The Found Gallery: The Joy of the Find on Dunbar High Street

Whether you are after an original painting, a locally made gift, or simply somewhere worth browsing on a walk through the town, The Found Gallery has become one of Dunbar's most rewarding stops: an independent gallery in East Lothian that puts craft and character ahead of the mass-produced.

That is rather the point. The Found Gallery is built around a single idea, one that Hannah, who runs the gallery with her partner Matthew, describes better than any mission statement could.

"The joy of the find is, for us, the opposite of an algorithm. Here, the experience is personal, and you can feel it when someone connects with a piece."

"Online, you are shown what a computer thinks you want. In high-street chains, you are shown what sells to the masses," Hannah says. "It is that little spark when a person and an object just click."

Images @a.m.photographics

From container loads to small batches

Hannah and Matthew came to Dunbar by way of London, and of a retail world about as far from a High Street gallery as it is possible to get. "We spent our careers in London's head-office retail world, buying mass-produced products by the container load," Hannah says. She studied art at college and had always worked in product design in one form or another, but found herself drawn, over the years, towards smaller, artisanal makers and small-batch production.

"Our corporate careers were exciting and high energy, but we realised we wanted to move away from volume and towards value." They moved to Dunbar for family, the coast and the community, and when the gallery became available, it felt, in Hannah's words, like fate. They took it on in 2025, continuing what the previous owners had built over more than a decade, and carried its spirit forward rather than reinventing it.

What they get from it now is the thing the container loads never offered. "We get to know the makers and their process, and we are always discovering something new that we want others to experience too," Hannah says. "It comes back to something simple: connection, between people and objects with real character and story, and between makers and the people who take those pieces home."

Images @a.m.photographics

What you will find

The pleasure of the place is that no two people are drawn to the same thing.

Near the front sits a changing selection of smaller handmade pieces, the easy-to-love and easy-to-gift finds: considered candles and diffusers from Kosel in Cornwall, seaweed-based bath oils and body products from Wasi, made with seaweed hand-harvested on the west coast of Ireland, and embroidered lavender bags by Hannah Shkandrij, whose work draws on her Ukrainian heritage.

From there, many head straight to the back to spend time with the original artwork. The gallery shows paintings and prints by artists including Sarah Anderson, Sarah Wakeford and Jade Stout, whose feeling for landscape and place runs through the work. Nicole Stevenson's mixed-media views of Dunbar Harbour are a current favourite, capturing the town and its architecture beautifully. Eleanor Cunningham's more abstract work, built from light and texture, stops people in their tracks. And Paul Bartlett's collage birds and wildlife tend to start conversations, not least because he holds a PhD in animal psychology, so there is real curiosity behind every image.

Sarah Anderson, Blue Hour, Bass Rock

Nicole Stevenson, Patterns and Reflections, Cromwell Harbour

Sarah Wakeford, A Thousand Trees Away

The jewellery cabinets are, for many, the way in: predominantly silver work inspired by natural forms, by makers including Donna Barry, Ana Herranz, who works from a studio overlooking an urban forest in Edinburgh, and Julie McLatchie, who makes delicate silver and precious-stone pieces right here in Dunbar.

The ceramics are Hannah's own weakness. The gallery shows stoneware by East Linton potter Douglas White, who fires in a kiln he built in his back garden, Michelle Lowe's colourful slipware decorated with hedgerow plants, and Rose Norman's raku wildlife. Seth Draper's wooden automata and small sculptures, made from driftwood, reclaimed tin and other coastal finds, bring a note of coastal storytelling, and a sense of play, to the mix. Behind the shelves is a network of around 150 artists and makers, a large share rooted in Scotland and East Lothian, the rest gathered on trips across the UK in search of pieces you will not see everywhere.

Images @a.m.photographics

Images @a.m.photographics

Always changing

The Found Gallery does not go in for traditional white-wall openings. Instead the gallery itself keeps shifting: the collection moves with the seasons, and at the moment it leans into coastal living, with pieces inspired by seascapes, seaweed, pebbles, shells and sea glass, alongside collections shaped by British wildflowers across painting, ceramics and jewellery.

There is one thing on the way worth watching for. The gallery is about to launch a loyalty scheme called Finders Keepers: collect a stamp on each visit and earn a voucher to spend on anything in the gallery. "Customers have been incredibly kind to us," Hannah says, "so it is our way of giving a little something back."

While you are in Dunbar, John Muir's Birthplace is a short walk along the High Street, and the harbour is ten minutes further on.