It’s show time again! This time somewhere very special and a location that’s been looming on the culture radar for years now, that place is Sherborne House – now simply known as ‘The Sherborne’.
This stunning new venue is high-end art gallery, sculpture park, events venue, restaurant / cafe and important historical house all in one. It also becomes the new home venue for Dorset Visual Arts which Simon was one of the original trustees of when it was established nearly two decades ago. Excitingly one of the first shows sees Dorset Visual Arts resurrect the Making Dorset brand, showcasing Dorset’s finest crafts makers, which we are placed to say we are considered one of.
Dorset Visual Arts is thrilled to announce the return of Making Dorset with a major new exhibition at @thesherborne. Building on the county’s rich tradition of craft, design, and making, Making Dorset will present the very best ceramic, furniture, silversmithing, print, glass, and textile work produced in Dorset. It explores the intrinsic dialogue between environment, heritage, and creative practice in the county and establishes Sherborne as a new home for design and making in the region. This new exhibition, featuring over 30 makers, forms part of the evolving cultural programme curated by Dorset Visual Arts at The Sherborne.
Making Dorset celebrates the county’s best contemporary craft, design and making. The initiative features a vast array of works with a variety of approaches, responses and use of materials, including award-winning international furniture makers such as John Makepeace OBE, Petter Southall and Simon Thomas Pirie.
Simon Thomas Pirie – Pair of Pivot Drawer Console Tables in Native Ash. Click here for more information
Amanda Notarianni and Charlie Macpherson (Notarianni Glass) have been working together to make award-winning contemporary glass for 25 years. They have a passion for design excellence and an exceptional commitment to creating unique works of art.
Ceramicist Victoria Jardine is a selected member of the Professional Craft Potters’ Association. She has taught Museum Studies at London Metropolitan University, examining how objects’ meanings can change as we move them through different environments, from home to museum or studio to gallery.
Each piece of Karina Gill’s silver is designed and handmade from her workshop in Dorset. Her work captures the transformation of hard metal into brilliant organic forms that mirror the geometry of nature. She has established a unique voice through the crafting of exquisite contemporary pieces that demonstrate her characteristic experimental approach.
Making Dorset also features other unique forms, including work by Jane Atkinson, whose practice in contemporary lace encompasses pieces designed at scale to examine aspects of the climate crisis and explorations into pattern and design to lead her lacemaking into wearable art and domestic ornament. It is an art that talks and works hard for its living.
The initiative’s relaunch also welcomes guest makers ahead of a call for new and emerging makers in early 2025.
At its inception, Making Dorset was open to professionally and/or academically trained designers and makers who had established their practice in Dorset, including trained or apprenticed emergent designers and makers. The group sought to share ideas and experiences and undertake critical reviews to explore the content and processes associated with each individual’s practice.
‘Once they get to Dorset (or return) the place holds them fast. The work, whatever the medium, sings of Dorset’s holloways, chalk and faltering edges, whimbreled cloudscapes and its brilled and dabbled seas.’ Professor Simon Olding, Foreword to Fifty Dorset Makers, 2017
Simon Thomas Pirie – Pair of O’Torri Side Tables in Ebonized oak. Click here for more information
Artwork from Making Dorset will be available to purchase through The Sherborne and many of the makers work will be featured in The Sherborne shop.
The exhibition opens on Saturday 26th October and runs until Sunday 12th January 2025. More information can be found on the Sherborne website