Collect 2026: Notes from the floor
A Curated Journey Through Collect 2026: Leading Galleries, Contemporary Craft Highlights, and Emerging Makers
Collect returned to Somerset House for its 22nd edition with forty specialist galleries and a buoyant mix of museum‑quality craft and collectable design. The mood on the ground was confident. Under the new Fair Director, TF Chan, furniture and design sat comfortably alongside glass, clay, lacquer and textiles, with works made in the last five years taking centre stage across the neoclassical rooms. Preview days revealed that visitors were eager for tactility and narrative, from oak leaves and denim to salt jars and straw marquetry.
Gallery FUMI
Mayfair’s Gallery FUMI has built a reputation for championing designers who fuse rigorous craftsmanship with experimental process, often in small workshops where hand‑carving, glassblowing, cabinetry and meticulous assemblage are the rule. That curatorial eye continues to resonate with collectors looking for work at the intersection of art and design.
Max Radford Gallery
Focusing on emerging talent in the grey space between art and design, Max Radford Gallery brings a London‑centric energy to collectable furniture. The gallery opened a permanent East London showroom to get people in front of “real objects,” and its recent collaborations, from Clerkenwell Fire Station to Ercol partnerships, underline a commitment to material intelligence and young makers.
Siat Gallery
Seoul’s Siat Gallery specialises in contemporary Korean craft and art jewellery. The name means “seed,” and that ethos shows in its international fair programming and in the way it nurtures artists from leather and lacquer to paper and metal. Its Collect presentations extend a thoughtful platform for new voices in Korean contemporary craft.
Society of Designer Craftsmen
Founded in 1887 by figures of the Arts and Crafts movement, SDC remains a living link between historic ideals and contemporary excellence. Its 2026 showcase highlighted technical refinement and material experimentation across disciplines, echoing a mission that began with Walter Crane and William Morris and continues to evolve.
Cavaliero Finn
Known for museum‑quality objects and award‑winning fine art, Cavaliero Finn’s curation is grounded in originality and craftsmanship. The gallery’s presentation this season continued its track record of platforming tactile, process‑driven work that sits beautifully in residential and institutional settings alike.
Thrown Gallery
An online and pop‑up gallery devoted to contemporary ceramics, Thrown draws fresh lines between process, form and function. Its exhibitions mix acclaimed names with emerging makers and keep clay at the heart of a wider contemporary conversation.
Caroline Fisher Projects
Curator Caroline Fisher champions clay in dialogue with other media, often moving between gallery and non‑gallery contexts. Her 2026 program foregrounds making as a form of inquiry, with exhibitions at Bolwick Hall and a Collect presentation that previews Norfolk projects to come.
Contemporary Applied Arts
Contemporary Applied Arts (CAA), founded in 1948, is London’s original multi‑disciplinary applied arts gallery and a long‑standing champion of British craft. Representing around 200 leading UK‑based makers across ceramics, textiles, jewellery, glass, metal, wood and furniture, the gallery serves as a benchmark of excellence. Its presentation at Collect continues this mission, highlighting material intelligence and cross‑disciplinary dialogue through rigorously curated works that bridge technique, tradition and contemporary innovation.
Florian Daguet‑Bresson
Florian Daguet‑Bresson’s Paris gallery celebrates the full plasticity of contemporary ceramics, from colour‑rich biomorphic forms to rigorous sculptural statements, while also placing works by 19th and 20th‑century masters in conversation with today’s artists. The new space near La Madeleine has quickly become a destination.
Ben Austin Projects
An independent curatorial platform, Ben Austin Projects, presented a solo by Portuguese artist Vanessa Barragão at Collect this year. Barragão’s hand‑tufted and latch‑hooked textile reliefs use upcycled materials to evoke living reefs and seabeds, folding sustainability and oceanic ecology into richly tactile forms.
Peter Layton & London Glassblowing
Peter Layton is a founding figure of British studio glass. Since 1976, his London Glassblowing studio has operated as an open hot shop and gallery, nurturing leading practitioners while welcoming the public to watch molten glass become form on Bermondsey Street.
County Hall Pottery
Launched during London Craft Week, County Hall Pottery has turned the historic South Bank building into a ceramics hub with exhibitions, classes, and a potter‑in‑residence program. The aim is simple and generous: a one‑stop home for pottery that supports makers and invites participation.
Hanna Salomonsson
A London‑based Swedish ceramic artist, Hanna Salomonsson, explores the poetics of memory and landscape through hand‑built vessels and sculptural forms. Scandinavian folklore and the textures of gnarly woods and mossy stone surface in work that straddles the sculptural and the functional.
Jihyun Kim
London‑based Korean ceramic artist Jihyun Kim presented “Salty Fairy Ring” in Collect Open. Slip‑cast porcelain vessels sit on gravity‑teasing gloop‑glaze stems, merging Korean salt rituals with European fairy‑ring mythology to create a circle of bright, fungal forms that feel both ritual and reverie.
Oriel Zinaburg
An architect‑turned‑ceramic sculptor, Oriel Zinaburg builds large vessels with press‑moulded slabs that he tears and folds, channelling desert geology and the suspension of time. His Collect Open installation extended that language into a spatial study of place and memory.
Kamilah Ahmed
A British Bangladeshi embroidery artist working across couture and interiors, Kamilah Ahmed combines hand‑wrapped silk warps, Jamdani‑informed structures and digital embroidery to create suspended textile works. Her Collect Open installation explored Dhaka’s layered cityscape and the endurance of craft intelligence.
Zofia Sobolewska Ursic
Working between craft, design and sculpture, Zofia Sobolewska Ursic reinterprets straw marquetry through sculptural furniture and objects. At Collect, she presented cabinets and mirrors in which raw straw, oak, and metal serve as carriers of cultural memory and light.
The Collectors’ Lounge
This year’s Collectors’ Lounge offered a quieter counterpoint to the energy of Somerset House — a space curated for close looking, conversation, and the kind of slow engagement contemporary craft rewards. Designed as a retreat for committed collectors, advisors and institutional representatives, the lounge brought together a refined selection of works, exclusive programming, and opportunities to meet gallerists and makers in a more intimate setting.
From material-led showcases to behind‑the‑scenes insights shared by participating galleries, the atmosphere balanced connoisseurship with discovery, acting as a bridge between the fair’s public narrative and the deeper collecting journeys that unfold privately. It also continued to serve as a hub for networking across the craft ecosystem, setting the stage for commissions, acquisitions and longer-term relationships.
A Contemplative Study in Craft and Materiality by Tola Ojuolape Studio
Across Somerset House, the year’s standouts shared a quiet insistence on materials as storytellers. Whether glass rising from the furnace, straw catching the light, salt vessels circling like mushrooms, or embroidered silks drawn into space, the message felt consistent. Craft is not a category. It is a way of thinking about form, time and care, and in 2026 that thinking is vivid and very much alive.
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Collect 2026 brought together forty leading galleries and over 300 makers, showcasing the very best in contemporary craft and collectable design. From glass and ceramics to textiles, wood and mixed media, these are the standout presentations shaping the craft landscape this year.