Preparing for a Trade Fair

Exhibiting at a major trade fair is the biggest work event in my calendar. This year I’m showing at Top Drawer Autumn, having already shown at the Spring session of Top Drawer earlier this year, but whatever the time of year the preparation needed for a trade fair is always enormous.

These fairs are not open to the general public but are aimed at retailers, and is where shops go to source their goods. When planning what and how I want to display, there are a many factors to consider. The show itself wants to attract as many buyers to attend as possible and hosts lots of resources for their visitors, often around guiding buyers to choose products to fit in with this season’s trends.

As a small designer/maker - I have decided to resist looking very closely at “trends” Of course, we are all influenced by fashion in decoration and homes as much as we are by fashion in clothes. But the commercial focus of constantly changing colours and themes is one that provokes a very mixed reaction in me. It is a concept that is difficult to adapt to the speed and rhythms at which a craftsperson operates. It’s this slower pace, I think, that is one of the factors that contributes to craft being perceived, rightly, as something of greater value than the simple churning out of products to chime with constantly changing fashion. What is more, the constant search for the next “hot trend” is not a sustainable path in a world of finite resources,

Despite my mixed feelings towards the holy grail of new trends, developing new work is always stimulating and is part of the attraction of being a maker. I think of myself and my work as one small player amongst others, each of us slowly influencing trends of one kind or another.

So as I prepare to show some more new designs that represent months of intensive work, it will be interesting to see whether some of these ideas too become absorbed eventually into a future “hot trend”.

However, at the heart of what I do is a desire to create beautiful tableware that people will enjoy using  and that will perform well on several levels - be comfortable to use and pleasing to touch, be durable, both in the sense of resistance to day to day wear and tear, but also to the ebb and flow of fashion, and be ethical and sustainable.

There is also a correlation, in my view, between the degree of automation with which a product is made, which diminishes its personality and ability to resonate with the person who uses it. Clearly not everything can be hand made and some processes will benefit from automation, but good craft and good design is about transmitting emotion and creating a connection between the maker or designer and the person who uses that piece of (in my case) tableware.

Sadly, I can’t invite everyone to come and see me at Top Drawer, but I will be posting on Instagram and Facebook the adventure - and magic - of the couple of days of stand installation - and news of the show itself.

Please wish me luck!