Exhibitionsand Events

The Farnham Craft Town programme is supported by Farnham Town Council and is the framework for a year round focus on the contribution that craft activity plays in generating cultural, tourism and economic impacts. As Iain Lynch, Town Clerk Says ‘Farnham is growing its reputation as England’s first Craft Town and we are delighted to supportthis imaginative initiative’. There is a special focus throughout October as all the key craft venues offer extra education, exhibition and lectures with the annual Craft Fair at the Farnham Maltings as a centerpiece.

The Crafts Study Centre is delighted to have been asked by the Crafts Council, along with the New Ashgate Gallery in Farnham, to join in the 2015 Hothouse programme. This year we will work alongside Smiths Row, Bury St Edmund’s to help provide support to the South East cohort of emerging makers.

Hothouse is one of the most sought after schemes in the UK for makers providing extensive training and development activities to bring additional business and advocacy skills to bear on their creativepractice. The Crafts Study Centre and the New Ashgate Gallery have successfully supported HothouseSouth East cohorts in 2011 and 2014.

CRAFTS STUDY CENTRE

NEWS

Cover: Work by Chien-Wei Chang.

Inside front cover: Detail, Small Blue Triangle with Yellow Twists, Deirdre Wood, Photo by David Westwood.

The Crafts Study Centre was established in Bath as a charity on 1 April 1970 with the mission to collect and research modern craft collections and to enable them to be seen and studied by the public. Some 44 years after the creation of one of the UK’s most significant craft collections, and 10years after the opening of the Crafts Study Centre in its new home of Farnham, this exhibition celebrates the strong partnership with the University for the Creative Arts. It places object from the founding years alongside those acquired more recently.

The exhibition draws across the range of these collections and includes archives, lettering andcalligraphy, ceramics, textiles, wood and furniture. Some pieces are being displayed for the first time at Farnham, including an important oak dining table designed by Romney Green and used by weaver Ethel Mairet in her studio at Ditchling (a gift of Crafts Study Centre Trustee Marianne Straub). A small group of pieces by the potter Eric Mellon has also been added to the displays.

The exhibition also acknowledges the status of the Crafts Study Centre as a Fully Accredited Museum, achieved after assessment by Arts Council England in November 2013. This crucial status underpins all of the Centre’s applications for funds to continue its work.

Works from the Crafts Study Centre collections.

Clockwise: Fried Baier, Susan Bosence, Sally Greaves-Lord and Bernard Leach.

EXHIBITION

- 44:10:1 -

until 6 December 2014

As with Hillu Liebelt’s recent touring exhibition Still Moments, this new exhibition entitled A Fine Line is a continuation of her studies of the changing seasons and the rhythm of nature. Looking at small details, minute changes, light movements, lines and shadows drawn by light, Liebelt records these fleeting moments with a camera, like a visual diary, capturing a certain mood or an atmosphere that can change in seconds.

She often works with repeats, creating a rhythm, exploiting an idea or material and investigating the value of shadows, lines, shapes and layers. In the mixed media work on display the starting point is often the material itself. Liebelt enjoys the process of collecting and connecting, finding material partners. The exhibition includes woven tapestries, textile objects, models and photographs.

Artist’s talk - Wednesday 24 September

Reception from 5:30pmLecture starts promptly at 6:00pm until 7:00pm

Tickets priced £5.00 are available from the Crafts Study Centreand must be booked in advance as numbers are strictly limited.

EXHIBITION

- A Fine Line -Tapestries & Textile Objects

29 July - 27 September 2014

Works by Hillu Liebelt.

This new exhibition brings the work of Chien-Wei Chang to the Crafts Study Centre with his first one person show at Farnham. He describes how he loves metal ‘because of the characteristics of the material and the process of making it work: treating it with fire to anneal it , using hammers to translate the invisible ideas into visual forms and bathing it in water to cleanse it. When I place metal, especially silver into acid to purify it and turn it white, it feels as though I have completed a personal ritual – almost like a baptism’.

