The, Guildhall St, Bury Saint Edmunds IP33 1PR
6th November to Sunday 22nd November, 10am - 4pm
Suffolk Craft Society is delighted to return to the historic Guildhall in Bury St Edmunds for our final exhibition of the year. Set within this remarkable 800-year-old medieval building, right in the heart of historic Bury St Edmunds, the exhibition brings together an inspiring collection of contemporary craft from makers across Suffolk and the wider region.
From ceramics and textiles to jewellery, glass, printmaking, wood, sculpture and leather, there will be plenty to discover, whether you are looking for a unique piece for your home, a special gift, or simply the opportunity to meet and support talented independent makers. The Guildhall itself is part of the experience. With its fascinating history, distinctive medieval architecture and private walled garden, it provides a beautiful and atmospheric setting for this celebration of contemporary craft.
Meet the Makers joining us this year...
Liz Chester has been a tapestry weaver since 1980 and became a professional weaver following a career in engineering. Her work is often graphic in character and inspired by her local environment and everyday experiences. Liz uses colour, texture and pattern to create richly detailed tapestries, from small domestic pieces to large commissions.
Chloe Scott is a woven designer whose work combines graphic patterns inspired by nature and architecture with traditional weaving techniques. She works with wool, cotton and specialist yarns, often hand-dyeing the warp so that every fabric is unique. Her bespoke handwoven textiles are transformed into cushions, bags, doorstops and other home and lifestyle pieces, as well as artworks for exhibition.
Jean Constantine creates decorative felt inspired by the Suffolk countryside and its wildlife. Using dyed wool fibres, yarns and prefelted shapes, she builds up layers through wet felting before adding hand embroidery to enhance detail. Her peaceful interpretations of animals and birds combine a love of natural forms with the rich textures and subtle colour variations created through the felting process.
Jenny Nutbeem creates individually dyed and painted velvet, silk and linen scarves and jackets using indigo and reactive dyes. Inspired by traditional Japanese textile techniques and the colours of the Suffolk coast, her work reflects a strong environmental and no-waste philosophy. Jenny also experiments with reclaimed and recycled materials and shares her skills through creative workshops.
Jo Rolfe creates textile work inspired by the colours, patterns and structures of East Anglian sea, land, sky and architecture. Local rural crafts such as sailmaking and thatching also influence her work, which includes screen-printed textiles, upcycled boat-sail pieces, bags and other functional items. She combines hand-dyeing, layering, stitch, laser cutting and print, working mainly with natural and reclaimed fabrics.
Alison Dane creates colourful, lightweight paper jewellery inspired by her interests in photography, gardening and the use of colour. She designs and decorates her own papers using techniques including monoprinting, sponging and staining before transforming them into hand-rolled beads and delicate three-dimensional earrings. Semi-precious beads add further colour and detail to her distinctive contemporary pieces.
Sara Barker creates handmade enamelled silver and copper jewellery inspired by the meeting point between built environments and the natural world. East Anglia’s landscape, light and open spaces provide a starting point for her explorations of shape, colour and structure. Her work combines three-dimensional construction with a playful use of colour and a strong emphasis on clarity and simplicity of line.
Helen Smith is a Suffolk-based jeweller, combining traditional techniques with contemporary design. She specialises in Mokume Gane, an ancient Japanese technique that creates intricate patterns by fusing and working layers of contrasting metals, and also creates Cloisonné Enamel jewellery. Her work often incorporates 18ct gold and gemstones, resulting in distinctive and enduring pieces.
Susi Hines creates contemporary jewellery using traditional construction techniques and her own gold alloys, combining different metals with etched and patinated surfaces, diamonds and gemstones. Inspired by movement, metamorphosis and patterns in nature, her pieces often incorporate intricate structures and moving elements.
Diane Levitt creates jewellery inspired by the natural world and the Suffolk landscape around her home in Constable Country. She uses recycled and ethically sourced materials wherever possible, incorporating enamels, stones, glass and occasionally found treasures from the coast. Diane enjoys creating bespoke commissions, working collaboratively with clients to produce jewellery with personal meaning and sentiment.
Mark Papworth is a traditional English leatherworker creating practical goods using time-honoured techniques. His hand-stitched pieces are characterised by clean lines and simple forms designed to last for many years. Mark also restores and repairs vintage leather goods and shares his knowledge through personalised leatherworking courses from his home in North West Suffolk.
Sarah Woodcock creates beautiful and practical leather goods using high-quality natural materials and traditional craftsmanship. Her aim is to make pieces that are durable enough to be loved and passed down through generations, becoming more characterful with age and use.
