Ruth has three strands to her professional practice; her artwork, community cultural development projects and a design range created from transforming manufactured bottles.

Ruth studied at the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University, graduating in 1993. She embarked on world travels during which time she attended and conducted workshops, exhibited, undertook residencies and worked consistently with ideas.

From 1996-2000, Ruth co-directed a hot glass studio and glass art business in Aukland, New Zealand, and acted as President of the New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass.  

Ruth returned to Australia in 2000, and resumed a more artistic practice. She completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at Monash University, majoring in Glass and Sculpture.  

In 2010 Ruth and her partner Josh set up a warehouse space in Coburg North, with a vision of creating a functional space to make almost anything. This has allowed them to develop their practices with the confidence of knowing a new direction of works can be supported by the space.

Daryl from Bisk-Art has been handcrafting biscuits cutters using traditional tools and techniques for over 30 years.  

Daryl started selling cutters online from the Tinsmith Shop at Sovereign Hill, when eBay was a baby, and social media didn’t exist. He started Bisk-Art in 2004.  At one stage he had patterns for over 2000 different designs, and drove around Australia’s east coast selling at shows and fairs. The cutter market has changed so much over the years; the market is now flooded with mass produced and 3D printed cutters, but Daryl continues to make his unique cutters the old fashioned way.

There are twelve stages to making every biscuit cutter; that’s a lot of handling! Each cutter is individually hand cut, folded, and finished by Daryl in his Ballarat workshop. With around 650 different design, he has a shape to help you celebrate all your special occasions.

Martin is a traditionally trained leather craftsman based in Melbourne, handcrafting his own range of leather goods as well as offering custom and bespoke items. He uses only the best leathers and leather products available and hand cuts and hand stitches all his work.

Martin stumbled across leatherwork whilst recovering from a motorcycle accident. He fell in love with the medium, and spent the next five years improving his skills, including learning from a  traditional Japanese leathercraft teacher in Hong Kong. This teacher’s techniques resulted in very clean and neat work, and instilled in Martin a highly refined aesthetic and an appreciation for fine, traditional skills. This teaching also led to his particular interest in making briefcases, which take Martin a full two weeks to make.

A horticulturalist and garden designer by trade, Helen has had a lifelong fascination with the beauty, diversity and biology of plants and flowers.  

Largely self taught as an artist, she has had some tuition in watercolours with the world renowned botanical artist, Jenny Phillips, and has exhibited her traditional botanical work in “The Art of Botanical Illustration” exhibitions at the National

Herbarium of Victoria. 

In her current series of mandalas, Helen is inspired by; the Victorian obsession with collecting and displaying natural curiosities with more regard to aesthetics than scientific classification (a challenge to her natural inclination for order and categorisation), floriography and plant symbolism, and a childlike love of the patterns and shapes created by kaleidoscopes. 

The labour intensive process has a meditative quality and her designs are imbued with personal symbolism. 

Helen lives in St Kilda, Melbourne 

Sockmaker and studio309. Linda has had a lifelong obsession with making things with string. She learned to knit, crochet, embroider, sew and tat in childhood. After a brief dalliance as an occupational therapist, she set up a small business as a made-to-measure dressmaker, and completed a diploma of designer dressmaking.

Whilst raising two girls, she revisited some of her crafting interests, further developing her designing, making, pattern writing and teaching skills, particularly in hand knitting.

Studio309 is her latest endeavour. She aims to bring together a range of products for sale, designed and made locally, as well as providing a space for classes in various creative pursuits. 

Her contributions to the retail store include tatted jewellery pieces, Sockmaker woollens, and teaching handcraft classes. Tatting is a lacemaking technique involving knots made using a small shuttle wound with thread. Sockmaker socks, scarves and baby beanies are made on an old style mechanical sock knitting machine. These machines were a popular way to contribute to the household income in the mid 1800’s to early 1900’s, with one model even named the “moneymaker”.

Mathieu DeChamps 

MD KNIVES

Born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, Mathieu trained as a maker of fine furniture. He spent a number of years travelling the world, during which time he was first introduced to knife making in Scotland. He has now established himself as a kitchen knife maker in Mount Dandenong, outside of Melbourne. 

Cutting boards are complimentary to his knife making, wooden boards being best for the proper care of good quality knives.

“For me, being an artisan is certainly about the craft, the quality and the materials. However, it is also about my relationship with the client, because my intention is to understand and meet the client’s needs, and then go beyond expectations.’

Sarah Dingwall is a glass artist based on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula with a degree in Fine Arts (Glass) from Monash University. She spends her days flameworking small works in glass - from wearable to purely sculptural forms - while being constantly inspired by the unique challenges and opportunities that glass offers. Sarah’s local landscape has naturally shaped her practice, as she has most recently been exploring sculptural work that sees flameworked glass paired with found objects from nearby coastlines and bushlands.

Francis is the independent, small scale design studio of Isaac Francis, a Melbourne based industrial designer and boot-maker.  

He has been operating in Melbourne for over five years, quietly honing his craft, and refining his carefully designed range of products. 

Isaac designs using modern and precision CAD technology, but manufactures each product by hand, one by one, using age-old traditional leather working techniques.

He designs and manufactures all of his products in-house from premium Australian leathers.  All of his wallets use sustainably sourced kangaroo leather.

