands will be showing off their craftmanship at the William & Son’s boutique in Bruton Street. Brands attending are De Bethune, F.P. Journe, Graham, H. Moser & Cie, Laurent Ferrier, Ludovic Ballouard, Moritz Grossmann and Romain Gauthier.

For more details of the London Craft Week programme and participants from Wednesday May 9 to May 13, visit www.londoncraftweek.com