For the Vintage Supermarket event hosted by Merchant & Found, we have collaborated with eight prominent contemporary makers to craft exclusive pieces. In conjunction with London Craft Week, we are thrilled to showcase these unique creations through workshops and presentations led by the artisans themselves.
Jahday Ford
Jahday Ford is a visionary glass artist who specialises in hot glass and mold design. He utilises a unique combination of glassblowing and digital design to create contemporary glass objects that are a radical departure from traditional forms.
Ford’s work is characterised by an exploration of materiality. Through experimentation, he bonds these two contrasting mediums, glass and digital design, to create truly bespoke pieces.
In his own words, “I create work that’s very bespoke and I create different aspects of design and craft. I like to create contemporary versions of glass rather than traditional.”
Ford works with a variety of materials compatible with glass, pushing the boundaries of the art form.
Johnny Tapp
Johnny Tapp is a passionate woodworker who creates functional items that are as pleasing to use as they are to look at. He uses a variety of woods and natural materials to create his one-of-a-kind pieces.
Tapp’s love of woodworking began at a young age, when he spent time working with his father, a carpenter and builder. He now uses some of his grandfather’s tools, and enjoys collecting and restoring old tools.
Tapp is self-taught in the art of brush making, and uses a variety of materials for the bristles of his brushes, including coconut husk and horsehair. The handles of his brushes are made from a variety of woods, including oak, pear, and ash.
In 2020, Tapp turned his woodworking hobby into a part-time business. He is based in Bruton, Somerset, and is committed to creating beautiful and functional items that will last a lifetime.
Marcia Bennett-Male
Marcia Bennett-Male is a stone carver and letter engraver working primarily with limestone, sandstone and marble. Having originally studied fashion and textiles,
in 1994 she moved on to architectural stone carving and letter cutting at the City & Guilds of London Art School. In 2001 she was granted a QEST scholarship to study stone masonry at The Building Crafts College.
Working to commission, she has been involved in the restoration of churches and historic buildings, while her personal practice centres around carvings that take inspiration from all aspects of food, an interest that developed as a result of working in the culinary diverse district of Peckham, south-east London. “With my own sculptures, I use a lot of surplus and waste stone from other stone carvers and material salvaged from buildings that have been demolished,” she says. “I also use slate offcuts from a local fireplace company as well as imported Zimbabwean Springstone that I source in Brighton.”
At the Vintage Supermarket, Marcia will be presenting a stone carving of a sweetheart cabbage on a base carved from a single block of limestone, as well as a cauliflower hewn from a chalk boulder she brought back from the Cherry Hinton chalk pits near Cambridge. “I’m aways interested to see my work in a different context,” she says.
Nick Malyon
Nick Malyon has been producing neon art and sculptures since 1993. Inspired by a trip to America in his early twenties, he returned to the U.K. and spent three months working in a sign factory in Wembley. A six month neon course followed, after which he spent several years working for various neon shops in London.
Now based in a studio in Farnham, Surrey he designs and manufactures neon signs for a host of establishments using a traditional process whereby glass tubing, usually from Italy, is bent under a hot flame. “Initially, my work was suppling commercial sign work to well-known high street shops and businesses, then throughout the 1990’s, it began to encompass television, film and exhibition work too,” he explains. “The advent of the LED in the early 2000s stripped away a vast amount of work and caused the closure of many neon shops but around 2005, by a quirk of fate, I became involved with a neon project for the artist Cerith Wyn Evans through White Cube gallery. This led to an enormously varied and interesting career making and installing neon pieces for artists around the world.”
Now, Nick is regularly commissioned by galleries and museums and his work has been displayed at the Tate Modern, the Royal Academy, White Cube, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and at the Venice Biennale.
Having never exhibited at Craft Week before, for the Vintage Supermarket he will be creating a selection of three-dimensional neon cheeses. “Anything three dimensional in a two-dimensional medium is exciting to make,” he says. “Most importantly, it’s a real challenge.”
Clemence Joly
Clemence Joly lives and works in Paris. Clemence graduated as a graphic designer from Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Arts Appliques et des Metiers d’Art, and from the Chelsea School of Art and Central Saint -Martins. Clemence is an internationally renowned textile artist who has been commissioned to create a textile installation for the Vintage Supermarket.
Hattie Newman
Hattie is originally from Devon and now works internationally creating, building and directing the most extraordinary works principally in paper. Hattie’s studio is a place where sketches and ideas come to life. Hattie has worked globally with many household names bringing their brands to life in a witty and unassuming way. Hattie has been commissioned to create a dedicated installation for the Vintage Supermarket.
Kate Jenkins
Kate is an internationally exhibited textile artist from Brighton. Her playful work is often food inspired, a playful world of pop-art crochet, knit and embroidery creations. Kate is best known for her trademark sense of humour with colourful yarns and lifelike creations.
Join us at The Vintage Supermarket
