WONDER

The Society of Designer Craftsmen is delighted to be returning to the Oxmarket Contemporary gallery - a medieval church full of light in the heart of Chichester - to showcase its prestigious annual exhibition of 2023.

WONDER embodies the imaginative thinking and highly skilled approaches of our members to new materials and contemporary technologies, across interdisciplinary craft and design specialisms, and will offer a rare opportunity to view and purchase a wide range of unique craft pieces exhibited directly by their makers.

Established in 1887, the Society of Designer Craftsmen promotes and support the work of creative thinkers, designers and makers who innovate through the exploration of materials and skills in their own creative fields.

Kate Mason, chair of the Society of Designer Craftsmen says:

“Our forthcoming WONDER exhibition is both an invitation and a provocation. An invitation to all to rediscover the childlike awe, the playful pure joy that comes when we experience a bolt of wonderment in life, followed by creative curiosity and a desire to find out more about the object that has caused it. To uncover how that object was made and why it engages and prompts you, the viewer - the participant - with such happy fascination.

Given the ongoing challenges around us in a post-pandemic and economically febrile environment, it has become more important than ever to proactively seek out spaces that encourage joy and wonder. Wonder needs to be reinstated in all our lives and not seen as something fleeting and reserved only for the young!

The playful and mercurial nature of wonder is part of our collective experience of what it means to be human, with all its commonality, creativity, and diversity. It underpins our thirst to discover, to experiment, to learn and to find new ways of doing and making things.

And here, also, lies the provocation. What does lie just over the horizon in terms of making, craft, and design? Where are we heading, in terms of innovation, materials, process, linked technology? What will be the tools for designer-makers of the future? We wonder …

The Society of Designer Craftsmen has always been pioneering in this field; utilising, and reimagining materials to create considered, beautifully crafted, aspirational, and sustainable work. For more than 100 years, it has advocated and promoted the role and value of craft and works to support the next generation of makers, designers, innovators, creative thinkers and change-makers.

We are delighted that our forthcoming exhibition WONDER will be held with our friends and partners at Chichester’s beautiful Oxmarket Contemporary. We invite you to join us, and wonder.

Come along and wonder at…why, how and who…”