Collect returns to Somerset House from 24 to 28 February 2027, previews on the 24th and 25th, the fair open from the 26th.
Collect, the Crafts Council’s fair of contemporary craft by living makers, returns to Somerset House in Covent Garden from Wednesday 24 to Sunday 28 February 2027.
The Crafts Council began in 1971 as the Crafts Advisory Committee, set up to advise the Minister for the Arts on the needs of the artist craftsman. It bought premises in Waterloo Place in 1973 and built an index of British craftspeople the year after.
For half a century the council has argued that craft belongs in the same conversation as art. Collect is the commercial side of that argument.
Almost everything at the fair was made in the last five years, and almost all of it is for sale. There is no historical material and no secondary market, so a collector buys from living makers as their work enters museum collections.
The international galleries bring their strongest pieces, because the buyers here are curators as often as private clients. Somerset House gives the fair rooms in place of a hall, so it is walked as a series of chambers.
Collect Open runs alongside, a strand of craft-led installations shown as single commissions. The 24th and 25th are preview days.