When Jason Collingwood left school and refused to go to university, he was given the ultimatum of helping his father, Peter Collingwood, a preeminent British weaver, in his rug-weaving workshop in order to ‘pay’ rent, “I was a typically grumpy teenager when I started helping in his workshop,” he says, “but at 24 I had more awareness of his standing and decided to take advantage of his knowledge and experience. I proved to be technically adept and he had the confidence to send out rugs I had woven in his name.” Jason does not describe himself as an artist, but as an artisan, “I would also be happy to be called a skilled machine (loom) operative! People think my day is spent in some creative cloud, but the truth is there are only so many steps required to weave a rug. The secret is in recognising that if it looks handmade, it is not well made.”

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Jason hand-wove this wool and linen rug using the shaft-switching technique. The red and purple geometric patterns are of his own design.

Design #153

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Jason hand-wove this wool and linen rug using the shaft-switching technique. The geometric patterns as well as the colour gradient are of his own design.

Design #118

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Design #140

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Jason hand-wove this wool and linen rug using the shaft-switching technique. The brown and black geometric patterns are of his own design.

Design #152

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Design #82

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Aiming to build a strong economy and infrastructure for contemporary craft, the Crafts Council UK champions high quality contemporary craft practice nationally and internationally through exhibitions, publications including Crafts magazine, education programmes and the curation of the UK's national collection. It also organises Collect, an international art fair for modern craft and design which takes place in London annually, attracting specialist craft galleries, dealers, designers and a wide community of craft enthusiasts. The organisation is a member of the World Crafts Council.

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After graduating and freelancing as an illustrator and art director, Hannah Waldron fell in love with the woven work of Anni Albers and Gunta Stölzl at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin. Inspired, she experimented with  weaving on a small loom and completed a MFA in Textiles at Konstfack in Stockholm. Ever since, fascinated by the possibilities of weaving, Hannah has specialised in telling stories through her textiles: “I don’t think one lifetime is enough to fully realise all the incredible techniques that the craft of weaving offers.” Working from her studio in Cornwall with a beautiful garden and café, she intuitively combines different natural and naturally dyed fibres like wool, silk and linen in a sustainable way.

Waldron, Hannah

Textile tales

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Weaving came to Catarina Riccabona while she was studying textile design after having previously studied and worked in translation in London. It was a need for something more creative that led the Austrian-born to her craft. Receiving the Cockpit Arts/Clothworkers' Foundation Award in 2012 gave her the chance to start her business by accessing a shared studio, and getting advice from the Cockpit Arts team. She now specialises in hand weaving, working on a large traditional floor loom; her work is as environmentally-friendly as possible, and she enjoys small irregularities and other elements that result from a making process that involves hands and soul. Working intuitively, each of her pieces is unique and spontaneously made.

Riccabona, Catarina

The art of textiles

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Fay McCaul creates luminous knitted panels inspired by architectural forms. Her pieces incorporate a mix of reflective materials inside knitted pockets. She builds up rows of pockets and places tiles of various materials inside: plastic, mirrored, painted plywood, and etched metal. These inclusions give Fay’s textiles a quality of light and movement not found in traditional fabrics. She has also invented an entirely new textile surface that encapsulates reflective materials via a heat bonding process. Fay’s work has been exhibited widely from London to Shanghai and been featured in Elle Decoration, Design Boom and Architectural Digest.

McCaul, Fay

A sense of scale

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Lora Avedian is a multidisciplinary artist who uses traditional embroidery and embellishment techniques to make modern works that look as beautiful on the body as they do on a wall. She favours slow processes, focusing on bespoke projects, and prefers to use unique, antique materials including cords, braids and ribbons when creating her pieces. Inspired by the ceremonies and folk costumes of her Armenian heritage, the symbolism of the objects, colours and embroidery techniques she uses throughout her work is important in telling her visual story.

Avedian, Lora

Fascinated by flowers

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Your authorizations

Developed in partnership with Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte and made possible by the support of Cartier, Homo Faber in Città gives you a rare chance to visit over 70 artisan workshops. The project is developed in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Confartigianato Imprese Venezia, CNA Venezia, Consorzio Promovetro Murano, The Venice Glass Week and Venezia da Vivere.

Our Partners

Step inside the workshops and ateliers to learn the secrets of local master artisans and manufacturers

Try your hand at different crafts with an authentic experience

Marvel at examples of fine craftsmanship by doing our itineraries

This september, the second edition of Homo Faber in Città invites visitors to step off the beaten track and discover the artisanal addresses where Venetian craftspeople create objects of exquisite beauty. A rare opportunity to witness Venice’s master artisans and young talents demonstrating their crafts and presenting the tools, materials and skills involved in contemporary Venetian craftsmanship.

Enrich your experience beyond Homo Faber 2024: The Journey of Life

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Homo Faber Guide is an online portal dedicated to contemporary craftsmanship, showcasing artisans, ateliers, museums, galleries, shops and experiences. Create your user account for access to exclusive features on Homo Faber Guide: save your preferred pages, hear about hot topics first, leave recommendations for your favourite artisans and much more.

