Collect Art Fair 2025

Presented annually by the UK’s Crafts Council, Collect returns for its 21st edition as the leading art fair for collectable contemporary craft and design, taking place at London’s famous Somerset House from February 28th to March 2nd, 2025.

A showcase of work by 400 artists presented by 40 galleries and collectives, with Collect Open, a parallel exhibition of work highlighting newcomers.  

Nature and mythical wonder were two themes running throughout the show. Here we share some of our favorite gallery presentations and artists as selected by UK-based Trend Forecaster and Contributor to THE KINDCRAFT, Fiona Coleman.

Flow Gallery

Flow, established over 25 years ago in London, showcases ‘The Spirit of Things’ at this year’s Collect show highlighting the ‘spirit' within handcrafted objects—evidence of their makers' processes. This ethos of Japanese craft emphasises finding beauty in simplicity for balance and serenity in surrounding objects. The exhibition celebrates minimalism, showcasing organic textures in materials like clay, textiles, wood, washi paper, and glass, with a focus on nature and the origins of materials. Highlights include Yoriko Murayama's nostalgic textile art from Kyoto, featuring house forms in sculptures and wall hangings, created using ikat techniques with natural dyes. Murayama explores themes of memory through her textile manipulation.

London-based design duo James Trundle & Isobel Napier blend carpentry and textiles in their contemporary craft guided by timber's qualities. Their new collection for Collect showcases digital techniques that mirror timber's natural contours via 3D modeling and CNC routing highlighting the contrast between control in digital making and heritage craft.

Through laser cutting and 3D manipulation, Isobel Napier transforms textiles into intricate paper creations showcasing the organic beauty and imperfection of her materials. Napier's debut at Collect includes a large-scale textile installation titled ‘In the Drift of Paper’. Placed beneath the arches of the Nelson staircase in the Somerset House, Napier's intricate paper textiles examine how crafted materials influence physical spaces.

Jaggedart

Since 2002, Jaggedart has showcased its unique style through poetic and intricate works of art that highlight the unusual and delicate use of materials manifested in organic forms. Its London gallery, located off Marylebone High Street, offers curated monthly exhibitions featuring intriguing and timeless pieces. At Collect, in ‘the Garden Room’, the vitality of the plant world captivates with an abundance of organic forms and botanical intricacies. We see fungi forms tumbling over benches, eggshells cascading down walls, and a wall of collaged artworks: paper-cut hydrangeas, bronze thistles, porcelain flowers, hawthorn sculptures, dandelion weaves, and silk grasses.

The craftsmanship and knowledge of materials are evident in pieces made from ceramics, grass, wood, paper, and textiles. Time is essential for growing grasses, hand-cutting paper, and creating artwork.

Presented as a gallery exhibition where artworks and materials complement each other, it is challenging to choose our highlights; Sculptural pieces by Alice Fox, the whole allotment garden is both a source of materials and an inspiration, Maria Smith is also inspired by the changing landscape, which using flowers and reclaimed natural materials in her weaves paper.  Thule Wright works with a plethora of text materials transforming atlases, books, and dictionaries into complex paper works. Robyn Neild’s sculpture responds to nature’s ‘unique fingerprint’ of organic forms and textures. Neild is more interested in nature’s tipping point; finding the transformation of decay more beautiful than the symmetry of bloom.

Contemporary Applied Arts

Contemporary Applied Arts (CAA) is London’s original applied arts gallery, founded in 1948 as a registered charity and membership organization with over 200 British artists in ceramics, furniture, glass, jewelry, metal, paper, textiles, stone, and wood. CAA's approach fosters dialogue between materials, techniques, and creation methods. One featured artist, Olga Prinku, embroiders with dried flowers and organic materials using various techniques to attach them to tulle fabric. Olga, self-taught, developed flowers-on-tulle embroidery in 2016. Inspired by nature walks near her North Yorkshire home and traditional Moldovan motifs, her art pays tribute to nature’s beauty, blending natural elements in an innovative way. Her process reflects both the fragility and strength of the natural world and humanity’s connection to it.

Charles Burnand Gallery

Founded in 2009 and based in London’s Fitzrovia, the Charles Burnand Gallery honors fine craftsmanship while emphasizing the use of sustainable materials and production techniques. For Collect the gallery present ‘BOUNDEDSHADOWS: The Art of Kyeok Kim’, a solo exhibition showcasing works by the Seoul-based artist. It features an innovative fusion of copper wire and Ottchil lacquer, masterfully blurring the boundaries between craft, design, and fine art. A finalist for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize and an alumna of the Royal College of Art, Kim has garnered international acclaim for her meticulous approach to materiality. Industrial copper wire has been transformed with crochet, merging strength with fragility. Each piece is then coated in layers of Ottchil lacquer, a revered Korean varnishing technique. This exhibition offers an immersive interplay of light and form, with shadows embodying the delicate balance between materiality and immateriality, providing a compelling meditation on the evolving language of craft in modern art and design.

