PORT PRESERVATION GIVES GUILD A NEW HOME
Associated British Ports’ (ABP) Port Director for its South Wales Ports, Budha Majumdar, recently visited ‘Craft in the Bay’, the new permanent home of the Makers Guild in Wales, to see for himself how a former historically and architecturally significant port warehouse has been incorporated into the structural design of the guild’s new gallery.The visit also allowed him to show, once again, ABP’s support for the project by helping the guild to meet a funding shortfall.
ABP is one of the first companies in Wales to come forward after the guild wrote to major commercial firms in Wales asking for one-off £500 donations which it hoped would help it meet a funding shortfall of £21,000.The gallery, which opened in June 2002, is proving to be a successful visitors’ attraction, but last-minute building design changes imposed on the guild have left it with outstanding costs to cover.
‘Craft in the Bay’ is regarded as one of the best applied-arts galleries in the UK. The building itself is testament to the arts and crafts of the Victorian blacksmith as the structure of the main gallery is, in fact, the cast-iron framework of a former dockside warehouse.The warehouse, known as ‘D’ Shed, was donated by ABP to the guild in 1999.It was carefully dismantled and preserved before being re-erected in its current form in the Bay.Selwyn Gale, Chairman of the Makers Guild in Wales, said:
“D Shed is one of the last remaining mid-19th century buildings in Cardiff Bay.ABP’s generosity has not only meant that this example of Welsh Victorian industrial architecture has been preserved, but that it also has provided the guild with a unique and extraordinary home for our gallery.”
Budha Majumdar, ABP Port Director, South Wales Ports, said:
“This project has been a double success, preserving a piece ofABP’s Port of Cardiff’s history, while at the same time providing a modern home for Welsh craftsmen and women.We are delighted to support ‘Craft in the Bay’.”
At ‘Craft in the Bay’, the guild sells the work of its members, conducts an education programme in the applied arts and crafts for schools and the public, as well as holding free exhibitions of outstanding works of applied arts by artists of both national and international renown.
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