Based in Belgrave, Upswitch creates one-of-a-kind lamps by reinventing and reimagining old treasures and turning them into beautiful pieces that inspire and illuminate. Each piece is hand made, it’s design informed by it’s original use and it’s own distinct character.

Michael has had a lifelong fascination with old ‘stuff’ that has been made redundant by ever changing technology, and been condemned to the scrapheap. With Upswitch, Michael has turned this fascination into a passion: reclaiming otherwise unloved items and giving them new life. Using science and laboratory instruments, photographic equipment, kitchenalia, salvaged timbers and more, Upswitch brings neglected objects back to life with an elegant and whimsical twist.  

Upswitch will also create a bespoke lamp for you utilising an object which has special significance for you, or by sourcing objects on request and reinventing them especially for you.

Ulrike is a photographer and jewellery maker. Since leaving a medical career in 2014 she follows her passion for creativity with freelance photography and lupidupi pencil jewellery and chases after 3 children, 1 dog and 5 chickens.

Ulrike Perkins Photography - fine art prints

Ulrike draws inspiration from the beauty of the Australian landscape, its simplicity and rawness. She loves to play with the simple elements of our surrounding world, constantly seeking to strip away, to show just enough, to travel deeper and to invite the viewers to immerse and perhaps lose themselves, in the image in front of them. 

All photographs are printed on pure archival cotton rag.

Lupidupi - Pencil Jewellery

With her love for bright colours and passion for “making things” for and with her own children, Ulrike started the little jewellery brand Lupidupi in 2014. Lupidupi pieces are made from coloured pencils. These are precisely cut, sanded smooth and finished on sterling silver stud earrings, chains and cufflinks. Since the pencils are taken out of context, but still recognisable as such, this jewellery is playful and elegant at the same time.

Julie grew up in an ‘arty’ family that loved making things. Crochet became a passion when her daughter was born and she started making hats and toys, and craft practice evolved into art. The result is detailed soft-sculptures of people, animals and monsters.

Julie’s work has won numerous awards, and appeared in many exhibitions, including ACMIs ‘Tim Burton Wonderland Gallery’ and the Toorak Village Sculpture Exhibition, in the Age newspaper’s ‘I made it myself’ and ‘Art and Design’ sections and in music clips for Kate Miller-Heidke and international artists Wax Taylor and Aloe Blacc.

In 2016 Julie was commissioned by Wabi Sabi Studios to ‘skin’ soft motion animation character armatures with crochet for a short film called Lost and Found.  It premiered in 2018-19 at the Berlin festival, and won a host of international awards including shortlisted for the 2019 Academy Awards.

Julie is also an award winning graphics designer and has been employed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for over 20 years, working in both the TV and online environments.

After dabbling in many creative pursuits; singing, playing guitar, jewellery making and working as a fashion model, Trudy decided to pursue her art more seriously. She enrolled in art school, where she was introduced to printmaking in many forms.  Looking for non-toxic printmaking techniques, Trudy came across the talented solar plate etcher, Janet Ayliffe. This was a significant turning point in Trudy’s art practice.

Trudy’s final works on paper are made in her Port Melbourne studio by printing layers of solar plate etchings. Her initial drawings are placed in the sun with a photopolymer plate, and etched into the plate, washed out in water, dried in the sun and then inked and printed onto paper. It’s a time-consuming process, but the results produced perfectly capture her drawings from the natural environment.

Trudy’s range of linen homewares are printed at a small workshop in Brunswick; KE Design. KE Design is one of a small number of companies in Victoria permitted to have supported workers (living with disabilities) working alongside their open employment staff.

The environment for me is a spiritual place and so exploring the environment in some detail feels like part of my own spiritual journey. I have found a connection with the shapes of the environment in the printmaking I have done. 

I have grown to love the beauty in the Box Ironbark forest of Central Victoria. 

Working with collagraphs, I love to use found objects from the environment in the creation of the plates I use in my printmaking.

Little Hangings was founded in 2015 by avid jewellery enthusiast, Renee, and grew from a love of intricate, minimalist jewellery pieces that still make a statement. 

Characterised by delicate and simple lines, Little Hangings offers affordable, hand crafted and high quality jewellery.

Hey Jude is a small creative studio with a fondness to create through thoughtful design and curation. We believe in simplifying the everyday, creating timeless pieces of quality, texture and functionality that are careful and considered. 

Ethical craftsmanship and sustainability is at the core of what we do, choosing responsibly and keeping our process honest and transparent. 

Our aim is to focus on slow, handmade and local production in small quantities, working towards zero waste, to focus on quality and create pieces that are kind to the environment. Our products are either handmade by us or by working closely with local makers. 

All of our notebooks are made from scratch from recycled materials. From the scoring, folding and punching of each page, hand sewn binding and constructed covers.

For Robyn Wilson, the hand making of objects has always been a deeply rewarding practice. Inspired by strong colours and bold shapes, Robyn uses materials such as titanium and enamel to infuse her jewellery with colour, and gives added dimension to her pieces with hydraulic pressing.

After a long career as an IT specialist, Robyn’s path to contemporary jewellery was fuelled by discovering a passion for working with Argentium silver.

She then completed an Advanced Diploma of Engineering Technology - Jewellery at NMIT (Melbourne Polytechnic). She was awarded the Design Institute of Australia’s Victorian Graduate of the Year for jewellery in 2014.