School’s out: craft graduates to watch in 2024

Caps have been thrown, gowns have been donned, and now craft graduates across the UK have left the classroom to embark on their making careers. As a new year of craft students start their courses, we bring you our highlights of this year's crop of new makers – selected by the Crafts team in partnership with Crafts Council Youth Advisory Panel member Maariyah Patel.

From surrealist metalsmiths to giant cabinet makers, this year’s degree courses have served up an abundance of talent. Read on to see whose work has been catching our eye.

Morgan Willey
BA Jewellery and Silversmithing
UCA Farnham

Morgan Willey grew up in Dorset with painter parents from whom she developed a love for all types of art. While she has previously produced mixed-media seascapes that incorporate stitching and printing techniques, for her final degree project she created knitted rings that were cast in bronze and then silver-plated or oxidised. Any rings that broke during the making process were repaired with the original yarn they were cast in.

Dezeta Fantie
BA Fine Art
Arts University Plymouth

Dezeta Fantie’s project Braiding the Black Atlantic weaves together her research into the history of Black hair, African American quilt making, and bio mythical fiction. Blending the personal and historical, this 'textile landscape' explores the history of Black hair being used to carry items such as gold, seeds and rice across the Atlantic during the slave trade.

Xinlu Liu
MA Ceramics & Glass
Royal College of Art

Inspired by flowing water, Xinlu Liu's Ripple collection is a series of pendant and table lamps crafted from slip-cast porcelain and slumped Bullseye glass. Each of the lights feature an undulating pattern intuitively hand-formed by Liu, and have been finished with bronze hardware or cold-worked blown glass bases.

Lucrezia Venturelli
MA Furniture Design
Central Saint Martins

Treasure Tower is a sculptural cabinet that ingeniously camouflages its functional compartments through 3D textural elements made using a CNC machine. In an era of constant exposure, the piece 'offers a refuge for our cherished belongings, keeping them safe and private,' says Venturelli, who plans to expand it into a collection over time.

Sam Holmes
BA Product Design and Craft
Manchester School of Art

Drawing inspiration from both urban and natural surroundings, Sam Holmes takes tools to mountains, city streets, river valleys and beyond to create jewellery in situ. The pieces – which are refined in his workshop – often reference the shapes and textures seen in his surroundings, and mix found materials with precious metals and stones.

Sophie L Ferrier
BA Contemporary Design Crafts
Hereford College of Arts

Craft meets ecological restoration in these urns by Sophie Ferrier, whose practice promotes circular making systems. Made out of invasive, non-native Himalayan Balsam collected from the River Wye, and bound with brown algae extract and tree sap, they are entirely biodegradable and compostable. She has also gone on to make lampshades from the innovative material.

Rose Davenport
BA Fashion Design
The Glasgow School of Art

In a process she dubs ‘from farm to garment’, Rose Davenport uses deadstock yarns almost entirely sourced from near her home on the Scottish Borders to create knitted clothing. Her graduate collection Faileas: The Hands My Mother Gave Me is meant to serve as a 'love letter' to Scotland's age-old knitting traditions and the long lineage of women who have practiced the craft.

Dixin Zheng
MA Jewellery & Metal
Royal College of Art

Expressing the poetics of the everyday is a leitmotif for contemporary artist and jewellery designer Dixin Zheng. Her graduating project offers a surrealist interpretation of the humble spoon, doing away with the utensil’s traditional functions by transforming it into a medium through which people can perceive the world around them.

Elliott Denny
MA Ceramics & Glass
Royal College of Art

Fascinated by industrial and studio pottery techniques, Elliott Denny works to see how these two methodologies can be interwoven. His final masters project hones in on the process of earthenware extrusion, which he has used to create a coffee table, room divider, and more.

Kyle Ferguson
School of Design - Silversmithing & Jewellery
The Glasgow School of Art

Born out of his struggles growing up between Scotland and Barbados, Kyle Ferguson’s Dormante collection references the fictional underwater refuge that he envisioned as a child to feel 'free from the perceptions and constraints of reality'. His jewellery therefore resembles elements of the ocean – like coral, and sea cucumbers – and mixes silver or bronze with gemstones such as sapphire, garnet and aquamarine.

Victoria Ackers
BA Ceramics
Cardiff Metropolitan University (Cardiff School of Art & Design)

Victoria Ackers' graduating project A Shadow’s Grief is a series of illustrative ceramic urns, each depicting an emotionally significant dream that occurred at key moments of her life when she was experiencing loss, inner conflict and bereavement. Through immortalising these narratives, Ackers is able to give viewers a true insight into her unconscious mind.

Oliver Linnell
BA Product Design and Craft
Manchester School of Art

Experiments in sand casting with clay led Oliver Linnell to develop a way to slip cast directly into sculpted sand moulds: 'These single-use moulds create unusual grainy textures as the clay traps some of the sand and its impressions within its ceramic surface.' Urchin Pot, showing as part of Linnell's graduate show, was crafted using this same method – and is encouraging him to remix other established forms of making.

If you’re an emerging craftsperson interested in appearing in our magazine, website, or social media platforms, share your work with us on Instagram using the hashtag #newmakers.