Endangered Craft

Endangered Craft

11 July – 6 September 2025

This show shines a light on heritage craft practices under threat as identified by Heritage Crafts, the national charity for traditional heritage crafts.

From blacksmithing to basketry, from weaving to woodturning, we have an incredible range of heritage craft skills in the UK and some of the best craftspeople in the world. But many of these skills are in the hands of individuals who have been unable to make provision to pass them on.

Confirmed exhibitors so far…

• Bridget Bailey millinery techniques
• Ruth Ball enamelling
• Sarah Burns hand block printing
• Alex De Vol wood turning
• Karen Edwards letterpress printing
• Rosa Harradine brush making
• Gethin Ceidiog Hughes silk weaving
• Louisa Loakes hand block printing
• John Williamson stave basketmaking
• Elizabeth Willow letterpress printed artist books 

Meet the Maker Event with Karen Edwards, and her letterpress printer Ada,
on Saturday 16th August from 2-4pm

Bluecoat Display Centre, the Bluecoat, College Lane Entrance, Liverpool L1 3BZ
T: +44 (0)151 7094014

crafts@bluecoatdisplaycentre.com
www.bluecoatdisplaycentre.com

Open Mon – Sat 10am – 5.30pm.

About the artists:

Sarah Burns is a patternmaker and textile printer working in the South Downs with her partner Alice Garner. Together they hand block print textiles for interiors mostly using natural dyes which they forage for in the woods and fields around Steyning. Their work has featured in World of Interiors, Country Living and as part of the King’s Foundation celebration of British Craft and is supported by the Endangered Craft Fund. Their patterns are inspired by the ancient churches and places on the South Downs, from where they draw their materials. Sarah is the author of the first monograph of 1930’s Block Printers Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher and together they have designed for the Dartington Trust, where they had their first solo show in 2023, The Virginia White Collection & Cloth Collective.

Ruth Ball. Captivated by the alchemy of colour and versatility of enamel, Ruth creates a wide variety of work. Ranging from fine jewels & small objects, to unique artworks, her pieces carry an individual style that highlights the potential of enamel as a medium for contemporary design & applied art. In combination with enamel she uses hand-engraving as a base for her colours. This acts to capture a depth or nuance of light in the metal surface, which reflects through the finely applied transparent layers of enamel. In addition she also includes other techniques to shape and form the work. In this collection, “spinning” is the main fabrication feature. As a separate skill this work is commissioned out, but it is always brought together in the piece by careful design workings and the accomplishment of the maker.

Rosa Harradine is a broom and brush maker who creates pieces that are beautiful and useful. Her work is made entirely by hand, using natural materials including arenga, tampico and broomcorn fibres. She harvests many of her broom handles from her small patch of woodland, and her long-term goal is to grow her own broom fibre. Rosa was chosen as a TOAST New Maker 2022 by the fashion and homewares brand who selected five makers demonstrating excellence in skill, originality and craftsmanship. She is passionate about sharing her heritage craft skills and regularly teaches brush and broom making workshops.

Louisa Loakes is a textile artist based in Peckham, London, who takes inspiration from various cultures, including the block printing heritage of Northern India. Although formally trained as a painter at Wimbledon School of Art, she found herself increasingly drawn to print, deciding to specialise in both printmaking and the traditional block printing. Today, Loakes describes herself as an “artist/block printer”, combining hand painted and block printed designs in a range of fabrics. She often uses natural forms and lines to inspire designs, working from sketches or photographs of plants, animals and other features of the environment. She tends to use a muted colour palette, with a splash of brighter tones here and there to bring the design together. In her prints, you can see how traditional Indian motifs and design traditions have informed her work. However, at the same time her designs remain modern and fresh.

Alexander deVol is a designer, artist and maker whose work investigates the material properties of wood and their transferal into other materials.  deVol uses a mix of traditional casting methods and new technologies to document the natural behavior and movement of the vessels he makes in ‘green wood’ while taking care to preserve the features he feels are aesthetically synonymous with the material’s origin. deVol works with the unseasoned wood from trees that are recently felled and high in moisture, in this state wood is still to undergo a dramatic process of change and given appropriate conditions will morph a form into a new organic shape as it dries. The final outcome is an object sculpted collaboratively by both maker and material. Alongside his artistic practice deVol lectures in design at the University of Central Lancashire and regularly collaborates with other artists and design studios globally.

Bridget Bailey makes artworks and sculptures that combine intricate making with the down-to-earth approach to life and death of an allotment gardener. They investigate aspects of nature from the growth-rhythm in a tangle of grass to the particular posture of a dead butterfly’s legs. Finding a ‘making language’ to describe alive and growing, or dead and still, needs very different approaches. Showing variety in thinking as well as materials brings a level of diversity appropriate to her subject matter. Millinery is an integral part of Bridget’s ‘making language’ and her personal heritage as a maker. In this exhibition she explores this by making an artwork using millinery-thinking, and giving a talk about her pathway from millinery to art.

Karen Edwards. I studied graphic arts at a time when tutors where pushing computers. I appreciated the technical capabilities but I just loved the experience an original print produced. It was a full sensory experience. Feeling the texture of the paper, handling the type, carving the linoleum block – you can even hear when you have rolled out the ink to the consistency that is just right. It is a time consuming process and can take hours, even days to get to the printmaking stage but when printing is in full swing you hit a rhythm and it’s like music or the sound of the sea – another favourite sound of mine! My letterpress items are printed using vintage printing blocks together with wooden and metal type on my lovely old printing press called an Adana 8 x 5. I also use carve rubber stamps or create printing blocks from found materials.

John Williamson. I live and work in the Teign valley Devon, where I grew up. My work is based around traditional land management practices. Living and working this way fosters a deep connection to the land and sense of place and has inspired a keen interest in traditional crafts. The stave basket project was completed conceived ten years ago in direct response to the decline of ash – one of its fundamental materials- as a result of ash dieback. The traditional, low impact methods of material sourcing and unique making process had all but disappeared. It was imperative to me that these baskets, which have such an important role within the cultural landscape of Devon, were rediscovered and shared. It’s exciting to see that as a vehicle, the basket can cover so much and engage so many. I find it interesting to start wider conversations with a hand made object that both include and go way beyond aesthetic and function. Over the last 10 years I have researched the stave basket in depth and now make all nine sizes faithfully to the traditional methods and design.

Elizabeth Willow makes sculptures, artist’s books, collages and ephemera. Much of her work is small, intimate and intricate, inspired by lost and found things, dreams and memories, overlooked details, fragments and forgotten places. She is fascinated by our relationship to objects and materials, their physical, functional and symbolic qualities, how we touch and are touched by things. Often Elizabeth’s work involves type-setting, letterpress printing and bookbinding techniques, delighting in the tactile and painstaking processes, the sense of thought made substance. She increasingly combines traditional methods with experimentation, sometimes mixing ink with other ingredients, such as dust, sap and rain, or printing onto papers which are old and delicate, exploring the tension between the solidity of press and type and the fineness of surface, and what might happen when they come together.

The Bluecoat Display Centre, a renowned independent craft gallery and shop in Liverpool, showcases a curated collection from over 250 talented contemporary craftspeople. Find unique gifts perfect for any occasion in ceramics, jewellery, textiles and more. Discover the beauty of handcrafted designs which can be treasured for a lifetime and celebrate creativity with every piece.