The work demonstrates strong Eastern and Western aesthetics and cultural references for example by combining metal with other natural materials such as bamboo and wood as well as found objects. Chien-Wei Change remarks that ‘each piece I produce depicts different stages of the narrative of my life as a Taiwenese artist living and working in the UK’. The exhibition will also embody the spectrum of cultures, creativities and identities in present day British society.

Artist’s talk - Wednesday 22 October 2014

Reception at 5:30pmLecture starts promptly at 6:00pm until 7:00pm

Tickets priced £5.00 are available from the Crafts Study Centreand must be booked in advance as numbers are strictly limited.

EXHIBITION

- Relevé, Pirouette, What now? -

7 October - 13 December 2014

Previous page:-Hand woven belt from the Ethel Mairet Source Collection. Photo by David Westwood

Work by Chien-Wei Chang.

A selling exhibition to celebrate 21 years of the Surrey Guild Craft Gallery in Milford. The touring exhibition brings together the diverse work of 40 members of the Guild. Each maker was invited to produce up to three exceptional pieces to showcase their skills in materials such as woodwork, ceramics, textiles, jewellery and metalwork.

Lois Bellew, Chairman of the Surrey Guild of Craftsmen (2014) notes that the co-operative was set up some 35 years ago ‘as part of a project run by Surrey University to give craft workers and their skills a higher profile’, and this imperative is behind the celebratory purpose of the touring exhibition.

The exhibition is held in the shop of the Crafts Study Centre

EXHIBITION

- elements: REFINED -

Surrey Guild of Craftsmen

4 - 29 November 2014

Clockwise: Work by Carolyn Wallace, Donna Collinson, Fleur Grenier and Adam Aaronson.

The Crafts Study Centre is proud to participate once again in the national scheme of Heritage Open Days. Celebrating the fantastic architecture and culture that England has to offer, Heritage Open Days encourages free access to places that are either normally closed to the public or would make a charge for admission. Heritage Open Days celebrate, what makes local communities and neighbourhoods special by stimulating curiosity and discovery and, by connecting people with their local places, fosters a sense of belonging and pride.

For four days every September, buildings of all age, style and function welcome the public for this chance to discover and explore architectural treasures, take part in tours, events and activities that bring local history and culture to life.

This year, Professor Simon Olding the Director of the Crafts Study Centre will lead a tour of the Centre’s exhibitions and comment on the Centre’s development plans.

In addition, visitors will be able to see the Centre’s reserve collections and a specially curated group of objects will be brought together for more detailed analysis.

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance as numbers are limited to 8 people for each tour. For more information and to book, please contact the Crafts Study Centre.

Images from the Crafts Study Centre collection.

HERITAGEOPEN DAYS

- Behind the Scenes -

11:00am - 12:00noonFriday 12 and Saturday 13

September 2014

The Trustees of the Crafts Study Centre have appointed the celebrated craft and design historian and writer Dr Tanya Harrod to take up a Fellowship at the Crafts Study Centre during 2014 named in memory of the spinner Morfudd Roberts. Dr Harrod’s seminal work The Crafts in Britain in the 20th century surveyed the whole craft field. Her fellowship lecture will discuss craftswomen in the area of textiles in the 1920s and 1930s and focus on their adventurous travels in Europe in search of an authentic vernaular. Dr Harrod is developing the research under the rubric Folk Art/Modern Art as part of a bigger book and wirh the possibility of an exhibition at the Crafts Study Centre.

Dr Harrod’s most recent book The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, modern pots, colonialism and the counterculture won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2013 and she was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University for the Creative Arts in the same year.

Lecture - Wednesday 8 October

Reception from 5:30pm The lecture starts promptly at 6:00pm until 7:00pm

Tickets priced £5.00 are available from the Crafts Study Centreand must be booked in advance as numbers are strictly limited.

