A feast of outstanding photographs welcomes the viewer into this beautiful celebration of contemporary craftsmanship. Craft forms a triumvirate with art and design, blurring the boundaries between function and decoration, and during the recent pandemic we all learnt to care about our immediate surroundings, investing passion in the everyday. With chapter headings like "Heritage and history", "Roots and Region", "Useful and Beautiful" the authors interview and photograph numerous makers of breathtaking work. Sculptor Michelle de Bruin, based in Marchmont House on the Scottish Borders, has created a stunning relief emblem for the gable end of the studios, elegantly combining a tree, wings, an egg and painters' materials, while volunteers from the same workshop are pictured waist-deep in a stream harvesting rushes for the seats of traditional chairs. Kilt making is listed as an endangered skill, along with handmade top hats and umbrellas, and Nikki Laird is pictured with a brightly coloured handloomed tartan. Two master wheelwrights with their apprentice illustrate another endangered skill. The world of handmade furniture encourages cutting edge design and a beautiful set of chairs is based on a single flowing S-shape, while a limited edition Infinity Table features a continuous triangle shape dyed in vivid colour. The Deck is a Savile Row tailoring atelier, the first on the street to have a shopfront exclusively for women, bringing high-end tailoring to women's shirt and suits. Vessel Gallery for contemporary glass and ceramics houses "Vug in Emerald and Purple", a unique hand-blown glass sculpture, and "Spring Greens" using a seed motif to build a complex form. Craftmasters Gallery offers an online platform for contemporary British silverware and sculpture, showcasing a spectacular solid silver "Lily Pad" candelabrum which can be broken down into smaller units. Helen Hood, the gallery's owner, is emphatic that silver should be enjoyed and never relegated to the back of a cupboard. The Heatherwick Studio is world-famous and an iconic exhibit is its Friction Table, with aluminium slats clad in red leather. 256pp, beautiful colour illustrations on most pages.
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