Our Festival Team’s Guide to Independent Makers 2025
27th November 2025
Since 2017, we’ve celebrated the spirit of making in all its forms; from Lancashire’s creative roots to the independent makers shaping the UK today.
For us, Lancashire Day is the perfect lead-in to Small Business Saturday, a moment to spotlight and champion small businesses and makers from across the county and beyond. Each year, we ask our team to share some of their favourite current makers for our curated list.
So whether you’re on the hunt for gifts or looking to follow some new independent businesses and artists, we’ve got you covered.
The Wolf in Silverdale
An independent countryside café filled with cake, coffee, and comfort, nestled in the beautiful Silverdale. Proudly self-taught, Rachael has developed her own methods, earning a unique identity for the way she weaves childhood flavours into her bakes.
Nowshin Prenon
Nowshin is a multidisciplinary artist, specialising in woven textile design. As a textile designer, Prenon’s work focuses on telling a story through the use of material and processes.
She creates hand-dyed and hand-woven artwork. Her process investigates both digital explorations and expressive winding techniques, which are influenced by her cultural heritage. Her use of rich colour and detailed pattern translated into fabrics illustrates her style as a designer.
Ruth Wilde
Ruth makes ceramics for sensitive souls. Her work is filled with tender thoughts of romance, nostalgia, and melancholy. Like shifting moods, her pieces move from happy to blue, silly to serious. She uses colour, pattern, and drawing to create work that resonates with those who collect and use her pieces every day.
Ashley Nicole Turner
Qualified in bench joinery and antique restoration, Ashley Nicole Turner was a contestant on Channel 4’s Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker. Discover her collection of beautifully handcrafted homeware pieces, each one a testament to her skill, craftsmanship, and love of woodwork.
R-N-W
Rose is a game designer in the UK who creates adventures, makes cute tabletop accessories and produces handy game master tools. Alongside writing tabletop adventures, she is an illustrator, graphic designer and avid DnD player.
WONDERHAUS
WONDERHAUS is made to have fun in.
Utilising materials that elevate and challenge the traditional value notion of precious jewellery. WONDERHAUS is passionate about plastic as a material, working with heat forming, laser etching and cutting to create wearable art pieces and homewear.
Emily Higham Jewellery
Emily is a contemporary Jeweller who uses the process of enamelling to explore colour and pattern within jewellery and creates delicate and aesthetic jewellery pieces that are inspired by the beautiful colours and patterns of honeycomb, and the shapes and layers found within beehives.
Leena Sobeih Studio
Everything at Leena Sobeih Studio is handmade with care and love. Based out of a little studio in Manchester, Leena draws influence from her Palestinian heritage through traditional Palestinian Tatreez (cross stitch) as well as her love of European historical textiles and silhouettes.
East meets West, creating perfectly whimsical silhouettes whilst honouring the centuries-old labour of Palestinian Tatreez in a modern and unique way. All materials are sourced carefully and thoughtfully, with most of the made-to-order range being made out of vintage curtains that Leena brings back to life.
Studio Wald
Leeds-based Studio Wald was founded by Jakob & Freya, a husband and wife team who met while studying a degree in 3D design. Studio Wald has an ever-evolving collection of botanically inspired products – including greeting cards, plant hangers and their best-selling flower press.
All of their products are made with care using sustainably sourced materials.
UPSO Bags
UPSO bags are unique, functional, and durable bags, primarily made from upcycled materials like retired truck tarps and fire hoses. The company’s mission is to reduce waste and provide a sustainable alternative to conventionally manufactured bags.
Each bag is hand-cut and sewn in Nelson. Due to the varied previous lives of the truck tarps and the way they are selected and processed, no two bags are the same. As well as being given a unique reference number, each bag is signed by its maker.
Kohi Coffee House
Kohi Coffee House is a newly opened Japanese-inspired coffee house in Blackburn, offering a delicious drinks and food menu that includes popular items like “pocket toasts” and soufflé pancakes.
Object Petit a
Simge Vurtak is a Manchester-based ceramics artist whose work explores all things humane. Blending raw textures with dark humour, she creates figurative clay sculptures that reflect on vulnerability, power, belonging, and the quiet awkwardness of being human.
Her practice often begins with a question or an unsettling feeling, using clay as a way to process complex emotions. Each piece is an invitation to reflection.
Max Machen
Glasgow-based artist Max Machen is bringing a smile to a wall/page/screen near you with their award-winning illustrations filled with joy.
Metal by Chaz
Caitlin Hazell makes historical and folklore-inspired objects, artefacts and souvenirs hand-carved in wax and cast in bronze or recycled silver, following ancient lost wax and sand casting methods.
Originally started in 2020, Metal by Chaz was born under experimental metal melting research in the Welsh borderlands, which serves as inspiration for the work, thrown in with lots of other wiggly nonsense, including casts from real tiny pickles.
Ian Halawi
Blackburn-based artist Ian Halawi creates beautiful artworks using paint and a range of printmaking techniques, including lino printing. Often inspired by nature and childhood, Ian crafts colourful and intricate pieces that capture a sense of wonder and nostalgia.
To learn more about Lancashire Day, visit www.visitlancashire.com
To learn more about Small Business Saturday, visit smallbusinesssaturdayuk.com
