London silversmith wins England Maker of the Year 2025

Silversmith Angela Cork has won the 2025 England Maker of the Year Award, supported by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, including a £1,000 prize awarded at a special presentation at Wentworth Woodhouse on Monday 17 November 2025.

The award celebrates a heritage craftsperson in England who has made an outstanding contribution to their craft within the previous year. It recognises a contribution that is far beyond the ordinary, either in pushing their craft to new levels, contributing to its promotion or continuation in an exceptional way.

Angela Cork is one of the UK’s leading contemporary silversmiths, recognised for her sustained excellence in practice, with sculptural sterling silver pieces held in prestigious collections, and her pivotal leadership as Principal of Bishopsland Educational Trust. Her dedication to mentoring the next generation, combined with her own high-calibre commissions, ensures the technical mastery and ethical foundations of silversmithing are safeguarded and advanced.

The two other finalists for the award were Florence Hamer, who is dedicated to the guardianship of endangered basketry and split wood crafts, winning the Basketmaker’s Association’s ‘Basketry of the Year’ award in 2023, and being selected for The King’s Foundation ’35 under 35′ network this year, and Razwan Ul-Haq, one of the UK’s few practitioners of traditional Arabic calligraphy, whose innovative work includes co-curating a headline exhibition exploring calligraphy and boxing, and pioneering a project to teach communities how to extract pigment from local materials such as bricks and soil.

The Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation supports innovative people working in field-based science, art and craft, teaching and protection of the natural world.

Photo: Angela Cork, winner of the 2025 England Maker of the Year Award, and Nicola Duncan-Finn, Heritage Crafts Trustee. Photo by Robert Wade.