New Designers at Mint

This week we are highlighting some of our favourite new designers featured in Mint’s LDF17 exhibition, Mint Luminates. Each of the designers, Marged Owain, Katy Gillam Hull, and Siriol Hughes, have taken materials, craft, and culture to create inspired collections.

Continue reading to see their beautiful work…

Marged Owain

Creiriau Artefacts © Marged Owain

Marged Owain’s work commemorates and celebrates traditional Welsh craftsmanship, specifically the craft of the butter maker and the quarryman. Both employ the traditional method of carving within their work. This influenced the materials and processes she uses, and the visual symbolism evident within her work.

Creiriau Artefacts © Marged Owain, Creiriau Artefacts at Mint Luminates LDF17 © Inge Clemente

This collection, ‘Creiriau’ (Artefacts), consists of objects with the potential for use and contemplation. Owain aims to communicate craft as an emblem of Welsh heritage, identity and culture. This narrative is implied through the careful selection and juxtaposition of materials; grass referencing back to the agricultural background of butter making, wood representing old wood turning traditions, glass and thread as a symbol of the fragile existence of such historic crafts within contemporary culture. The pieces reflect upon the diminishing crafts, and highlight that these historic traditions are slowly deteriorating.

Creiriau Artifact at Mint Luminates LDF17 © Inge Clemente

Katy Gillam-Hull

Found not Lost © Katy Gillam-Hull

Artist and Maker of contemporary jewellery and objects, Katy Gillam-Hull is often inspired by small curiosities found in archives and on shorelines. Working within these contexts she creates installations and objects that encourage the viewer to slow down and take a second look, engaging the viewer with a playfully tactile combination of materials.

Found not Lost © Katy Gillam-Hull

For her project ‘Found not Lost’, broken bottles, forgotten and fractured are found and made whole with new parts delicately cast and crafted to their exact shape and style. The bottle tops can be separated and worn as a necklace or brooch. Both object and jewellery fixes the forgotten and lost, making new curious artefacts that delight the wearer.

Mudlarked at Mint Luminates LDF17 © Inge Clemente

Found on the River Thames broken pieces of ceramic and glass are preserved in mud, when un-earthed they reveal small parts of London’s history. Katy Gillam-Hull is inspired by these artefacts to re-imagine what they could have looked like originally. Reacting to the object she assumes new shapes for them, often wilfully misunderstanding them, crafting new ghostly forms in silver wire.

Siriol Alaw Hughes

Undulation at Mint Luminates LDF17 © Inge Clemente

Siriol Hughes is a designer and maker. For her most recent project ‘Undulation’ she created a tableware collection inspired by aerial photography of Snowdonia’s mountains. The different heights of the rock formations are mirrored in the shaping and moulding of the piece, and the textures express the rough and harsh qualities of the landscape.

Undulation at Mint Luminates LDF17 © Inge Clemente

She aims to capture the interaction between man and landscape in this collection of tabletop objects, four vessels that sit on a CNC platter. Their functions are non-specific, and dependent on the user’s needs. All the materials used to create these pieces originate from Snowdonia adding to the authenticity of the project. Additionally Hughes sourced the wood from the Snowdonia National park, thus helping people identify with some of the rich textures and qualities that are so visible in this untouched habitation.

Should you like any further information about the above pieces, please email info@mintshop.co.uk.