Urban Makers Christmas Market — Saturday 12 December
By Urban MakersFifty independent designers, food, drink and workshops at the Ecology Pavilion in Mile End Park. Free entry, 11am–5pm.
About this event
Where
Ecology Pavilion
Mile End Park, Grove Road, London E3 4PX
Good to know
Free entry
No ticket needed — just turn up. Bring a bag for life.
Step-free access
The whole market is step-free with accessible toilets on site.
Getting here
Please travel by public transport or bike — there is no visitor parking.
Meet the makers
Beeswax & Birch
Candles & home fragrance
I only use British beeswax, bought in blocks from three beekeepers I know by name, and I add nothing to it.
Concrete Botanicals
Print & illustration
I make botanical studies of weeds. Buddleia out of a railway wall, ragwort on a verge, the fig tree that has taken over a car park near me. They are drawn in coloured pencil from life, which means a lot of standing about in high-vis looking suspicious, then reproduced as giclée prints on textured cotton paper. Each print names the plant in Latin and gives the street where I found it. I sell them loose or mounted in reclaimed frames.
Duck & Drill
Textiles & accessories
I make workwear-inspired bags out of heavy cotton duck and drill cloth, the same cloth used for painters' overalls.
Fudge & Fable
Food & drink
I make fudge in a copper pan on a gas ring, beaten by hand with a wooden spoon at exactly the right temperature, which is the difference between fudge and a very sad caramel. Flavours are sea salt, whisky and oat, a burnt honey, and a rhubarb one that is only around in spring. It is all butter, cream and sugar with nothing else in it. I cut it into rough cubes rather than neat squares and sell it loose by weight in paper bags.
Glasshouse Terrariums
Plants & florals
I build closed terrariums that genuinely work, which means proper drainage, activated charcoal, a sterile substrate and plants that actually like living in a humid jar. Ferns, fittonia, moss collected sustainably from a licensed supplier. Once sealed they need watering roughly once a year. I build each one with long tweezers through the neck of the vessel, which takes about two hours and a great deal of swearing. I also sell empty vessels and the layers separately for people who want to build their own.
Hearth & Hush
Candles & home fragrance
I pour into vessels I cast myself from jesmonite, in a speckled terrazzo made with crushed offcuts from previous batches. Each one is sanded wet by hand through three grits until it feels like stone. The scents are quiet and woody, chosen so they do not fight with a room: dry fig, cedar and smoke, a soft amber. When the candle is finished the vessel washes out with hot water and becomes a pot for pens or a very small plant, which is entirely the point.
Kiln Formed
Glass
I fuse and slump glass in a kiln rather than blowing it, so my work is flat: dishes, coasters, small wall panels and jewellery. I stack sheet glass with layers of powder and stringer between them, fire it to 800 degrees to fuse, then fire again over a mould to give it a shape. Each firing cycle takes eighteen hours including the cooling, so nothing is quick. Colours are deliberately restrained, mostly steel blue, olive and a warm smoky grey that suits British light.
Lamplight Illustration
Print & illustration
I paint night scenes in gouache, which is opaque and forgiving and lets me build light out of the dark rather than leaving it as bare paper.
Mended & Made
Textiles & accessories
I weave rag rugs and mats on a peg loom using strips torn from worn-out bedsheets and shirts.
Moss & Mortar
Plants & florals
I cast planters from a concrete and recycled aggregate mix, then plant them up with drought-tolerant things that will forgive being ignored: sedums, echeveria, small houseleeks. The pots are cast in moulds I make from old food packaging, so the shapes are quietly familiar without being obvious. Each has a drilled drainage hole and a cork foot so it will not mark a windowsill. I sell them planted or empty. The plants are all propagated from my own stock over the previous year.
Mudlark Made
Ceramics
Everything begins with a sketchbook of things pulled out of the river: clay pipe stems, bottle necks, worn scraps of transfer-printed china. I press those shapes into plaster moulds and build tiles, spoon rests, small wall pieces and shallow dishes. The body is a buff earthenware and I use a soft blue-and-white slip that nods at the shards without copying them. Each piece is stamped underneath with the year. Honestly, half the joy is explaining the process to people at the stall.