Craft Alliance Atlantic

Craft Alliance Atlantic is a Canadian non-profit committed to marketing opportunities and promoting Canadian fine craft exports. The Atlantic region is a hub for creative individuals, enriched by its Indigenous history and immigrant traditions. ‘HERE + NOW: Connecting Culture and Landscape Through Water’ highlights water's significance through the eyes of various artists. We spotlight two textile artists. Rilla Marshall from Prince Edward Island weaves narratives of coastal changes influenced by light, water, and seasons, using hand-twisted, plant-dyed cotton cord as a supplementary weft to create textured pieces. Many of her works feature ‘Meta Weaves, ' integrating a supplementary weft brocade with locally foraged dyes. Elise Campbell, a Nova Scotia artist, combines wool and natural fibres to create sculptures that reflect nature's beauty and resilience. Inspired by land and sea, her felting techniques express ecological narratives and humanity’s delicate balance with nature through repetitive movements in her art.

Jenny Blyth Fine Art

Founded in 2003, Jenny Blyth Fine Art gallery highlights emerging international talent. For Collect, they showcased Susan Moxley's textile and ceramic works. Moxley creates collaged textiles, ceramic sculptures, and prints – all with a deep sense of narrative. For over 40 years in Greece, Moxley has collected old, hand-spun yarns and functional fabrics that have a worn patina. As traditional weaving methods have faded, Moxley creates ‘textile paintings’ using discarded fabrics woven by women on old, heavy looms. In her own way, Moxly uses a stitched thread in the same manner as a sketched line to draw stories from cloth.

Design & Crafts Council Ireland

Traditional Irish craft is closely linked to the land and its materials. Multidisciplinary practitioners at Design & Crafts Council Ireland redefine the boundaries between function, ornament, and art. Craft responds to time and environment. The work at Collect emphasizes weathering, repair, and transformation, dismantling hierarchies between luxury and vernacular and presenting craft as a space for dialogue across time periods.

The ‘Weathering Revival’ exhibition at Collect connects Ireland’s craft traditions to global discussions on preservation, care, and material ethics. Natural dyer and designer Alison Nea presented a quilted wall hanging titled 'Connected' made from eco-printed Irish linen. Nea grows dye plants, like coreopsis, then steams flowers into damp textiles, and often incorporates foraged leaves from Dublin’s streets into her woven works. Her work reimagines linen’s legacy and highlights the fragility of Ireland’s textile industry while celebrating its material potential through place-based making.

Vessel maker Katharina Treml originally trained in biotechnology before becoming a ceramicist. She is focused on the alchemy of the kiln where micro-crystalline glazes come to life in color and texture. Treml's porcelain vessels are highly organic, one-of-a-kind pieces that sit together as a collection in a dialogue of form and hue much like a landscape.

Lloyd Choi Gallery

Lloyd Choi is an international gallery based in South Korea for contemporary artists who are blurring the boundaries between art, craft, and design. For Collect, they curated works by seven Korean artists, including; Min-wook Kim, a finalist for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, showcasing poetic woodwork, and So-ra Lee, an internationally-acclaimed textile artist unveiling a new piece that reinterprets Korean textile traditions. Lee’s work has been selected by The World of Interiors as one of their ‘Loves’ at Collect. Her contemporary works of art merge traditional Korean patchwork (Jogakbo) with an innovative approach, applying natural tree sap (Ottchil) to textiles. This distinctive approach both honors Korean heritage and expands the possibilities of material exploration in contemporary art.

Galerie Melissa Paul

Winning the Collect Outstanding Stand Award, Galerie Melissa Paul presents a solo show of work by Agnès Debizet, ’Hidden Life’, which explores the unseen but vital forces of nature. Inspired by myths and tales, Debizet's work blends enchanted imagery with subterranean worlds transforming the soil’s hidden network into a surreal and magical space. It spans a rich tapestry of forms and aesthetics across a wide range of objects. The collection brings a unique perspective on traditional ceramic techniques. Her creations often subvert expectations, bridging function and artistry into thought-provoking pieces. Complementing the ceramic works on display were two handwoven Kilim rugs by Taylan Aygün featuring root-inspired patterns and botanical motifs in an earthy color palette.

Collect Open

Collect Open showcased ten projects from artists in Austria, the Netherlands, China, Ireland, and the UK. Selected by an expert panel, these artists create works that challenge perceptions. Wanbing Huang, inspired by nature and Eastern philosophy, blending material with the immaterial. Using ancient Chinese ramie and traditional techniques, she balances strength and softness, creating textured surfaces through tearing, folding, and layering. Each piece invites dialogue across time and is transformed with crochet and layered in Ottchil lacquer, embodying the delicate balance of materiality and immateriality in modern craft.

London-based wood artist Darren Appiagyei uncovers the potential of wood by emphasizing textures and details. He discovered woodturning during his 3D design degree at UAL in 2016, finding the process meditative. He won the Collect Open Award 2025 for “What Grows in the Dark Comes to Light, " honoring his late mother and marking his first personal art venture. Judges praised his unique creative voice through carving, turning, and pyrography techniques.