Shortlist announced for the 2025 Brookfield Properties Craft Award
Meet the five Brookfield Properties Craft Award makers who represent the best new perspectives on British craft
Brookfield Properties and Crafts Council have announced the five makers shortlisted for the 2025 Brookfield Properties Craft Award. The shortlist spans woodwork, glass, ceramics, and paper, exploring themes that unpack gender politics, the lived experience of being Black and British, and the relationship between urban and natural forms.
In its sixth year, the Brookfield Properties Craft Award celebrates the best of UK contemporary craft, giving a much-needed platform to living makers and their contribution to the practice. Shortlisted makers are selected from over 400 artists exhibiting at Collect art fair and are assessed on several criteria, including excellence in skills, making and material knowledge as well as a body of work that demonstrates ambition, scale, colour and form.
Nominated for the 2025 edition are:
Alan Meredith (represented at Collect 2025 by Cavaliero Finn)
Chris Day (represented at Collect 2025 by Vessel Gallery)
Ebony Russell (represented at Collect 2025 by Cynthia Corbett Gallery)
Isobel Napier (represented at Collect 2025 by Flow Gallery)
Valeria Nascimento (represented at Collect 2025 by jaggedart)
Isobel Napier, image courtesy of the artist.
The award winner will be announced on Wednesday 26 February 2025 at Collect art fair. As part of the prize package, Brookfield Properties will acquire works from the winning artist and then donate these to Crafts Council Collection, the national collection for contemporary craft.
Chris Day, photographed by Tom Arber. Image courtesy of the artist.
“Since its launch at Collect in 2020, the Brookfield Properties Craft Award has grown in reputation and the exhibiting galleries really value the opportunity to have one of their artists selected for the Award’s shortlist.”
- Isobel Dennis, Collect Fair Director
Alan Meredith’s work sits at the intersection of craft, sculpture and architecture, with a portfolio that includes furniture, public space design, and sculptural wood-turned vessels. A focal point of his work is finding ways to respond to the inherent properties of wood through a process-driven approach to technique and practice. Alan was awarded The Golden Fleece Special Award in 2023 and 2024. He is currently creating pieces for the Irish Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Based in the Midlands, Chris Day works with glass and mixed media. His work balances technical knowledge and craft skills, addressing the Black experience in both Britain and the US. Day’s pieces aim to confront his audience with the often overlooked traumas of our collective past, using recurring motifs such as copper cages woven over glass. Despite only relatively recently developing his career as a glass artist, impressively he has work held in private collections, as well as the V&A, the National Museum of Scotland, the Stourbridge Glass Museum, and The Chrysler Museum in the US.
In 2020 Jareh Das sat down with Chris Day ahead of his solo show at Vessel Gallery. Read the article here.
Ebony Russell’s works are created by meticulously layering soft ‘piped’ porcelain. This highly skilful technique reflects the artist’s interest in gendered aesthetics and labour. Her approach challenges the tradition of decorative crafts, typically coded as feminine, by making the decorative element fundamental to the piece’s structure. This seeks to erase boundaries between form and aesthetic, and associated gender-based binaries. Russell’s work has been exhibited at Homo Faber, Venice 2024, and at Teetering on the Brink, Claire Oliver Gallery, New York 2024, among other exhibitions.
Ebony Russell, photographed by Hande Renshaw. Courtesy of Cynthia Corbett Gallery.
Blending textile craft skills with modern technologies such as laser cutting and 3D milling, Crafts Council Directory maker Isobel Napier’s designs balance the precision of digital techniques with the organic qualities of natural media. Napier’s works evoke a sense of fragility and flow. Through meticulous cutting of wood and paper, her works mimic the intricate patterns, threads, and textures of textiles, transforming solid forms into delicate, ephemeral creations. Napier has exhibited at The New Art Centre, Wiltshire, as part of the exhibition Common Thread.
Brazilian artist Valéria Nascimento’s large-scale porcelain installations blend architectural precision with botanical fluidity, reflecting her enduring fascination with the interplay between urban structures and natural forms. Central to Nascimento’s artistic practice is her use of repetitive sequencing, symbolising the harmony and unity inherent in nature’s design. Her work seeks to evoke emotion, inspire a sense of wonder, and foster a profound connection to the world around us. Nascimento has created bespoke installations for Chanel, Dior, Cartier, Bucherer, and Tiffany’s. She has been exhibited, through gallery representation, at PAD London and Paris, Design Miami Basel, and Design Miami.
“This year’s finalists showcase why the UK remains at the forefront of contemporary crafts worldwide.”
- Saff Williams, Curatorial Director for Brookfield Properties, Europe
Valeria Nascimento, photographed by Alun Callendar for jaggedart. Image courtesy of the artist.
The work of each finalist will be on display with their respective representing galleries as part of the 2025 Collect art fair. Showcasing works from 40 worldwide galleries, Collect is dedicated to bringing outstanding international contemporary craft and design to a collectors’ market.
Launched in 2020, past winners of the Brookfield Properties Craft Award include Matt Smith (Cynthia Corbett Gallery), Anna Ray (House on Mars), Christian Ovonlen (Intoart), Alice Kettle (Candida Stevens Gallery) and Halima Cassell (Joanna Bird).
See the works in person. Book your tickets to Collect art fair 2025
Alan Meredith photographed by Roland Paschhoff. Image courtesy of the artist.
