Plant Explorations: Reimagining a Botanical Archive at The New Craftsmen
Photography via The New Craftsmen
To mark its ten year anniversary, The New Craftsmen has invited its community of makers—artists, woodturners, basketmakers and furniture makers—to reflect upon and take inspiration from the evolution and uses of their craft across the centuries. This month, it stages Plant Explorations—a response to and reflection on humanity’s resourceful and ingenious making traditions with plants. Here’s a look:
Plant Explorations'” features work by the basketmaker Pip Rice.
Archival files from the Economic Botany collection at Kew Gardens.
Takahashi McGil are a husband and wife team with a woodturning studio based in Devon; their work for Plant Explorations was inspired by a collection of ancient, cylindrical water gourds they studied while at Kew.
Using techniques that stretch back to prehistoric times, basketmaker Lisa Atkin has created a collection of baskets intended for use by a tribe of fictitious hunter-gatherers.
A series of trays created by Cyriaque Ambroise in response to the collection of hand-carved, Japanese Wagatabon trays seen at the Economic Botany Collection.