Creative Collaborations

Art is Life!

You may have noticed; we really value art at Glen Dye. We have some serious names on our walls, from Peter Doig to Patrick Caulfield, David Shrigley to Damien Hirst and more. But it isn’t by any means only the household names that we embrace. We very much support emerging artists, and their work is everywhere for visitors to enjoy.

Part of our mission is to welcome painters, musicians, makers, poets, writers and more to Glen Dye. This is where our Artist in Residence programme comes in.

Each year, we invite several successful applicants to come and spend time with us in the glen, during which they can make work that is inspired in part or wholly by the place. We provide a location and if need be a stipend, and all that we ask for in return is that the guest leaves us something of their work when they depart.

This has been a successful project so far and every year we welcome new artists and craftspeople. It clearly benefits those guests, but it offers us massive, often intangible benefits too; having creative people adds something, perhaps abstract but important nonetheless, to the place which matters hugely to us.

It’s an energy that you can’t measure, but it’s here, in the ether.

A Cauldron of Birds by Neil Williams

This was designed and made by our long-term friend and collaborator, Neil Williams. It’s a gentle homage to some of the birds of prey that a visitor to Glen Dye might encounter in the hills. A cauldron is a little-used collective noun for a group of birds of prey.

Neil is a designer, photographer, retailer and builder who lives and works on a 1953 French fishing vessel moored off Hayling Island in Hampshire. We’ve worked closely with Neil on loads of projects for around 20 years; he helped us to design our pub in Wales as well as nine shops for our brand Pedlars, from London to Tokyo.

Neil isn’t really on the internet, but you can see some of his work here.

Find it outside Gladstone’s Luxury Dry Goods when you next come and see us.

Gail Bryson in The Showman’s Caravan

Gail is a designer, artist, print-maker and colour specialist who has worked for some of the biggest and most respected homewares retailers in Britian.

We have been lucky enough to work with Gail for 20 years on prints, fabrics, crockery and much more. She is currently collaborating with us on some product for Gladstone’s Luxury Dry Goods, and she made Wayfinder 01 on the Adventure and Discovery Trail.

At the tail end of 2025 we were having lunch together in London (at St John’s, natch), chatting about future projects.

Both Gail and I have long harboured a desire to furnish a house where everything is for sale. We might well do that one day, but at that lunch we decided that Gail would take on the Showman’s caravan here at Glen Dye and fill it with stuff. And so in April of 2026 that’s what she did, bringing a collection of her printed fabric and paper as well as a collection of vintage ephemera to the project, all of which is for sale. This is a gentle homage to Gail’s late mother and the holidays that they enjoyed in Scotland in the 1980s.

Visit Gail’s website here. The key for Showman’s can be collected from the office. Please ask.