Festive Harbour marketplace – accessories

Folkestone Festive Harbour Marketplace opens on Friday 17th November at 4pm.  Open every weekend from 11am to 6pm until Christmas Eve and for late night shopping on Fridays, there’s a lot for people to enjoy.  There’s artwork, food and drink, clothing and accessories – for you or your dog.  Folkelife gives you a rundown of what you can find:

by cally

Cally is one of Folkestone’s finest creating jewellery, bags, other accessories and clothing.

“I came down to Folkestone 8 years ago to sort out my gran’s house and I’ve never left!  I’ve been a part of the East Cliff Creatives group and have shared stalls with different artists over the years.  This Christmas I’m with Pebble Folke who create art from pebbles which are really cute.  I think what makes it for me is being with the other stall holders.  They’re really supportive and happy, and that translates to the customers too. 

“I’ll be selling fingerless mittens which were very popular last year; my record bags are also back.  This year, as well as singles I’ve made some album bags too.  I then have a whole variety of jewellery from enamel, silver, recycled copper, aluminum and rubber creations.”

silver by the sea

Sam and Jas are the mother and daughter team behind the highly successful Silver By The Sea 22.  Regulars on the Harbour Arm Station market over the years, they return for another festive season in their hut.

“We started the business in 2019 after Jas had an apprenticeship as a silversmith.  We’ve always collected sea glass and done creative things with it.  I’ve also been a yoga teacher for the past 20 years and have an interest in crystals so we’ve brought those into the business too.”

each piece tells a story

“All the seaglass we use is from Folkestone, we don’t use it from anywhere else. Depending on the colour you can roughly date as to what period of history the glass comes from.  A lot of Folkestone’s seaglass dates back to Victorian times, and a little before then too.  Yellow glass dates from the Depression.  They made a lot of yellow glass items for the table to cheer everyone up, so it’s a happy colour.  But as it was only manufactured for a short period of time it becomes quite rare.  We made a pink seaglass ring the other day and pink is a very rare colour for us.  That piece would have come from a piece of artwork.  Red is another rare colour and we don’t find very much of that at all.  They used to use gold as part of the colouring process so that would have been used as decorative beads and in jewellery. 

“The seafoam colours like white, blue, and greens are the most common.  These come from soda, beer and wine bottles.   Don’t forget that we had the Silver Springs factory here and in the Victorian times they would dump their glass bottles over Jock’s Cliff, and the Folkestone Glassworks also dumped their unwanted glass here too.  So, part of our working life is to comb the beaches around looking for glass, it’s a hard job! 

“Folkestone Harbour Marketplace has been really good for us and we’ve been really regular and built up a good customer base.  We love being here, and very proud to be in our home town of Folkestone.” 

house of dawg

Baxter’s people are Stephen and Cheryl and they sell dog accessories and clothing which they’ve hand made and designed themselves.  Baxter is their muse and is incredibly obliging in modeling the stock, and looks rather fetching too.  Before this, Stephen and Cheryl were in banking which is where they met.

“We’ve got loads of different doggy presents; we get our toys from Los Angeles so we’ll have lots of things that no one else will have.  Our handmade bandannas are unique too.  There are collars and leads just in case you need to get a new one and rest assured your dog will be served well here.  

“We really like what they’ve done with Folkestone Harbour, it looks really attractive.  We come here for a day out and so we hope that lots of other people will come too.”

rubber ducks

Everyone needs a rubber duck and you’ll find a huge variety at Gone Quackers.  It’s the place for a secret Santa present, especially if the person suits a Greek Donkey Duck.  You’ll find more seaglass than you can shake a stick at from Archie’s hut where she and Bolt walk the beaches each morning to collect glass for her cards and necklaces.

Helen Sharp Jewellery is at Hut 29 with recycled silver jewellery.  The silver she uses comes from NHS x-ray films.  If you can imagine the white bone showing up on an x-ray, that is silver nitrate.  By using a displacement chemical reaction, the silver is removed from the film and Helen buys that from her metal merchant.  It takes 1kg of film to create enough silver for a simple ring.  Helen has more on offer though, from necklaces and earrings to cufflinks and bracelets.