Markku Harri: Craftsman and an artist, with an eye on history

As long as I can remember, I have enjoyed making things of use and beauty with my hands. The unique and personal nature of handmade objects appeals to me.

Studying history has held my interest captive since I realised that it is effectively a bottomless well of fascinating stories. Since the Sumerian cuneiform script was developed from accounting lists, people have recorded their greatest triumphs and their most catastrophic losses.

I have a particular love for the European Medieval period, which combines some familiar features from our daily lives to a plethora of fascinatingly exotic practices, ideas and objects, with enough having gone unrecorded to cloak the subject in an aura of mystery, allowing imagination to pick things up from where the records end.

These interests meet in chainmail crafts, where I combine the ages-old metalwork techniques with ageless aesthetics to create durable and beautiful accessories and jewelry.