First in a series of blogs about craft and artisan fairs I’ve been to. Might reorganise the content later!
Today, my parents and I visited Fakenham Racecourse for the Norfolk Artisan Fair. This was a large one with around 130 stalls situated over three main areas, both inside and outside under gazebos.
Lots of highlights to mention, lots of business cards collected. Without further ado, I’ll start with Sandra Penstone-Smith, a mixed media artist based in North Norfolk. At the show she featured mostly her maps like the one below.
I’ve seen this sort of thing before, but these were done well. Very local maps, too, from the Norfolk coast and from further inland.
Next up, we have lampwork glass jewellery designer Lana Goulding and her company Gingebod Designs. She had on display various pieces of jewellery made out of her glass beads. They were lovely. A picture of some past pieces is shown below.
Underglass Terrariums was upstairs in the first building we went into. Now, I love terrariums and I thought their pieces were excellent, and well priced. I wish I’d bought one but it was early in the day and I forgot to go back!
Also upstairs was John Marchant and his collection of Historic Pens. These were stunning hand turned pens made out of wood and/or acrylic. Of particular interest were screen-used pens from, for example, Casino Royale (the Daniel Craig one, not the David Niven abomination!) and Nolan’s Batman films. Also of note were pens made out of pieces of the Titanic (!) and the Olympic and also some aircraft pieces. My favourite was the one made out of a piece of the original TARDIS (see below)! I bought a keyring mini pen, but could have spent a LOT more at John’s stall.
Next up, Ambelotte Art (Victoria Bond) specialises in prints of art pieces made out of layer scalpel-cut paper. The results are much more impressive than the description. I picked up a card for my mother in law which I hope to give her next weekend. Here’s an example of Victoria’s work:
Outside, there were plenty of food and drink stalls. Two in particular caught my eye: Twin Peaks Gin (who were displaying a lot of their award winning gins, which we sampled – very nice!) and Ingleside who brew oak smoked sloe gin (which was gorgeous to sample).
Inside another building, we found a lovely dog walker bag maker called Sunshine’s Woof Market. Jackie Talbot has done some great work making these bags (see below) but doesn’t overprice them. I was tempted but didn’t see one that was *quite* for me. Still, I wanted to feature her as she hand makes them all herself.
And last, but not least, we have the magnificent Nottingham House Lamps. These are handmade one of a kind pieces of lighting art. One I liked particularly was a block of wood with a small stage light on it (below) but he had a lot of nice pieces.
That’s all for this fair! Hope you’ve enjoyed my post. Let me know what you think of my attempt to highlight some great makers!