New Designers Exhibition 2020

Each year we scour the graduate exhibition shows to source the most innovative, emerging contemporary artists.

Passionate, free-spirited and innovative, these artisans are not afraid to explore new styles, experiment with modern materials and . Diana Porter brings you four of the best new designers now available in store.

New work by Edinburgh based designer Millicent Bradbury, inspired by the sequences that appear in nature, like scales she uses a mix of materials such as shells and woven fabrics to create luxurious, tactile jewellery that’s both timeless and seasonless. 

With an eye for detail and intricacy, Eleanor Whitworth, our second new designer based in Glasgow, draws inspiration from the smaller curiosities in the natural world, such as ants and aphids, cleaner fish and larger marine animals. She works intuitively using a palette of tonal greys and rich golds merging it together with a laser she joins multiple components to build brooches and earrings.

Metal crochet prominently stands out in Achoria works. Two seemingly contrasting things: crochet and brutalist architecture. The brutalist inspired wire structured is an unlikely, but a beautiful companion to the crochet in her collection. It helps balance out the dense, delicate, organic elements with something airy, angular and man-made. Merging masculine shapes with feminine details, Anchoria has produced a collection of earrings, necklace and brooches which brings together the old and new.

Sheffield based jeweller Georgia Chipmans uses a chain as a central motif in her work. In 2017, she spent time honouring her craft working side by side with goldsmiths and master chain makers in Bangalore. The designer draws her inspiration from her time in India and her hometown of Sheffield. Her pieces recall the profiles of architectures and industrial suburbs within both cities and have influenced her to explore chain design. Pushing the boundaries of metalwork while experimenting with raw materials, she looks for contrasts, weight and hidden textural qualities.