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Making Matters

On sale

14th August 2025

Price: £24.99

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Selected: Audiobook Downloadable / ISBN-13: 9781529346336

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‘A celebration of the overlooked artistry in crafts practised across the world’
THE TIMES

‘Clare Hunter is out to reclaim the joy of making for the masses… no act of creativity is too humble, too ephemeral, for this hymn to the sensory wonder and connectivity of the homemade’
OBSERVER

Making Matters is an open door to the power of craft. Now inspired, I’m off to get creative’
DAILY EXPRESS

As children, we made things: snowmen, paper boats, eccentrically costumed plays. That making fired our minds and imaginations – it altered our small worlds and shaped who we became. But as adults, it is hard to find to find the space for creativity and to remember its power.

Exploring craft traditions and forms of making from across centuries and cultures, Clare Hunter encourages to engage with the world afresh. To use our hands again, to see beauty in unexpected places, to play and protest and embrace imaginative possibilities. From paper crafts to wonders made from light and snow, she searches for creative delight – making lanterns, puppets and pinhole cameras.

Inspiring and fascinating, Making Matters celebrates individual and collective creativity. It blends history, culture and politics with rich storytelling, wonderful characters and tales of remarkable objects. Read this, and then make something.

‘In an era of screens and machines, what a joy it is to read Clare Hunter’s inspiring new book, which summons up the creative delights of making wonderment with our own hands’
Justine Picardie, author of Miss Dior

Making Matters celebrates the joy of the handmade in all of its wonderful variety. In a fast paced world, it is a timely and beautiful exploration of making traditions. I loved it!’
Kate Strasdin, author of The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes

Reviews

Kate Strasdin, author of <i>The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes</i>
Making Matters celebrates the joy of the handmade in all of its wonderful variety. In a fast-paced world it is a timely and beautiful exploration of making traditions. I loved it!
The Bookseller
A delightful tribute to the slow and simple pleasures of playful craft
Justine Picardie, author of <i>Miss Dior</i>
In an era of screens and machines, what a joy it is to read Clare Hunter's inspiring new book, which summons up the creative delights of making wonderment with our own hands
Observer
Clare Hunter is out to reclaim the joy of making for the masses . . . no act of creativity is too humble, too ephemeral, for this hymn to the sensory wonder and connectivity of the homemade
Daily Express
Through assembling snowmen, sandcastles, paper boats and costumes for plays, to finding creative delight in making lanterns, puppets and pinhole cameras, Hunter brings us back to a time where the possibilities for creativity are endless. Making Matters is an open door to the power of craft. Now inspired, I'm off to get creative
Christine Patterson, The Times
A celebration of the overlooked artistry in crafts practised across the world... Hunter has a magpie-like mind and an enviable ability to be absorbed in what she reads, hears or sees... Making Matters is packed with fascinating detail... It's well written and meticulously researched and left me feeling that making things is good for the brain, good for the hands and good for the soul