Volunteering at Walford Mill Crafts: Chapter 5

This week at Walford Mill Crafts we began taking down the Fire exhibition to start setting up the Christmas at the Mill exhibition! This is very exciting and obviously involves quite a lot of work for all staff so it was all hands on deck this week. Along with my usual full Wednesday, I put in an extra couple of mornings I had spare to help out.
On Monday we began packing up the Fire exhibition; my main task was to pick out the items from the gallery that had been sold during the exhibition, pack them safely in bubble wrap, add contact details for their new owners and put them to one side ready for collection. I also helped to pack up jewellery and other bits n bobs that hadn't sold to be sent back to their maker(s).

David Walker Ceramics

Some of the exhibits from Fire were big and unusually shaped like the above ceramics by David Walker. These are a bit challenging to wrap up but very beautiful of course.
On Tuesday morning I helped out again, this time with a stock check in the gallery shop because everything had to be accounted for before the big changeover to Christmas. There are hundreds of really beautiful objects in the shop but this is one of my favourites:

Flight of the Bombus - Heidi Warr

This is a huge dish by Heidi Warr Ceramics; being a huge fan of Op Art and also bees I think it's the Best Thing Ever! Unfortunately a little out of my price range to say the least but I can admire it until some lucky person snaps it up.
On Wednesday I was (wo)manning the gallery shop most of the day. I had to learn how to use the till and various other skills as I went along but luckily I'm quite good at working that way. I also did some pricing, unpacking deliveries and meeting and greeting customers and makers who popped in. Not in that order.
We had a delivery of new stock from Elm House Studio which were mini, big and extra big bowls like this one:

Elm House Studio

Ooh! These come in a few different colourways including blue, aqua and yellow (above). Very 1970s-ish in style I think; lovely!
After lunch I helped in the gallery for a while: screwing things into walls, arranging and re-arranging mostly. Then Mel and I began to rearrange the stock in the shop to fit in the new Christmas goodies. This was the shop at the beginning:

And this is the shop at the end of the day when we left:

Not finished, but looking distinctly more christmassy! I was responsible for the table there in the foreground and also for the shelves of Christmas cards on the right. I shall be excited to see how it all looks when I go back next Wednesday.
And here's the gallery amognst all the boxes and deliveries and plinths:

Obviously not finished here either (although it is now). I'll be posting photos next week after I've been in and seen the final results!