High praise: Authors, actors, chefs and more tell us about their favourite crafts

12 February 2024

From Prue Leith's most-admired weaver to Jeremy Irons’ joy in boatbuilding, our magazine's regular 'In praise of…' column gives popular figures a chance to talk about the crafts they love

12 February 2024

Crafts magazine

Actor Jeremy Irons' choice for our 'In praise of…' column

In each issue of Crafts, we ask a well-known person to tell us about the maker, material, craft tradition or handmade object they love the most – for a long-running column we call ‘In praise of …’

Authors, chefs, actors, artists, architects, curators – as well as makers themselves – have all spoken lyrically to us about something that’s close to their heart over the years. It’s a question, we’ve found, that elicits deeply personal responses – evoking childhood and ancestral memories, musings about comfort and joy, and powerful political statements.

Read on for a handful of the most memorable. Crafts members can click through to see the articles in full online, and see who'll be featured next by receiving our printed issue.

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At a Window VI by Archie Brennan, commissioned by Prue Leith. Photo is by Kenneth Gray, courtesy of Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh

Prue Leith on the weaving skills of Archie Brennan

‘Who would have thought that a bodybuilder and ex-holder of the Mr Scotland title would also be one of Scotland’s greatest artists and one of the world’s best weavers?’ asked the chef and broadcaster, who has been a fan of the artist since commissioning a piece by him in the 1970s. In her article for Crafts' November/December 2021 issue, she told us about how she tracked the artist down.

Jim McDowell on Edgefield face jugs

‘When I was 13, my grandfather told me about the religious practices of our African ancestors,’ the late North Carolina-based potter told us for our May/June 2021 issue. ‘He spoke to me about Edgefield face jugs: how they were made as grave markers because slaves were not allowed to have gravestones, or were put by doors for protection.’ Making his own versions of the face jugs was his way ‘to honour my people, to keep this tradition alive and to unite people through our shared history’.

John Hegarty working on a wooden vessel, an image from Hegarty’s Boatyard, a photographic essay by Kevin O’Farrell

Jeremy Irons on boat-building in West Cork

Decades ago, the acclaimed actor commissioned a family business near his home in Cork to build him a 23ft gaff rigged ketch, which he called the Willing Lass. ‘Great craft – be it a boat, sculpture or chair – emanates from the soul of the maker, and that soul is nurtured by the place and the people that surround it,’ he said in this article from our January/February 2021 issue.

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Lamp, mid-14th century, glass, free-blown, tooled, enamelled and gilded; an example of the kind of vessels made in Syria. Photo: William Randolph Hearts Collection. Museum Associates/LACMA

Simone Fattal on Syrian glassblowing

In the 1970s, while spending a lot of time in Damascus, the artist befriended a master glassblower called Abu Nazir. ‘I would get there at 6am on Saturdays, we'd have breakfast together, and then I'd watch him work until noon,’ she told us for our January/February 2022 issue. Many years later, spotting similar works in other parts of the world, she notes that the traditions of Syria continue to live on, far beyond the country itself.

Annie Mae Young, Bars, c.1965, cotton, polyester, synthetic blends, one of the Quilts from Gee's Bend

Tracy Chevalier on quilting

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, the author found sewing quilts to be a form of therapy. That feeling of losing yourself in craft also inspired characters and scenarios in her novels. 'If I’m upset or anxious, the repetitive movement and focus on one tiny thing – a needle going in and out of fabric – soothes me,’ she wrote in an article in our September/October 2020 issue.

Recreation of a mihrab in Harrow at 'Three British Mosques', an Applied Arts Pavilion Special Project by the V&A at the 2021 Venice Biennale, curated by Shahed Saleem

Shahed Saleem on the handmade mosque

In this article for our September/October 2021 issue, the architect looked back to the 1960s, when the first generation of South Asian postcolonial migrants were carving out a place for themselves in Britain. ‘Migrant Muslims fashioned mosques out of existing buildings they could readily acquire: pubs, cinemas, factories and houses were adapted and reinscribed with a self-made visual language of Islam that emerged from the diasporic memories and imaginings of the communities,' he said.

The potter Ladi Kwali at work incising patterning into a water jar. Photo: WA Ismay, courtesy York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery)

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Jareh Das on potter Ladi Kwali

The seminal ceramic artist Ladi Kwali was a central figure in the 2022 exhibition Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art, at London’s Two Temple Place. Writing at the time for our March/April 2022 issue, its curator explained how she straddled the worlds of Nigerian and British studio pottery and influenced generations of artists working in clay. ‘Her hybrid pots and water jars can now be seen as radical objects – dense, heavy, decorative objects that traverse time periods, techniques, cultures and worlds,' Das said.

Nicholas Kirkwood’s collection of blown-glass vases by Ettore Sottsass date from the 1980s: Alioth, Ananke, Sirio, Celisetera, Astimelusa and Neobule

Nicholas Kirkwood on Ettore Sottsass

‘I’ve never directly referenced his work, but I share a certain design approach: a love for mixing high and low materials, and for making the impossible possible,’ said the shoe designer, who collects work by the Italian icon, in our November/December 2020 issue. He told us how he takes inspiration from him in his own work and predicted another design revolution was imminent – with a rule-breaker like Sottsass at its helm.

Etka Kaul's London Story Map hanging in-situ. Photo: Yeshen Venema, courtesy the artist

Ekta Kaul on mapping

While living between Delhi and London, the textile artist began to stitch maps of both cities, depicting places that held personal memories – using it as a way of questioning where home was. Since then, maps have become central to her practice. ‘I like the idea that I, as an artist, can create works that evoke a sense of place that exists more in memory than in geographical space,' she told us in our July/August 2019 issue.

Thinking Chair, 2007, by Arthur Ganson

Anthony Horowitz on automata

‘Are they toys or are they artworks?’ asks the writer in his ode to automata – mechanical sculptures that tell stories at the turn of a handle or the push of a button – in the March/April 2021 issue of Crafts. It doesn’t matter, though: Horowitz has long been a fan of the work of Arthur Ganson, whose Thinking Chair makes him think of his own life: 'so much of it solitary and, for that matter, spent sitting down'.

The Refugee I, Esna Su, 2015. Crafts Council Collection 2018.10. Photo Stokes Image Ltd

Rosy Greenlees on Esnu Su’s work ‘The refugee’

Writing at a time when innumerable Ukrainians had been displaced from their homeland, Rosy Greenlees praised the artist Esna Su’s 2015 artwork The Refugee as particularly poignant. 'The work was made in response to another humanitarian crisis, the fleeing of millions of Syrian people to vast refugee camps,' she explained. Designed to cocoon the wearer, ‘Su’s artwork expresses humanity and care to those escaping conflict,’ Greenlees added in the May/June 2022 issue of Crafts.