A swimmingly good time at the show!

Here's a picture of me and Domenique in the midst of the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair last week. We look happy don't we. We were! 

A few weeks ago I did an exhibitors workshop about planning for GNCCF, run by the lovely Patricia from the Design Trust and she suggested setting an intention for what we’d like to get out of the show. What would we like to be celebrating as we are packing down our stand at the end of the weekend? What would we like to be going home to tell our partner or our kids, what will we be writing in our newsletter when we talk about how it went?

Well let me tell you.

You know sometimes you feel like you are in exactly the right place at the right time? When you are right where you belong?  It was one of those times. 

I decided to just take my laser cut and engraved treasure and stem collection and give them a spotlight of their own. It felt good to have a small and simple stand and a cupboard full of ready made posies and packs of all kinds of treasures to sell. It was their first outing to a big show like this and it was nice to see them all together, presented cleanly. The collection has really expanded this last year and it was good to know that they could hold their own.

And what a great venue for a show. It was in The Victoria Baths, an old Edwardian swimming pool. It made for the best floor of a show stand I've ever had, even though it was a little on the wonk!

It's an amazing building with a faded, paint peeling kind of beauty and lots of lovely architectural detail.

You can almost hear the echoes of swimmers. Splashes, squeals, whistles blowing...

This long corridor made you feel like you’re heading to the pool in your swimming costume and goggles!

There were three pools full of makers and you could also find work in the turkish baths, up on the viewing balconies and in the changing room cubicles!

 It is such a fun setting for a bunch of creatives to get together to show their work.

There is a unique camaraderie between makers when you do shows. We are a friendly bunch. Collaboration always trumps competition, we all support each other and we all share the ups and the downs of running our designer/maker businesses and celebrate each other's work. Instagram supports all this for sure as we can keep up with each other online but there’s nothing quite like doing a show that strengthens a bond. I did my first British Craft Trade Fair in Harrogate over twenty years ago and I did it every April for twelve years and also I did the first six Great Northerns when it first began in Manchester eighteen years ago. Every time you do a show you chat with your old show friends again and come away with a few new ones, so each time the network grows and strengthens.

This is Karl's stand Solace in Wood. It was lovely to see him using my stems in his incredible turned wooden vases.

and it was so lovely to meet Ling Warlow for the first time. She made me one of her beautiful paper flowers - this poppy is naturally dyed with madder, alder cones and onion skins (and look out, she's going to come and do an open studio with me in May 2026)!

And I absolutely loved seeing people I met at those first shows all those years ago, like dear Sarah-Jane Brown and lovely Annabet Wyndham whose earrings I still wear all these years later after I swapped them for a lamp at my first Harrogate. Some of us go back a long way. I used to look up to the older makers in those early days. Now I am one! Eeek.

And there were so many lovely visitors  (including Dean, seen here chatting to my brilliant opposite neighbour Woman of the Woods) . Some visitors knew my work well and remembered my old shop Radiance and had lamps that were still going strong after twenty years. Some people just came to say how much my getting my three somethings email meant to them and some were seeing my work for the very first time. I saw customers I'd not seen in person for years and I met internet faces for the first time like Patricia and Ann-Marie from the Design Trust and Sarah from the Craft Festival. It was great to meet some of my stockists for the first time too, like Linda from the Hilde Gallery and Emma from Gathered. 

Hugs all round.

I had so many good chats with so many people and I talked a lot about Hebden Bridge and the fact that I open my studio once a month. People always say they love a trip over to Hebden. (We talked a lot about Riot Women too. Have you seen it yet? Sunday eve, BBC1, set in Hebden Bridge and going down a storm).

One lady observed that people at this show weren’t filling their stands with things just to ‘sell, sell, sell’, but rather the things on their stands say, “THIS IS ME”. Their work is a culmination of years of dedication to their craft. It’s work that shows how someone dared to follow a weird creative flight of fancy. What would happen if I did this? Like Jade Mellor's gold jewellery that was inspired by the cadis fly larvae that gathers together teeny tiny stones and sticks them together with their own silk to create a safe place for them to snuggle! Or these amazing chopping boards by People Studio that tell the stories of the old dance floors or the bannisters that they are made from. Of course we need to sell our work too so we can keep making it, but there is more than that at play here.

A few people asked me how I came to be making what I make and I had a few stories to tell about how things evolved, for instance, my meadow posies, in their current form, probably wouldn't have happened without Keeley Traae who makes the vases. A few years ago I only knew her work from Instagram and I'd never met her in real life but after the studio fire in 2022 she sent me one of her vases in the post as a gift. They once had a house fire so they really felt for me. The little vase, 3D printed from birch pulp, sat on my cupboard with some dried stems for a long time until one day I thought I'd try and make some laser cut stems to fit it exactly. And that was that. They worked beautifully. I bought more colours and I designed more stems. Last year I went to GNCCF to meet Keeley for the first time and that visit inspired me to do the show myself!

It's amazing to consider all the little sparks of inspiration and connection that bring a new thing into being. The whole place was buzzing with these stories and it made for a great atmosphere.

I sold lots and lots of stems and treasures, more than I dared to wish for when I did that workshop last month, lots of new people signed up to my mailing list (something I'm always wishing for) and lots of folk are going to come and visit my monthly open studios. This was one of the reasons I wanted to do a show that was a good day-tripable distance away, to encourage visitors. So all my wishes came true...

AND to top it off I won an award from Manchester Art Gallery which was such a lovely surprise. They love what I do and are giving me a showcase of my work in the gallery next year. We are going to get together soon to discuss the finer details as time goes on. I will of course let you know. I am delighted!

I’m so happy that shows like this exist. Great Northern is 18 years old now and so it had a lot of years to hone its audience of people who appreciate what we are making and it’s amazing to think of all the curious objects that they left with through the swimming pool exit.  

I had planned to spend the last hour of the show taking photos of my favourite stands, but the show ended an hour earlier than I was expecting on the Sunday and suddenly everyone was packing up, but check out GNCCF instagram for some great photos and reels of everything.

It felt great to be back on the show scene after not doing a big one since pre-covid. I loved being among my people and I realised how well supported I am (thank you). I'm still bathing in the afterglow. My friend Nat wished me a 'swimmingly good show' last week. She loves a good pun. Thanks Natalie, it was just that. 

Thanks to everyone who came to say hello. Maybe I'll see you there again next year. x