FLOW GALLERY, SITUATED IN THE HEART OF NOTTING HILL, IS A PEACEFUL SANCTUARY FOR HAND CRAFTED OBJECTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

As the streets quieten and the world spends more time in the home, we have been looking into the lives of our collectors, seeing how stillness has been created through their collections and curation of handmade objects.  

Yvonna Demczynska, founder of Flow, lives surrounded by a remarkable gathering of art and craft. In her gallery home, there is an eclectic mix of materials and objects that meet harmoniously with the soft walls and light streaming in through tall windows. 

Woven brushes from around the world including Poland, Japan and Scandinavia are carefully hung and arranged in an open cabinet. While ceramic vessels, plates and jugs, often used, are placed together on a beautifully simple floating shelf. In a quiet nook under the stairs, stillness can be felt in a gathering of a large textured stoneware vessel by Eva Brandt and the hand carved, deep wooden bowls by Hans Henning Pedersen, both from the Island of Bornholm, Denmark. 

Artists alike find tranquillity in the making of objects which can be displayed as landscapes of still life. Malcolm Martin and Gaynor Dowling, collaborative artists working in wood, carve vessel-like-sculptures that draw light and movement across their surfaces. Their work pushes the boundary between a two-dimensional textured surface and the volume of a three-dimensional form.

The pieces by Martin and Dowling share a central role of the hand of the tool. As their still life sculptures move into the collectors’ home they take their audience back to the maker’s hand, the studio in which it was formed and the imagination from which it was conceived. This is perhaps the most generous offering that an artist and their work brings to us. They breathe calm into our homes, creating still moments as they catch the casting sun and shadows throughout the day.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BETH EVANS