Cathy Constable creates fused glass inspired by the light, colours and textures of the East Anglian landscape, particularly its marshes, estuaries and coastline. She builds layers of glass to reflect the marshes and sea, using opaque and iridescent glass, enamels, powders and frit to create depth and texture. Her work sits between abstraction and representation, often incorporating local birds, boats and plants.
Hassina Khan specialises in kiln-formed glass, combining fusing, slumping and traditional glass painting. Her English and Pakistani heritage informs her work, with fragments of text translated between English and Urdu and transformed into abstract compositions using Nastaliq script. Through changes of scale, rotation and arrangement, the original words become patterns that communicate ideas of identity, language and heritage.
Sally Freer, former Vice Chair and now an Honorary Member of Suffolk Craft Society Sally creates monoprints inspired by the Suffolk and Essex countryside and coast. Her work captures hedgerows, woods, pathways, patterned fields, churches and boats along the shore, exploring how colour and patterned print marks can transform the atmosphere and mood of an image.
Greta Hansen trained at Ipswich Art School, Central Saint Martins and London University before developing her printmaking practice at Gainsborough’s House. She works mainly in collagraph, lino and MDF wood blocks, often using reduction techniques to create rich and unexpected colour effects. Deeply inspired by the Suffolk landscape, Greta develops her prints from sketches and paintings made during regular countryside sketching trips.
Helen Maxfield creates limited-edition linocuts from her studio near Needham Market in Suffolk. Her inspiration comes from sketching trips through the Suffolk countryside and along the coast, with observational studies forming the starting point for her designs. These are developed through the printmaking process to celebrate both the beauty of the landscape and the distinctive qualities of linocut.
Terry Bryan is a printmaker and graphic artist working from his rural Essex studio. Following a long career in graphic design, he began studying traditional fine-art printmaking at The Curwen Print Study Centre in 2013. He works in solarplate etching, photo etching, monotype and collagraph, drawing on landscapes, seascapes, architecture, photography and military history to create contemporary prints.
Marta Dyer-Smith has been passionate about printmaking since taking a course at Thomas Gainsborough House almost ten years ago. She works experimentally across collagraphy, monoprint, drypoint and relief printing, drawing inspiration from landscape and outdoor sketching. Her abstract landscapes are developed from sketches and observations.
Jenny Portlock is a wood engraver and linocut artist whose work combines intricate detail with a strong graphic quality. She works primarily in boxwood, valued for its fine grain, and prints her engravings using a specially adapted etching press. Inspired by her imagination and her admiration for Japanese Ukiyo-e, Jenny creates dreamlike images featuring rhythmical shapes, intricate detail and often a hidden meaning.
Heidi McEvoy-Swift creates sewn sculptures using salvaged theatrical textiles and found organic materials. Her hand-stitched vessels and wall pieces combine discarded costume fabrics with natural materials gathered from woodland and coastline. Her recent work explores themes including rising sea levels, flooding and coastal erosion, reflecting on humanity’s relationship with the natural world and our attempts to control it.
Joy Holden creates original mosaics using finely cut glass and ceramic tesserae, specialising in the reverse method, which produces unusually flat surfaces. Inspired by the shapes, colours and patterns found while walking in the countryside, Joy seeks to capture fleeting moments in the landscape using permanent mineral fragments. Her work explores the contrast between the fluidity of nature and the solid materials used to represent it.
Nicci Dedman creates intricate three-dimensional sculptures using recycled and repurposed steel wire, drawing on her background in jewellery. Working without soldering or welding, she carefully manipulates wire into complex forms inspired particularly by local flora and fauna. Her sculptures explore the contrasting qualities of fragility and strength through delicate, highly detailed structures.
Nicholas Rowe is an artistic woodturner whose work celebrates the natural character of locally sourced green, seasoned and reclaimed timber. Rather than forcing the material into a predetermined form, he responds to the grain, bark, cracks, voids and spalting revealed during turning. His carefully considered forms and highly refined finishes aim to preserve and highlight the unique qualities of each piece of wood.
Toby Winteringham creates bold contemporary pieces defined by strong lines, elegant forms and an emphasis on hand craftsmanship. Working mainly in solid wood and veneers, he combines pared-back structures with distinctive trompe l’oeil marquetry designs. Alongside larger pieces, Toby also creates mirrors, trays, magazine holders and jewellery.
