“Woven objects that belong on your nature table.”
If you pocket pebbles on walks, love a windswept landscape, and your camera roll is full of lichen close-ups — there might be something here for you.
I'm a maker based in the Derbyshire Dales. Since I was given a raffia weaving kit as a kid I always hankered after a heddle loom. In lockdown I thought 'sod it' and started weaving on whatever came to hand — forked sticks, pebbles, cardboard boxes. In 2025 a friend lent me a four shaft loom — a dream come true. I enjoy the rhythmic work and the way the pattern builds. But I still love using natural materials as a starting point, weaving tapestries onto the things I find outside. A loom has constraints I enjoy exploring. But a found stick or an interesting stone gives me a problem to solve.
I work from home in an old quarryman's cottage on the edge of the Derwent Valley World Heritage Site — the birthplace of the industrial revolution, where weaving got hooked up to a power supply. So I'm being a proper Luddite a couple of centuries too late. What passes for my studio is an old dressing table-come-naturalist's desk, where a natural history collection mingles with the yarns I've gathered.
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