Nightshift Etching
Print & illustration
I drive a night bus four evenings a week and draw everything I see from the cab in a pocket sketchbook at the terminus.
Paper Cartographer
Print & illustration
I draw maps by hand of things that are not usually mapped: every lido within the M25, the lost rivers of east London, the route of a walk somebody sends me. The lettering is all hand-drawn with a technical pen, which is the slow part and the reason I do it. They print as large sheets on uncoated paper that takes a pencil if you want to annotate. I take commissions for personal maps and those take about six weeks from first sketch.
Pocket Constellations
Jewellery
People bring me a date and a place and I map the sky above it, then drill that star pattern into a silver disc, each hole sized to the brightness of the star.
Steam & Sage
Bath & body
I make things for the shower rather than the bath, because most London flats do not have one.
Tamarind & Tin
Food & drink
I blend spice mixes from whole spices, toasted in small batches and ground the same morning, because pre-ground spice loses everything within weeks.
The Balm Room
Bath & body
I infuse oils with herbs for six weeks in a sunny window before I make anything, which is the slow step everybody skips.
Third Floor Linocuts
Print & illustration
I cut lino at my kitchen table on the third floor and print by hand with a wooden spoon, which is slower than a press but means I can work at night without annoying my neighbours.
Type & Tide
Print & illustration
I hand-letter with a broad-edged pen and a brush, then print the results. The words come from sea shanties, tide tables and things my grandmother used to say, so there is a lot of salt in them. I mix my own walnut and iron gall inks, which age and shift over the years rather than staying flat. Prints come in three sizes and I letter the odd one-off on request while people wait, which is nerve-racking with an audience but usually goes well.
Unwrapped Soap Co
Bath & body
Nothing on my table wears any packaging at all. Soap bars cut from a loaf and sold loose by weight, solid shampoo, a deodorant that comes in a cardboard push-up tube. If you want it wrapped I will put it in a paper bag and that is the extent of the packaging. The soaps are palm-oil free, made with rapeseed and shea, and scented with essential oil blends. I cut the loaf on the stall so people can smell it fresh and choose the thickness of their own bar.
Wednesday Woodblock
Print & illustration
I print mokuhanga, Japanese water-based woodblock, using cherry plywood, rice paste and a baren rubbed by hand. There is no press involved at all. Each colour is a separate block, registered with cut notches, and a print with six colours means six carvings and six passes. The ink sinks into the paper rather than sitting on it, so the surface stays matt and soft. My images are quiet: rain on water, folded laundry, a bowl of plums. Editions of twenty, printed in one sitting.
Woad & Weft
Textiles & accessories
I keep an indigo vat going in my back yard and feed it like a sourdough starter, which is exactly as odd as it sounds. Everything I dye is shibori: bound, folded or stitched before it goes in, then unpicked wet to reveal the pattern. I dye linen napkins, cotton bandanas, silk scarves and a small run of cushion covers. The blue oxidises from green to indigo in front of you as it comes out of the vat, and I bring a small vat to markets to demonstrate.
Workshops
Winter wreath making
with Frit & Flame · Adults and over-14s with an adult · 90 min
Build a full door wreath on a moss base, using foraged eucalyptus, spruce, dried orange and seed heads. You’ll learn how to bind a base that won’t sag by New Year, and go home with something that took you an hour and looks like it took three.
Sat 12 Dec, 12:00 · Workshop corner, next to A1· 9 places left
Block-printed tote bag
with Hearth & Hush · Families, ages 7+ with an adult · 60 min
Print an organic cotton tote with hand-carved wooden blocks — winter branches, stars, a fat robin. Two colours, a bit of planning, and a bag you’ll actually use rather than keep in a drawer.
Sat 12 Dec, 12:00 · Workshop corner, next to B8· 9 places left
Sat 12 Dec, 14:00 · Workshop corner, next to B8· 4 places left
Organised by
Moderate refunds. Full refund available until 7 days before the event.
Already have tickets? Find my tickets