Victoria Works Studios at Crafts Alive September 2025

September 10th - 14th Crafts Alive at Rodmarton Manor - Despite difficult weather conditions we had a fantastic week at this wonderful celebration of contemporary craft, showcasing our site specific installation entitled BLOOM. Located in a very atmospheric attic room BLOOM was composed of individual pieces of work by 17 artists from the studio, in response to the room, the view of Rodmarton Manor’s garden and the landscape beyond that unfolds beneath the window.  As you can see from the images below a huge variety of work was created, photo’s don’t really capture the special atmosphere created by the work in its intriguing setting - it really was magical.

Crafts Alive is presented by The Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen and takes place biennially at Rodmarton, the festival celebrates outstanding contemporary crafts, Guild members and invited collaborators such as ourselves to fill the rooms, chapel and grounds of this Arts and Crafts manor house and gardens with contemporary, often site-specific, craft and fine art. The exhibitions are complemented by selling stalls and a lively programme of talks, demonstrations and workshops for all ages. The house and garden are simply beautiful and well worth a visit on there own

Huge thanks to all who came along to see it, despite the rather unfortunate weather, every day was jam packed with enthusiastic and knowledgeable visitors, it was a pleasure to be part of it. Thanks also to our wonderfully patient curator Charlotte Abrahams, who worked extremely hard in tricky circumstances to pull it all together so beautifully for us. 

Participating artists

Ruth Hickson