Urban Makers Christmas Market — Sunday 13 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
Bitter Orange Studio
Candles & home fragrance
My scents all start from citrus peel, which I dry myself on racks above the radiator through the winter, then infuse into a carrier before blending. Bitter orange, yuzu, a green mandarin. They go into candles, room sprays and small sachets of dried peel and spice for drawers. Working from real peel gives an edge that bottled citrus fragrance never has, though it fades faster and I say so. I pour in a shared studio and my hands smell of marmalade for days afterwards.
Foxglove Editions
Print & illustration
I make copperplate etchings, which means acid, aquatint and a lot of rag paper soaked overnight before printing.
Herring & Ink
Print & illustration
Fish and shellfish are the whole of it, drawn accurately enough that fishmongers argue with me about the species.
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.
Kilnfolk
Ceramics
I run a small community kiln and make my own work around teaching evenings. The range is tableware for sharing: sectioned plates, deep curry bowls, and a wide serving dish with a rolled rim you can grip with oven gloves. I throw in a warm terracotta-flecked stoneware and use bright food-safe glazes, turmeric yellow, chilli red, a green like curry leaf. It is meant to look right with the food my family actually cooks. Most market customers build a set piece by piece.
Lampwork Lane
Glass
I work at a torch, melting borosilicate rod into beads, tiny animals and hanging ornaments.
Loom & Lantern
Textiles & accessories
I tuft rugs and wall hangings using a hand-operated tufting gun and a frame the size of a door. The yarn is New Zealand wool, cut and carved after tufting so the pile has raised and sunken areas, almost like relief carving. Designs come from the tilework I grew up around in Tripoli, redrawn in colours that suit a British flat. A small rug takes three days including the backing and binding. I take custom sizes and always sketch on paper with the customer first.
Nettle & Gold
Jewellery
I use keum-boo, an old Korean technique where fine gold foil is fused onto silver with heat and burnishing rather than glue or plating. It gives a warm gold that will never wear off. My shapes are simple discs, pebbles and long bars, hung on chain I make link by link. The gold goes on in irregular patches, like lichen on stone. Each earring in a pair is close but not identical, which I say clearly, because a few people want them matched.
Nibs & Notions
Stationery
I carve rubber stamps by hand from carving blocks, cutting the design in reverse with a small gouge, which is a strange skill to have acquired but a satisfying one.
Nine Bowls Pottery
Ceramics
I trained in Japan and brought the habits home with me: throw a hundred, keep nine. My work is quiet. Tea bowls, small plates, a lidded rice pot, all in a sandy stoneware with tenmoku and nuka glazes mixed from raw materials. Each foot is trimmed by hand while the pot is leather-hard, which takes as long as the throwing did. I fire in reduction at a shared gas kiln four times a year, so what I bring to a market is simply what exists.
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.
Quiet Hammer
Jewellery
My whole range is forged from a single gauge of square wire, twisted, tapered and curled into bangles, ear cuffs and open rings that you squeeze to fit. Because it is all one material there is very little waste, and offcuts get soldered into chain links. I work in brass for the affordable end and silver above that. The finish is deliberately dark, brought back with beeswax rather than lacquer, so it keeps ageing after it leaves me.
Rosemary & Rain
Candles & home fragrance
My range is entirely essential oil, no synthetic fragrance, which limits the palette but keeps everything I make honest. That means herbal, green and citrus scents rather than vanilla and candy floss. I make wax melts, small travel tins and a soy pillar, plus a linen spray distilled with rosemary from my window boxes. Essential oils are volatile so my candles have a shorter shelf life than most, and I date every label rather than pretending otherwise. Small batches, poured fortnightly.
Salt & Sorrel
Bath & body
I make bath and body things for people who swim outdoors in cold water, which is a specific crowd but a devoted one.
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. Calendula for a nappy balm, comfrey for aching hands, plantain for bites and stings. From those oils I make small pots of balm with beeswax from a beekeeper in Kent. Everything is safety assessed by a cosmetic chemist and batch numbered, because I take that part seriously even at this scale. Tins are aluminium and I refill them at markets for a discount.
The Slow Wheel
Ceramics
I make one thing properly at a time. This year it is teapots: spout, handle, lid and gallery all thrown and assembled, which takes the best part of a day each. I work in a dark stoneware under a celadon glaze that runs pale over the throwing rings and pools green in the shoulders. Matching cups and a small tray come with them. I finish maybe eight a month, so markets are less about volume and more about meeting whoever will use them.
Tidewater Clay
Ceramics
I walk the foreshore at low tide and the colours down there, silt grey, oyster and rust, are the palette I mix towards. I make press-moulded serving boards, ripple-edged dishes and bottle vases in stoneware, finished with layered matt glazes that pool wherever the surface dips. Nothing is perfectly round, because nothing on the river is. Four years of markets in and I still bring a tray of odd experiments alongside the proper range, mostly to see what people reach for.
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.
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.
Workshops
Silver stacking rings
with Foxglove Editions · Adults 18+ · 90 min
Make two sterling silver rings from scratch — measure, saw, file, solder and finish. You’ll use a jeweller’s torch under close supervision, and choose a hammered, brushed or polished finish before you go.
Sun 13 Dec, 12:00 · Workshop corner, next to C1· 6 places left
Organised by
Moderate refunds. Full refund available until 7 days before the event.
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