LECTURE

- The Morfudd RobertsTextile Fellow -

Tanya Harrod

6:00pm-7:00pm8 October 2014

Detail of hand-woven belt from the former Yugoslavia (1918-1991), Ethel Mairet’s source collection of textiles.

A one day symposium that has at its heart conversations and then shared ceramicpractice between Ashley Howard and Risa Oghi.

Howard had been drawn towards the surface patterns of a stoneware dish made by Risa Ohgi displayedat the 2011 International Society for Ceramic Art Education and Exchange Exhibition in Tokyo. It prompted a dialogue between the two potters that has emerged as an exhibition launched at The Leach Pottery, St Ives and now displayed in The Foyer Gallery of the University for the Creative Arts. The symposium will feature short lectures by makers and writers including Ashley Howard, Dr Bonnie Kemske and Professor Simon Olding.

For times, ticket prices and to book, please contact the Crafts Study Centre for futher information.

The principal exhibition will be held in the James Hockey and Foyer Galleries at the Universtiy for the Creative Arts from 30 October to 12 December.

A small selling exhibition of work by Ashley Howard and Risa Oghi will be shown in the Crafts Study Centre shop from 4 - 13 December.

Shima Kara Shima E translates as ‘From Island to Island’.

SYMPOSIUM

- Shima Kara Shima E -

4th December 2014

Work by Ashley Howard and Risa Ohgi. Photos by David Westwood and Risa Ohgi

MASTER OF RESEARCH

- Crafts -

The University for the Creative Arts in partnership with the Crafts Study Centre is now taking applications and expressions of interest in a new degree, the M Res Crafts.

The degree offers makers, writers, curators, historians and anyone with a dedicated interest in modern and contemporary craft the chance to build on their knowledge and their practice by a sustained investigation. The principal outcomes of the research will be an extended essay in a subject of the student’s choosing as well as the unrivalled opportunity to curate an exhibition with the starting point of the Centre’s collections and archives. Students will be able to research these collections in depth with the support of the Crafts Study Centre Curator, Jean Vacher. They will also participate as members of the wider MA cohort in The School of Craft & Design.

The M Res Crafts is offered both full time (one year) and part time (two years).

The Course Leader for the new degree is Professor Simon Olding, Director of the Crafts Study Centre. Further application details can be found on the University for the Creative Arts website:www.uca.ac.uk/mres-crafts Prospective students are also invited to discuss their interests with the Course Leader solding@ucreative.ac.uk.

Detail of ||Seasons|| by Alice Kettle, 2009. Photo by Joe Low.

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

The Trustees of the Crafts Study Centre have been working on a development project throughout 2014. This project will consider the current strengths and limitations of the museum, and in particular the strains of accommodating the growing collections in such a way as to allow access for study and enjoyment.

The Trustees have appointed Adam Richards Architects to undertake an Options Appraisal. This report will draw up a short number of costed options for the development of the building, (including a possible extension). Consultation with users of the Centre will take place to inform this study. The report will then feed into an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund in November 2014 to the Heritage Grants programme using the preferred option as the basis for the bid and the search for additional funds.

Detail of work by Ann Richards from the Crafts Study Centre collection. Photo by David Westwood.

Crafts Study CentreSchool of Craft & DesignUniversity for the Creative ArtsFalkner RoadFarnhamSurrey GU9 7DS

01252 891450www.csc.ucreative.ac.uk@crafts_csc

Open Tuesday to Friday 10.00am to 5.00pmOpen Saturday 10.00am to 4.00pm

Please note that the Crafts Study Centre will be closed to the public from 4.00pm on Saturday 13 December and will reopen at 10.00am on Tuesday 6 January 2015

Free admission

Research visits welcome by appointmentPlease telephone 01252 891450

Accessible for wheelchair users

Induction loop at reception

The Crafts Study Centre is a registered charity (261109)