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Although the Michelangelo Foundation researches the talents for its projects autonomously, collaboration with our ambassadors is fundamental. Over 120 associations, schools and institutions allow us to map the continents for craftsmanship and to have partners in each country who share our vision and goals. In addition, we have asked well-known personalities in the craft, design and art world to be our ambassadors in the cities where they live, so that their recommendations can offer a unique insight into craftsmanship in the major cities of Europe and beyond.

Who are our ambassadors?

Download our free Homo Faber Guide app (iOS and Android) to discover artisans, museums, galleries, shops, and experiences by location. Search Homo Faber on the App store on your mobile device.

Find craftsmanship destinations on the go

Discover the addresses of esteemed manufacturers, well known for producing high quality objects across a wide variety of crafts. Read their stories and find out where you can shop their contemporary pieces, see their archive collections and even in some cases visit their workshops. Find exceptional ateliers where artisans collaborate creatively to create fine pieces of craftsmanship. Reach out to them to commission something special.

Ateliers & Manufacturers

All the artisans and small workshops featured in Homo Faber Guide have been carefully researched and selected. They are presented and narrated through a selection of images and an interview, which allows readers to immerse themselves in the universe of these makers who exemplify excellence in their individual fields or are promising talents of the future. Find masters and rising stars who share the same passion and determination, and whose workshops are ready to share their secrets with visitors.

A selection of the best artisans

Are you eager to discover a city through craftsmanship? Do you wish to spend a few hours visiting an applied arts museum or attending a course on a craft with one of the masters featured in Homo Faber Guide? Browse the section dedicated to experiences and find your next adventure.

Experiences

An expert artisan is an accomplished artisan who has been in activity for more than ten years. He or she may also be engaged in passing on their knowledge to the next generations, but they have been doing so for less than seven years. Beyond this, they will become a Master artisan.

Who is an Expert artisan?

Homo Faber Guide provides you with a selection of the best addresses across Europe and further afield, where you will be able to discover and purchase exceptional objects, some of which are created by artisans featured in Homo Faber Guide.

Galleries

Homo Faber Guide is an online platform dedicated to craftsmanship that allows you to discover artisans and their masterpieces; explore museums, visit galleries and shops selling unique objects; enjoy experiences in cities across Europe and beyond.

Homo Faber Guide is a signature project developed by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship, an international non-profit organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, which was set up in 2016 thanks to the intuition of Franco Cologni and Johann Rupert. The Michelangelo Foundation’s mission is to celebrate and preserve master craftsmanship, and for this reason it has created a map of the most significant representatives in this field, with the aim of connecting all its protagonists: artisans, designers, gallery owners, art curators, collectors and enthusiasts of high-quality handmade pieces.

About the Guide

Are you an artisan, atelier or manufacturer? Would you like to be featured in Homo Faber Guide? The Michelangelo Foundation encourages self-assessment initiatives and is pleased to evaluate new members to appear on the Guide or in other projects. Thanks to the Master’s Touch Evaluation Tool, every artisan can send their application: register and access a questionnaire to see if you fulfill the 11 criteria for excellence that stand behind all the activities of the Michelangelo Foundation. If your answers reach the minimum requirement, your application will be brought to our attention; if, on the contrary, you should score below the minimum requirement, we will give you some points for improvement, in the hope that you may participate in future initiatives of the Michelangelo Foundation.

Join the Homo Faber Guide!

Our artisan labels

A master artisan is an accomplished artisan who has been in activity for more than ten years, and who has also been engaged in passing on his or her expertise to the younger generations for more than seven years. This is in keeping with one of the key values of the Michelangelo Foundation: the transmission of knowledge in craftsmanship.

Who is a Master artisan?

Find museums handpicked for their links to contemporary craftsmanship and the exquisite collections they have on display. In each city, discover a museum of interest and organise your visit. From Italian museums displaying coral collections, glass pieces and ceramics to decorative art museums in Russia and Greece, marvel at the variety of museums exhibiting masterpieces, showcasing techniques and recounting histories.

Museums

A rising star is an artisan who has been active for less than ten years, and who is capable of expressing his or her craft with competence, creativity and originality. Whether self-taught or trained, the rising star represents the future of craftsmanship, in creativity, concerns and approaches.

Who is a Rising star?

The artisans featured in Homo Faber Guide have been selected through a meticulous assessment process based on the 11 criteria for excellence, identified by Alberto Cavalli, Executive Director of the Michelangelo Foundation, in the volume The Master’s Touch, written with researchers Giuditta Comerci and Giovanna Marchello. The members of the Michelangelo Foundation’s network who have been invited to participate in sourcing artisans for the Guide use an evaluation tool based on these criteria. In this way, they can identify the most suitable artisans to include in the project.

Simple rules for a transparent selection

In which city does the artisan work?

In which country does the artisan practise?

What craft does the artisan practise?

What is the artisan’s Instagram page?

What is the name of the artisan you are recommending?

Does the artisan have a website?

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