Commission a Maker

Commissioning craft is an exciting opportunity to create something unique and special to:

  • Celebrate a friend or family member

  • Mark a special occasion

  • Create an heirloom

  • Try something inspirational and fun collaborating with a maker


Commissioning is easy and can suit any price range. Most MAKE Southwest Maker Members work to commission. Do you have an idea for a bespoke craft object? Things to consider: Who is it for (It might be you!)? What materials would you like it to be made of? How much can you afford?

We can put you in touch with the right maker and guide you through the process. Take a moment to browse some of our Maker Members listed below who work to commission.

If you’ve found a maker’s work you like, why not take the next step towards commissioning them? Speak to our friendly team or email us at hello@makesouthwest.org.uk

Baskets

 

Hilary Burns

Hilary makes contemporary-style baskets and related work, using traditional techniques in predominantly natural materials. I work in a sustainable way with willow, grown organically on Dartington Trust Estate, as well as other green wood.

Ceramics

 

Christine-Ann Richards

From Christine-Ann’s journeys to China and Japan, beginning four decades ago, an eastern aesthetic has continued to influence both her thrown porcelain and garden ceramics.

 

Jill Fanshawe-Kato

Jill’s ceramics are inspired by the natural world and by travel. Making processes include coiling, slabbing, sculpting, using moulds and throwing and altering. Slips and glazes are applied for colour. Work ranges from functional pottery to large sculptural works and wall murals.

 

Ross Emerson

In a nutshell Ross makes ceramic clocks. To him they represent an outlet for which a mixture of unrelated stories and themes can come together in a colourful expression of creativity and fun.

 

Sandy Brown

Sandy loves doing things she has never done before, and so when she is commissioned she jumps to it!  She developed Candleabra as the result of a commission and love the opportunity for freedom and invention that it offers.

Furniture

 

Peter Lanyon

Peter’s approach is not one of nostalgia, but of re-imagining how the traditional tools and techniques of the past, and of working with unseasoned wood can be combined with modern methods and materials to create a contemporary but organic aesthetic.

Glass

 

Fabrizia Bazzo (Stained Glass / Architectural Glass)

Fabrizia likes to create works that have texture, are multi-layered and that you discover gradually according to how they are viewed. It is the contemporary approach to the craft that, with the aid of modern technologies, breathes life into new exciting methods and opportunities.

 

Roberta Ayles (Fused Glass)

Roberta makes fused glass panels, mainly for windows. Glass colours are melted together in a kiln. The softened glass picks up texture from the kiln shelf, so she uses this effect in the windows to bring the colours to life.

 

Stuart Low (Stained Glass / Architectural Glass)

Stuart is an artist and maker of stained glass. He enjoys working to commission on a domestic scale for the home, transforming windows, front doors and fanlights with colour. He also undertakes large church and architectural glass projects.

Jewellery

Emma Mogridge

Emma hand-crafts gold and silver jewellery inspired by the ocean. Fully trained as a gemmologist and diamond grader, she also loves to work with a wide range of gemstones. Emma creates unique jewels to celebrate engagements, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and special occasions.

 

Gillie Hoyte Byrom (Enamelling)

Gillie hand paints portrait miniatures in enamel. Techniques involve multi-firings using a hot kiln to build up the likeness in layers of glass fused to metal. These jewel-like heirlooms will never fade.

 

Steven Whitford

Steven enjoys offering his clients unique hand-made designs to which they can contribute their own ideas. Silver, Yellow Gold, Rose Gold and Platinum rings are set with precious and semi-precious stones. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings and cufflinks complement the collection.

 

Wayne Victor Meeten (Silversmithing)

Bringing silver to life is a hard task. In expert hands it can be transformed into something suffused with feeling and energy. Wayne looks beyond a simple mastery of the metal, seeking to understand it and work in harmony with the materials.

Metal

 

Celia Smith

Celia makes artworks using wire; they are either wall-based drawings or sculptures and inspired by birds she has drawn. The initial drawing made from life is very important. She tries to replicate in wire the intuitive and spontaneous lines in sketchbook.

 

Mike Thompson

Mike’s technique involves spot welding the metal pieces together, keeping the form as anatomically accurate as the material affords, whilst trying to keep the tools in their original form. He also tries to showcase the tool’s origins - highlighting any cast makers’ marks or place of manufacture, as well as using their bolts, nuts and handles, incorporating as much of the original tool as possible.

Printmaking

 

Debby Mason

Debby loves drawing fish, sketching in aquariums, fish markets and behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum. The Coelacanth, the 'Fossil Fish', Jules Verne's '20,000 Leagues under the Sea‘, Sea Dragons, Nautilus, Argonaut and Fangtooth, keep her fascinated and inspired.

Sculpture

 

Luke Shepherd

Luke makes bronze portrait sculpture to commission. Each 3-D observation is fashioned directly from clay until the growing ball finally comes alive. Only then is it captured in bronze. The expected lifespan of his work is probably more than 6,000 years.

Textiles

 

Liz Clay (Felt)

Liz is a textile artist and researcher specialising in bespoke handmade felt. She exhibits worldwide and has collaborated with some of the most iconic labels in fashion. Studio production is entirely by her, enabling each project to have a unique identity.

 

Trudie Timlin Brown (Weaving)

Trudie loom weaves, embedding colour and ideas within her canvas of hand-dyed silk warps and weft. Off the loom, the canvas is stretched to restore tension and framed. Weave is a process of crossing threads and for Trudie, pulling together threads of ideas to give them visual substance.

 

Vivien Prideaux (Decorated Textiles)

Shibori – indigo and dyeing are contemporary techniques of our time, but Vivien always wants to delve further and discover through traditional and cultural references, a wider vocabulary to use in her work.

Toys

 

David Plagerson

David is one of a small group of Craftsmen Toymakers who believe that the aesthetic value of toys is as important for children’s play as their robustness and capacity to stimulate the imagination.

Wallpaper

 

Hugh Dunford Wood

Hugh has worked as an independent artist designer since student days at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art in the 1970s. He paints landscapes and portraits; has run a fashion business and designs crockery, jewellery, furnishing fabrics and wallpapers.