Urban Makers at Old Spitalfields — Wednesday 2 December

About this event

Where

Good to know

Meet the makers

• 

  Clay & Canvas

  Ceramics

  I throw everything on a small wheel in a railway arch, mostly in a speckled stoneware that fires to a warm oatmeal.

  website@clayandcanvas

• 

  Grogged

  Ceramics

  I use heavily grogged clay, the coarse stuff meant for sculpture, and throw it anyway. It shreds your hands but the finished pots have a wonderful sandpaper edge. My range is planters, kitchen crocks for utensils, and big salad bowls that get passed around a table. Interiors are glazed in glossy cream or deep blue, outsides left raw so they darken with handling. I work in runs of twenty and rarely repeat a glaze beyond a single season.

  website@groggedceramics

• 

  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.

  website@kilnfolk

• 

  Koji & Co

  Food & drink

  I grow koji on barley in an incubator I built from a broken wine fridge, then use it to make miso, shio koji and a fermented chilli paste. The misos sit in buckets under weights for anything from six months to two years, so what I sell now was started long before I knew whether it would work. My six-month barley miso is sweet and light, the two-year is dark and properly savoury. I give people spoons and explain how to use it, since most have only met it in soup.

  website@kojiandco

• 

  Lost Wax Lane

  Jewellery

  I carve wax models under a magnifying lamp, which is how I lose whole afternoons.

  website@lostwaxlane

• 

  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. Those sketches become drypoint prints, scratched straight into perspex with a needle so the burr holds the ink and gives a velvety line. Each plate only yields fifteen good impressions before the burr flattens. The subjects are night workers, empty stops and the strange blue light of an out-of-service depot. I print on Sundays and sell what I have.

  website@nightshiftetching

• 

  Pigeon Post Prints

  Print & illustration

  I draw the birds nobody paints.

  website@pigeonpostprints

• 

  Soot & Saffron

  Candles & home fragrance

  I hand-roll incense the way my aunt taught me, mixing powdered woods, resins and gums with water into a stiff paste, then rolling it onto bamboo sticks and drying them flat for a week.

  website@sootandsaffron

• 

  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.

  website@wednesdaywoodblock

• 

  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.

  website@woadandweft