The Artworkers’ Guild was founded in 1884 by architects and designers, who wanted to create a meeting place for the fine arts and the applied arts on an equal footing. The guild promoted the unity of all the arts, denying the distinction between fine and applied art. Today, the Artworkers’ Guild is a society of artists, craftsmen and designers with a common interest in the interaction, development and distribution of creative skills. The Guild operates like a club, but its principle of learning by doing spread through art education and has a worldwide influence.

Many artists, designers and makers are avid collectors who find inspiration in interesting objects. For the annual Table Top Museums exhibition, Guild members present their private, sometimes rather eccentric, collections on a table. In the past, this included collection – or museums – of Andean textiles, jelly moulds, stencils, lucky-bags from the 1990s, shopping lists, clip-on moustaches, rubber stamps and mud. In the keepsake, line drawings of different tables reflect the originality and uniqueness of the collections.