What can I see at Crafts Alive at Rodmarton Manor in 2023?

Rodmarton Interiors Bedroom with Liz Lippiatt Textiles and Janine Roper Ceramics (Image: guildcrafts.org.uk)

Once upon a time, visitors to rural craft fayres could expect to find a small field dotted with stalls selling corn dolls and crocheted antimacassars. Times have changed. Not only has craft become cool, but it is also a hot topic, understood as being good for our wellbeing and cognitive development, acknowledged as an important economic sector, and recognised as a vital part of our cultural heritage in need of support and protection.

It is against this background that, in 2018, The Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen launched their five-day festival, Crafts Alive, at Arts & Crafts house Rodmarton Manor. The festival’s third iteration, ‘In The Maker’s Hands - The Tools of our Trade’, opens on September 13.

Crafts Alive at Rodmarton Manor (Image: guildcrafts.org.uk)Plant sales at Rodmarton (Image: guildcrafts.org.uk)‘Crafts Alive is a project borne out of a passionate belief in demonstrating the huge social value of the Arts & Crafts movement and in creating something well made with access to all,’ explains project lead, textile designer Liz Lippiatt.   

Rodmarton Manor was designed by the Arts & Crafts Movement architect, Ernest Barnsley for Claud and Margaret Biddulph. Built between 1909 and 1929, it was one of the last houses in Britain to be constructed and furnished in the traditional style with everything done by hand using local materials and local craftspeople, including important figures such as furniture maker Peter Waals, Wedgewood pottery decorators Alfred and Louise Powell and the sculptor William Simmonds.

When the house was finished, it became a hub for creative activity with people from Rodmarton village coming to take part in music, plays, and puppet shows (the puppets and Punch and Judy theatre were made by Willam Simmonds), as well as various craft skills workshops. The Rodmarton Women’s Guild met there every week, producing an exceptional series of applique panels featuring local scenes which still hang in the house today.  

Crafts Alive 2023 has the house and its community craft history at the heart of the programme.

Hooverfish, by Nigel Williams (Image: Nigel Williams)‘This year’s Crafts Alive will see the legacy and utopian ideas of the Biddulph family living on in the Gloucestershire Guild’s extraordinary community,’ says Liz. ‘As the direct successors of the original craftsmen and women who contributed to one of the finest Arts & Crafts Movement houses in the country, more than 60 skilled and visionary Guild makers will create some outstanding contemporary craftwork responding directly to the interior settings and the theme, In the maker’s hands – the tools of our trade.’

Working in partnership with the current fourth generation owners, John and Sarah Biddulph, Guild members and a number of invited guest artists were given privileged access to the house and many of them have created site specific work which will be placed throughout the house creating a fascinating dialogue with the original architecture and domestic furnishings.

On the first-floor corridor, mosaic artist Cleo Mussi has placed a tall ceramic panel in each of the seven alcoves. Symbolic of the mythical world that was created in seven days by The Makers’ Hand, the panels represent the changing seasons in the garden. 

In the dining room, textile and fashion designer Kathryn Clarke has collaborated with ceramicist Annie Hewett to create a contemporary twist on the table setting. Clarke’s textiles feature natural forms drawn from the house, while Hewett’s modular cake stand was inspired by a motif she discovered on a large chest in the hall.  Outside, guest artist, sculptor Paul Grellier has made a new body of work in ash timber in response to ash dieback disease which is having a devastating impact on the landscape.

Rodmarton Enamel Brooch, by Harriet St Leger (Image: Harriet St Leger)And, echoing the spirit of Rodmarton Manor as a community enterprise, there is plenty of visitor engagement too with a lively programme of workshops, maker demonstrations, talks and even a play, The Making of Lucy by local author Frank Hatt, featuring the creators of Rodmarton Manor.

Those creators gave many individuals the opportunity to learn and practice a craft to a professional level, enabling them not only to do worthwhile work, but also to live as part of a supportive, thriving community. Perpetuating that ambitious ideal has always been the Gloucestershire Guild’s central aim for Crafts Alive and this year, against a background of rapidly declining creative education in schools and colleges and the rapidly accelerating advance of AI, it has never felt more relevant.

Crafts Alive: In The Maker’s Hands - The Tools of our Trade presented by The Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen runs from September 13 to 17, 2023 at Rodmarton Manor, Gloucestershire, GL7 6PF.
Intelligent Hands, by Charlotte Abrahams and Katy Bevan, is published by Quickthorn Books (Image: quickthornbooks.com)
Charlotte Abrahams is writer and co-author of Intelligent Hands: Why Making is Life Skill, published by Quickthorn Books. Her co-author Katy Bevan will be talking at Crafts Alive on Sunday, September 17 at 2.15pm about the book and the importance of arts education.