Great Northern contemporary Craft Fair

http://crafthaus.ning.com/profiles/profile/show?id=LucyHarvey

The Great Northern Contempoary Craft Fair is located in Spinning Fields, Manchester. It is a new event that promotes designer-makers who can exhibit and sell their work. It is the ideal place to look for gifts and beautiful hand crafted products which are difficult to find in your average shopping precincts. I visited the fair to see if it would be the kind of event where I could sell and promote my own screen printed fashion prints in the future.

I was impressed by the quality and range of crafts being exhibited including textiles, jewellery, fashion accessories, ceramics, glass, silver, wood, furniture, paper and more.

I particularly liked the work of Louise Kirby who hand prints scarves, wall hangings and cards. She uses discharge and acid dyes with screen print and monoprint techniques onto pure silk and wool. She gathers inspiration from her travels e.g. colours from the city of Marrakesh and detailed wrought iron windows, but also tree bark from her home town, Scotland. The scarves are reversible and have a contemporary feel mixing patterns and dye processes upon the fabric. Both images obtained at http://www.kirbytextiles.com

I was also interested in the work of surface pattern designer, Hollie Brown, who has a decorative illustrative style. Her designs focus on greeting cards and some of her clients include The Art Group, Hallmark cards, Creative Moments, Tiger Print Design, Museums & Galleries Ltd and Gibson Hanson Graphics. I love the way she has cute, linear drawings combined with beautiful paint washes and text. She also has an excellent use of colour. Her work is best described as '"Humourous and quirky with a lively imagination"'. Hollie Brown finds inspiration in every day life and loves to draw quirky characters that make her smile! Her print techniques include hand drawn illustration transferred using silk screen printing, combined with painterly backgrounds and dyes. They are then embellished with stitch, found papers and fabrics. http://www.holliebrown.co.uk/prints.html