No 40 – TheBigForest Emporium

From Brighton Blokes to Santa Bears, Michael from TheBigForest Emporium shares what visitors should be expecting in their house.

“We call ourselves silly artist makers and we love making people smile and laugh when they see our work. We send our work all over the world. This year it has been featured in the Sunday Times Magazine so we expect to see folks from out of the city, too, at our open house.

This is the second time we have exhibited. The first time was May this year. We opened our studio as part of Clerkenwell Design Week in London and when we returned to Brighton we wanted to be part of AOH.

We always think of a theme and we’ve decided to make our living room into a retro shop. For the May Artists Open House we went for the Edwardian period but because now we know the words of all the music hall songs (this may come in handy some day?) our Christmas open house is in a less defined period sometime in the past.
Most of the work we design and make ourselves. Our work is either made in felt with a high percentage of wool. We create construction cards, too. For Christmas we will have doggy things – felt dogs, dog brooches, felt Christmas decorations and beary things, too, including santa bear.

What else? Lots of stocking fillers, including kits and badges. Our card construction ‘Brighton Bloke’ dolls are always popular and this year we have a Christmas bloke and a cut out and make card celebrating Brighton beards!

We also have some wonderful mixed media pieces by Clair Letton, a fellow Fiveways Artist, in our Christmas open house.

I’m most looking forward to meeting people during the AOH. The conversations with visitors really give us new ideas. It is also lovely when weeks or months
later an open house visitor contacts us with a commission.

We’d also like to see lots of nice people buying our work who will either enjoy it or give it as presents to folk who love what we create. I its that simple really.”

Venue details: 56 Chester Terrace Brighton BN1 6GB, https://aoh.org.uk/house/thebigforest-emporium-2/

All images credited to: Michael Craven, TheBigForest

twitter: @TheBigForestuk