Lin Carters work carries a joyful urgency and a deep appreciation for materials, processes and provenance, with each piece telling its own story. Trained in traditional and contemporary basketry, Lin works with locally gathered and grown materials, including willow she has cultivated herself and rush collected from Suffolk rivers. She weaves these into rush hats, vessels and decorative forms that celebrate both place and tradition.
Neville Tatham creates functional slipware pottery drawing on the traditions of rural European ceramics and the Arts and Crafts movement. Working with local clays and traditional techniques, each pot is hand thrown and decorated using slip trailing and incised decoration. The warm terracotta clay is often left partly exposed, creating a tactile contrast between raw and glazed surfaces.
Claire Pirie specialises in thrown functional ware, working primarily in porcelain. She is particularly interested in form, function and the tactile qualities of polished clay, creating calm, understated pieces designed to enhance everyday life. Her simple palette of glazes allows the purity and natural character of the porcelain to remain central to each piece.
Moira Goodall creates hand-built ceramic vessels inspired by the coastal forms, colours and light of the river and salt marshes surrounding her studio. Her vessels are made from flattened coils, decorated with pale slips and burnished before being fired using an ancient sawdust and smoke-firing technique. The unpredictable effects of fire, fuel and weather become an important part of the finished work.
Marie Coomber is a self-taught ceramicist working in the Stour Valley, creating wheel-thrown pieces in speckled stoneware. She enjoys contrasting exposed, tactile areas of clay with smooth glazes and combines angular forms with colours inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk, South West France and Germany. Her functional ceramics are designed to bring individuality and pleasure to everyday rituals.
Susie Bruce creates unique porcelain tiles inspired by drawings and observations from her sketchbooks. Each tile is individually designed, handcrafted and fired at high temperatures before being decorated with coloured glazes, creating a rich interplay of surface, colour and detail. Following a career as an art teacher, Susie now works from her own ceramics studio, continuing to develop her practice.
Cathy D’Arcy creates imaginative ceramic figures and animals inspired by her childhood in East Africa and Kuwait and her love of vibrant colour and pattern. Working in earthstone clay, she uses a variety of techniques including engobes, underglazes and different glazes and firings. Her playful pieces combine her background in textile design with a distinctive contemporary approach to clay.
Pat Todd creates bowls and wall pieces in porcelain and stoneware. Her delicate porcelain bowls capture spontaneous moments in the casting process, while her framed ceramic landscapes and seascapes use textured clay and slip decoration to evoke the Suffolk coast. Oxides and carefully applied glazes add colour and depth to her work.
Mary Wyatt is a ceramic artist based in Felixstowe whose hand-built sculptures explore shape, balance and movement. Her work features human figures, animals and seascapes suspended in dynamic forms, and she is currently experimenting with the distinctive surfaces and unpredictable effects of raku firing.
While the craft is at the heart of our exhibition, take time to also explore the remarkable building that provides our setting. The Guildhall has been at the centre of community life in Bury St Edmunds since the 1220s. Built for the Guild of Merchants when the town was at the heart of the lucrative medieval wool trade, it became an important centre of civic power and played a significant role in the town's long and sometimes turbulent relationship with the powerful Abbey of St Edmund. Over the centuries, the Guildhall has been a place of justice, civic debate, social provision and community life. Its Courtroom, Banqueting Hall and Tudor Kitchen each tell a different part of the building's story.
The Guildhall also has a remarkable connection to the Second World War. Its Royal Observer Corps Operations Room is the only surviving example of its kind in the world. From here, aircraft movements over Britain were tracked and information passed to RAF Fighter Command. The building itself has evolved over hundreds of years. From its original medieval structure, later additions included the porch and its wall safe, the division of the main hall into the Court Room and Banqueting Hall, and the Council Chamber, which later became the Operations Room.
This exhibition is also your final opportunity to buy a ticket for the Friends of Suffolk Craft Society Annual Raffle. Tickets are just £1, with some wonderful craft prizes to be won:
The raffle is organised by the Friends of Suffolk Craft Society, and every ticket helps support the Society, its makers and contempory crafts.
With so many makers, materials, techniques and stories to discover, there is plenty to explore at our final exhibition of the year.
We look forward to welcoming you to the Guildhall for a wonderful celebration of creativity.
Our exhibitions celebrate the extraordinary craftsmanship of Suffolk Craft Society makers, showcasing intricate details, time-honored skills, and innovative designs. With dynamic, ever-evolving displays set in iconic venues, each showcase promises a fresh, inspiring, and immersive experience.
If you're unable to attend an exhibition in person don’t forget you can support talented local artisans through our online shop >>>