We’re open! After a huge team effort from our dedicated members—and with thanks to our wonderful hosts, we’re delighted to welcome visitors to Gallery 21 and The Dovecote at Snape Maltings for our first exhibition of the year. This inspiring showcase by the Suffolk Craft Society celebrates the exceptional skill, imagination and diversity of our makers, many of whom draw inspiration from Suffolk’s landscapes. Featuring ceramics, printmaking, textiles, glass, wood and jewellery, the exhibition brings together contemporary craft rooted in tradition. We look forward to welcoming you. 

Printmaking is represented by Sally Freer, whose prints depict Suffolk’s hedgerows, winding paths and coastal scenes, using layered colour and patterned marks to shift mood and atmosphere. Helen Maxfield creates limited edition linocuts inspired by sketches made across the Suffolk countryside and coastline, celebrating both place and the bold qualities of the linocut process. Greta Hansen’s work, developed from observational sketches and paintings, is rooted in the Suffolk landscape and conveys a strong sense of light, space and connection. Wood engraver Jenny Portlock works primarily in boxwood, enabling intricate detail and fine line. Influenced by Japanese aesthetics, her graphic, often dreamlike prints are rich in symbolism and meticulously crafted. 

Glass artists joining us at Snape include Cathy Constable, who uses fused glass to evoke the salt marshes and tidal creeks, layering translucent and iridescent materials to create atmospheric, semi-abstract landscapes. Clare Gaylard sculpts Murano glass in the flame, forming intricate vessels, sculpture and wearable pieces that celebrate colour, light and storytelling. Hassina Khan combines kiln-forming and glass painting to create contemporary works inspired by her English and Pakistani heritage, often incorporating text rendered in Urdu Nastaliq script. 

Textile artists exhibiting include Liz Chester, a tapestry weaver since 1980 who trained with the Lyth Tapestry Weavers of Caithness and now exhibits her work nationally and internationally. Helen Dougall works with batik, translating her observations of light across landscape and shoreline into richly layered pieces built through repeated waxing and dyeing. Ruth Holt weaves silk and wool textiles on a 24-shaft loom, creating subtle, tactile cloth inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk and the seascapes of Orkney. 

The new Curlew bench will be unveiled on 11th April as part of Britten Pears Arts’ Place Weekend. A unique collaboration between Britten Pears Arts, Suffolk Craft Society and The Bench Project, the bench was designed by SCS member Tim Germain and is located along the historic Sailor’s Path overlooking the Alde Estuary. Inspired by the musical notation of Benjamin Britten and featuring poetry by W. H. Auden, it brings together craft, music and nature while also enhancing accessibility along this much-loved walking route. 

Jewellers adding sparkle to the exhibition include Susi Hines, who creates contemporary pieces from her own gold alloys with which she achieves subtle tonal shifts. Articulated forms that explore layered assembly, movement and rhythm are central to her intricate designs. Diane Levitt draws inspiration from the natural forms of Constable Country, making sustainable jewellery from recycled materials, enamel, stones and found shoreline fragments. Helen Smith creates Mokume Gane, an ancient Japanese technique that fuses layers of contrasting metals. Through repeated forging, drilling and milling intricate, organic patterns are revealed and captured in simple forms often accented with gold and gemstones. 

Adrian Parfitt crafts finely made furniture from northern hemisphere hardwoods, producing a small number of considered pieces each year from his garden studio, reflecting tradition and respect for material. Nicholas Rowe’s woodturning celebrates the natural character of timber, allowing cracks, grain and spalting to shape each piece into tactile, authentic forms. Dylan Pym handcrafts bespoke furniture from locally sourced hardwoods, blending traditional joinery with steam bending to create flowing, organic forms, while managing his timber sustainably on a 15-acre smallholding. 

The exhibition will feature a wide range of ceramics, including Susie Bruce, handcrafts delicate porcelain tiles and vessels with a whimsical spirit, exploring the movement and tension inherent in clay.. Don Hawkley creates large sculptural stoneware vessels and figures, layered with slips, glazes and oxides to combine structure with expressive surface texture. Moira Goodall handbuilds contemporary vessels inspired by coastal light and marshland, using burnished slips and smoke or sawdust firing to create subtle, textured surfaces. Neville Tatham specialises in traditional slipware, throwing functional earthenware from locally sourced clays and honouring centuries-old English pottery traditions in a contemporary way. Janene Waudby’s ceramics reflect her deep connection to the sea and wild coastlines, using throws or handbuilding with slips, oxides and fire to create elemental, weathered surfaces shaped in collaboration with nature. 

Working in porcelain and stoneware, Pat Todd creates functional bowls and wall pieces that read as painterly compositions. Her slip-cast bowls capture movement and ammonite-like textures, while layered clay landscapes evoke the Suffolk coastline. Ursula Stroh Reubens handbuilds sculptural vessels, biscuit-fired then Raku or smoke-fired, with forms inspired by Greek architecture and landscape, where birds, trees and landforms emerge through slips and pigments. John Chipperfield, founder and Honorary Member, produces asymmetrical jugs, shallow dishes and vessels featuring bold, expressive glazes. His ceramics act as canvases for dramatic surface design. Pam Schomberg, draws on ancient artefacts and historical objects to create mainly non-functional vessels, alongside porcelain jewellery and select functional pieces rich in narrative and form. Kate Reynolds makes sculptural ceramics exploring the human head and figure, using Raku-fired crackle glazes and smoke-blackened surfaces, as well as press-moulded platters and tiles decorated with slips and oxides. 

The exhibition will also include sculpture from Heidi McEvoy-Swift, who creates sustainable “sewn sculptures” from salvaged textiles and found natural materials, hand-stitched into intuitive vessel and wall-based forms. Anne Schwegmann-Fielding transforms broken tableware, jewellery and glass into vibrant mosaic sculptures, reworking familiar ceramic patterns into richly textured contemporary pieces. Nicci Dedman produces intricate three-dimensional sculptures from repurposed steel wire, crafting delicate yet strong forms inspired by local flora and fauna, all without soldering or welding. 

Nestled on the scenic River Alde, Snape Maltings is just six miles from Aldeburgh and set within stunning countryside. The converted Victorian buildings house shops, galleries, a restaurant and café, along with several performance halls making it the perfect backdrop for enjoying our Spring Exhibition and so much more. We look forward to welcoming you very soon.