Design Crafts Glass, Ceramics and Jewellery
Introduction
Design Crafts at Swansea College of Art is a material-led programme that encourages students to explore, question, and develop their own creative practice through making. Working across ceramics, glass, jewellery, textiles, wood, metal and digital technologies, students are encouraged to experiment with materials, processes, and ideas to discover their individual creative voice.
The course combines traditional craft skills with contemporary approaches to design and fabrication, including 3D printing, laser cutting, mould making, casting, and digital design. Through workshop-based learning, students investigate the relationships between materials, people, objects, and place, while developing technical expertise and critical thinking.
The work in this exhibition reflects the diversity of contemporary craft practice. From functional and wearable objects to sculptural and conceptual outcomes, each project represents a personal journey of exploration, problem-solving, and material discovery. Together, these works celebrate curiosity, innovation, and the unique perspectives of a new generation of designer-makers.
@designcraftsuwtsd
Our Work
Chelsie Gallagher’s work challenges perceptions of beauty, value, and disgust by celebrating creatures that are often overlooked or feared. Inspired by the decorative elegance of eighteenth-century Rococo design, she creates ceramic vessels adorned with insects, rats, and other commonly unloved animals. Using a playful palette influenced by sweets and confectionery, her work contrasts attraction with discomfort, encouraging closer examination of the subjects it depicts. Through this approach, Chelsie highlights the ecological importance and unique beauty of these creatures while questioning human assumptions about what belongs, what is valued, and who the true intruders in the environment might be.
- Instagram: @ellen_art_studio
- Email: chelsieellen-art@outlook.com
Lydia Greaves is a ceramic artist whose work is deeply connected to landscape, geology, and material processes. Drawing inspiration from places of personal significance, particularly coastal environments, she uses thrown ceramic forms as a foundation for exploring transformation through fire. Her practice centres on layering, burning, and saggar-firing techniques that allow heat, atmosphere, and natural materials to shape colour and texture. Incorporating locally sourced clay and driftwood, Lydia’s work reflects the rhythms of erosion, compression, and change found in nature. Through these processes, she creates pieces that embody both the physical character and emotional resonance of place.
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Instagram: @Lydmakes_
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Email: Lgreavesdm@gmail.com
Anna Jones is an artist whose practice is rooted in a deep connection to nature, growth, and environmental care. Influenced by theories of new materialism and biophilic design, she creates ceramic works that encourage living systems to become active collaborators in the artwork. Her vessels incorporate innovative self-watering structures designed to support the natural growth of plants and seeds across their surfaces. Combining terracotta clay with textured and cracked finishes, Anna’s work invites organic transformation over time. By bringing together art, science, and ecology, she explores the evolving relationship between human-made objects and the natural world.
- Instagram: @kilnclay.studios
- Email: kilnclaystudios@gmail.com
Jayne Maund’s practice explores identity, self-expression, and the social expectations that shape how we present ourselves to the world. Her wearable works draw on the concept of the alter ego, examining the tension between authenticity and conformity. Inspired by conversations around gender, personal identity, and self-acceptance, she creates bold, exaggerated forms that celebrate individuality and confidence. Masks and adornment function as both protection and empowerment, allowing hidden aspects of personality to emerge. Through her work, Jayne encourages viewers to challenge stereotypes, embrace difference, and celebrate the freedom of being true to oneself.
- Instagram: @delphinecreativedesigns
- Email: contact@delphinecreativedesigns.co.uk
Louise Jackson Rowan creates immersive glass installations that explore the complexity and fluidity of human emotion. Through patterned suspended glass panels, she transforms colour, light, and movement into evolving visual experiences that shift as viewers move around the work. Influenced by colour psychology, her practice examines how emotions can coexist in contradictory ways, with hues taking on different meanings depending on their context. By pairing colours with black and white, Louise investigates themes of vulnerability, strength, joy, anxiety, and resilience. Her work encourages reflection on the layered, changing nature of emotional experience and personal perception.
- Instagram: @ljr.glass
- Email: ljrglass@outlook.com
Jessica Theobold is a glass artist whose work explores themes of containment, vulnerability, and the relationship between body and object. Combining blown glass with copper, she creates wearable sculptural forms inspired by Brutalist principles of material honesty and industrial aesthetics. Her practice examines the tension between fragility and restraint, using the contrasting qualities of glass and metal to investigate physical and emotional boundaries. Breath plays an important role within her work, connecting the making process to the presence of the body. Once worn, her pieces become extensions of the wearer, transforming movement, perception, and experience.
- Instagram: @bald.zy
- Email: jessicatheobaldglass@outlook.com
Seren Trodden is an artist and maker whose practice is inspired by a lifelong fascination with creatures, both real and imagined. Working with driftwood, seabird feathers, and found materials collected from the Gower coastline, she creates expressive puppet-like forms that explore character, movement, and transformation. Her work combines traditional making with mechanical elements, using joints, hinges, and handcrafted structures to bring her creatures to life. Through playful experimentation and material discovery, Seren reimagines discarded objects, giving them new purpose and identity while celebrating the relationship between storytelling, nature, and craftsmanship.
- Instagram: @craft_by_seren
- Email: serentrodden@gmail.com
Exhibition Gallery
