SHOP SMALL FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON
This festive season, embrace the spirit of giving by supporting the talented designers and makers who infuse each item with individuality, creativity and passion for their craft.
If you’re looking for an extra special gift for a loved one this year, here are a few UK-based independent businesses creating bespoke, handmade pieces.
SELFISH CUSTOMS
‘Selfish Customs is a design studio founded on curiosity and collaboration. Our practice focuses on materiality to develop sculptural pieces that have real relevance to their surroundings.
We are a creative partnership. Our career backgrounds have always been in technical roles – fabrication for fine art, design and film and so working with other technicians and makers is instinctive to our process. Our location in rural Suffolk has therefore led us to collaborate with local industry.
In building a relationship with these businesses we have become interested in the byproducts of farming and its satellite trades. Some of these materials once essential such as wool, are now all but valueless. In the hope of spotlighting this decline we have created a collection of objects from these remnants of rural trade. The collection celebrates the inherent qualities in the various materials by exposing them in playful, tactile forms.’
OLIVIA JANE JEWELLERY
‘Working in recycled Silver and Gold, Olivia is a contemporary jeweller based in Penryn, Cornwall.
Thriving on getting stuck in, Olivia sketches, designs, plans and manufactures each design from her workshop based in Penryn. She takes inspirations from geometric forms, lines and shapes, that we see around us everyday. From the negative spaces between leaves and branches, light and shadow, textures and interiors. Once she has a selection of shapes and forms, she dissects and combines them for balanced proportionality. Olivia aims to achieve harmony and visual satisfaction within her designs.’
TIMBER ROBOT STUDIO
‘Timber Robot was founded by Philip Gay in 2022. Producing both limited and open editions of work, there is a strong focus on making impactful pieces. With a playful approach to design, the studio often uses contrasting timbers, textures and materials. Precision woodwork, exploring themes of duality, contrast, tactility and balance. Contemporary collectable furniture and objects for your home.
Philip worked for over 10 years as a propmaker in the uk film industry, working on such films as Star wars – Rogue one, Guardians of the Galaxy and Mission Impossible Fallout. Alongside film jobs he also worked with toy inventors helping to develop prototype models and mechanisms. In 2021 he was frustrated with making such temporary objects and so retrained in fine woodwork at Robinson House Studio, tutored by Theo Cook and Marc Fish.
All of the work for Timber Robot has been designed and built by Philip. He finds the process of taking a concept though to realisation incredibly rewarding, building with his own hands is an important part of what he does.’
FLORINA
‘FLORINA inspires from the prosperity and the enduring light evoked by primordial gold treasures. Creating from this source of inspiration at high-end level is a premiere. You are opting for a truly niche jewellery creation.
This revitalisation responds to people’s most intimate desire to renew themselves from their deepest self and arrive at a more fulfilled life dimension.
Its jewellery aims to remind you to use your intuition, creativity, fulfil your higher dreams and celebrate wholeheartedly.
Florina creates confident design for jewellery lovers to navigate life wholeheartedly.
The designer entrusted each jewellery with the continuous mission to provide you with inspiration for your life.’
BELINDA KING GLASS
‘My business interest is split 50/50 between making homeware and creating one off pieces of art from a clients commission. With my homeware, the water jugs and tumblers and blown in the hotshop, with the pattern added on in a way that can’t be exactly recreated in the next piece made. This makes every piece unique and a one of a kind, fitting the amazing nature of working with glass.
For my Incalmo bowls and the Fraternal pieces, due to the time and colours involved, they are available upon commission to fit the customer themselves or who they are designing for. I love taking parts of peoples’ personalitites and using them as inspiration for the colours, patterns and scale, so this is the best way for the work to be made. Each piece takes two seperate hotshop hires to make, one to make the cane for the patterned colour elements, which are then cut to size and kiln formed if needed, and then heated back up and picked up in the hotshop. Each piece again is one off, as when picking up any element, the exact placement and position of the colour can not be replicated.
As an autistic designer, in my day to day life I am very strict in how certain things have to be for me to be comfortable. By leaning in to the nature of glass and all its’ capabilities, I am able to design work where the joy of the piece is in its’ uniqueness whilst also allowing me to not stress over making each piece be exact. This means I am able to make work that I love creating time and time again, whilst helping my mind to be calm down from its’ normal speed of living on the spectrum, and help me to destress and focus purely on what I love to do.’
For more, head to our Instagram page where we’ll be shouting out small design businesses on our stories – comment on our post to be included.
Wishing you a wonderful festive season, from Team ND