Our New Year New Maker for 2025 is Annabel Hood. In this annual, digital series, we platform makers from across the United Kingdom whose contemporary practice champions heritage crafts, reflecting the ethos of the Arts & Crafts Movement. Featuring newly commissioned film and photography, we take you behind the scenes into the maker’s studio, showcasing their practice and exploring routes into heritage crafts.
Annabel Hood is a silversmith and hand-engraver based in Edinburgh. Originally from Wiltshire, Hood moved to Edinburgh in 2014 to study a Jewellery and Silversmithing BA at the University of Edinburgh.
“I’ve always loved sculpture and making things… and I’ve always loved glitter. I looked at becoming a primary school art teacher, but then my mum said, if you’re going to play with glitter, play with the real thing.” – Annabel Hood.
Silversmithing and hand-engraving are crafts that are steeped in heritage, with origins that date back thousands of years. Hand-engraving is now on the Heritage Crafts list of Endangered Crafts, with only an estimated 50 makers still working in the trade today. Hood is proud to be amongst their rank and the history of the craft inspires her approach to making.
Using a collection of new and vintage tools, Hood hammers and engraves her pieces by hand. She moulds sheets of silver around a block using a metal hammer:
“This creates the form and it takes maybe a day or two days, depending on the form you’re trying to achieve. But you get all these beautiful glistening hammer marks over the piece, which is lovely. And sometimes I follow them all away and then hand engrave them. Other times I keep them.” – Annabel Hood
Hood utilises simple forms that allow her engraved designs to sing. She often trials her designs first on copper, a cheaper and less precious metal that is more forgiving when it comes to mistakes. Once happy with the effect, she transfers the design onto a silver form.
Hood is deeply inspired by nature and the Scottish landscape. She enjoys exploring the Scottish countryside with her film camera and sketch book in hand. With these she documents the patterns she finds in nature, from ancient rock formations to rain streaking over a car window. “In Scotland we have so many amazing patterns like the Celtic knot work and the traditional scroll work that is hundreds of years old from different parts of Scotland. And the tartans or, you know, the buildings and everything around here. So it is seeping into my work and my inspiration for what I do.” Annabel Hood
In the spirit of the Arts & Crafts Movement, it is important to Hood that her works are useful, as well as beautiful. Through her engraving designs, Hood seeks to raise awareness of important social issues, from disability awareness to the damaging impacts of climate change.
In 2019, after a research trip to the Outer Hebrides was called off due to extreme weather, Hood created the Glacial Flow Teaset which highlights the devastating impact of the warming climate on the world’s glaciers.
Annabel Hood
Glacial Flow Teaset
2019
Recycled silver and bog oak
Purchased with support of Art Fund
Image credit: Robin Zahler
Hood visited Professor Peter Neinow, a Glaciologist at the University at Edinburgh, and over a cup of tea she learned about how climate change is accelerating glacial melt. This led Hood to discover the work of filmmaker James Balog and photographer Tom Hegen, whose collective work documents the dramatic erosion of arctic glaciers.
“Both of these really struck me. And I was thinking that climate change is quite a science heavy topic, but when you put it in a visual way, I think it’s a lot more striking and maybe a little bit easier for people to understand. I really wanted to do something with this, and I’d really enjoyed the flow of the water throughout my trip in Scotland, of the rivers and the waterfalls and the lochs. I tried to recreate that with the kind of matte finish of the silver to represent the ice, and then the hand engraving to represent the flow of the water over the top of it. And it’s a technique that lends itself really well to that.” – Annabel Hood
In 2024, Lakeland Arts were fortunate to acquire the Glacial Flow Teaset by Annabel Hood into Blackwell’s permanent collection, with support of Art Fund’s Sir Nicholas Goodison Award.
“I am very excited to have my glacier flow tea set in the permanent collection of Blackwell – Arts & Crafts house. It’s such an honour to have this piece. I couldn’t have thought of a better home for it to be able to have it on show.” – Annabel Hood
To find out more about Annabel Hood’s practice and for more New Year New Maker content, follow us on Instagram @blackwellartsandcrafts.
