Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Craft “is cool,” says Isobel Dennis, director of Collect, the annual contemporary craft and design fair in London. “In a technology-heavy world, its relevance has never been greater. No matter how much the world changes, we as humans will never stop making.” Established by Crafts Council, the fair’s 2025 edition runs from February 28 to March 2 at Somerset House. While the 400-plus makers — from textile artists to metalsmiths — draw on techniques stretching back centuries, if not millennia, they are producing works that spark new ideas and innovate with diverse materials. The best pieces are not just sought-after by collectors and interior designers, they “enrich our lives”, says Dennis. Lee So-raComprising abstracted patterns of delicate fabric, the work of Korean artist Lee So-ra — presented by Lloyd Choi Gallery — appears like stained glass. Lee’s medium is jogakbo, a traditional Korean patchwork using leftover textiles. “I love how small fabric scraps — including discarded ones — can be continuously stitched together to create something entirely new,” she says.Lee works with Oksa silk and ramie, used for traditional Korean clothing, and hand-dyes these with homegrown botanical pigments. She then cuts the fabric into geometrical shapes, layers them and hems them using a special technique called Ssamsol stitching, then sews the various fragments into a composition. The resulting works are either framed or free-hanging; some comprise more than 8,000 pieces of fabric. Lee has exhibited her work internationally and collaborated with designers including Rose Uniacke.James Trundle and Isobel NapierHaving met at art school in London, partners James Trundle and Isobel Napier pursued their separate practices — carpentry and textile art — before looking at how they could work together. Debuting at Collect with Flow Gallery, the duo produces sculptural furniture and artworks that marry digital techniques with the natural idiosyncrasies of timber.In a series of wall pieces, panels of offcuts are 3D-milled to create an undulating surface and then laser-engraved with patterns that enhance the wood’s grain. “It blurs the boundaries between craft, fine art and furniture,” says Trundle. The duo wants to scale up their works to create whole interiors, and have several pieces on show at Collect.Chisato YasuiFrom her base in Tsukuba, Japan, Chisato Yasui draws on her background in oil painting to create coil-formed ceramics that blend the painterly and the sculptural. The clay, she says, “is a perfect medium to tangibly experience and shape the underlying flow of my emotions”.Her Profile series, on show with AIFA gallery, strikes a cubist note: abstract assemblages of geometric forms with glazes of varying hues. These are, she says, inspired by magnetic building blocks her children used to play with. “They often turned these creations into their ‘home’ or ‘castle’, weaving stories around them,” she says.Darren AppiagyeiLondon-based wood-turner Darren Appiagyei creates his unusual vessels from banksia nuts — cones from the banksia tree dotted with holes — as well as burr wood, irregular growths in trees that appear like deformities.Appiagyei is exhibiting as part of Collect Open, which invites designers and artists to showcase experimental installations. His project, “What Grows In the Dark Comes to Light”, dedicated to his late mother, aims through 10 works to explore her experience with fibroids, non-cancerous but sometimes painful growths in or around the uterus. The wood used came from Greenwich, the London borough his mother lived in for 40 years. He used tools to create different textures — and even burnt some of the pieces, “dot by dot”, resulting in intricate patterns.Shinta NakajimaSheffield-based Shinta Nakajima works with silver, creating sculptures, lights and other decorative objects that are inspired by nature and influenced by the city’s metalworking heritage. His ongoing Acanthus series, exhibited with The Goldsmiths’ Company, depicts the plant’s leaves as twisting silver forms, reinterpreting its use in architecture as a symbol of enduring life.Nakajima calls his works “vessels”, though they are not practically so; in his mind, the silver forms protectively wrap around a void. He works at the city’s Silver Space studio, which supports the next generation of silversmiths.Craft Council’s Collect Art Fair is at Somerset House, until March 2Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
