British Craftmanship
We work hard to find people and businesses that share our vision with a focus on quality, no corner cutting, and always looking for ways to reduce their environmental impact.
Amy lives in Sussex and started hand carving wood when she was a child and fell in love with whittling sticks. It was an interest that grew into a hobby and is now her work. She finds all her wood locally, either from fallen trees blown down by the wind, or ones that have been felled as part of sustainable woodland management. I love to see the marks she’s made as she carves out their shape from the wood.
Amy doesn’t use sandpaper to smooth edges, instead she uses a
super sharp knife which leaves a smooth yet faceted surface showing the final cuts.
We work with small scale British beekeepers who we visit so we can see the bees and landscapes that have made each honey. Here are some of them...
We're very proud of the beekeepers we work with so all our honeys come with a beekeeper card to tell you more about the person behind your honey.
All of our beekeepers are good custodians of their bees and the environment and work with landowners to encourage planting for pollinators, sustainable land management and protect the natural landscape for their bees.
It was a very happy day the day I met Jason and his wife at his workshop in this old mill in Oldham. I love places like this, the size of them, imagining them in their prime and now given new life as workshops and full of creativity.
Jason’s a member of the guild of master craftsman, teaches and handmakes beautiful things from leather. I’m learning a lot as we work together to create leather goods that play to each hide’s own unique characteristics and thoroughly enjoying it!
Our mugs are made out of Cornish clay for us by Duchess China which is one of the remaining potteries in Stoke. They were founded in 1888 and are still going strong.
I was amazed at how many processes a mug has to go through before we can call it a mug: it takes about a week with skilled craftsmanship involved at every stage so over 20 pairs of hands can touch a single product during its manufacture.
For about 300 years linen was Northern Ireland’s main export with the flax grown, harvested and woven there. It was cotton’s increasing popularity and cheaper price that marked linen’s decline and now there’s just one linen mill, Ferguson's, left in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, which is where we source the linen for our cushions from. The flax yarn they use to weave into the linen cloth is from Northern Europe with the producers being able to tell the mill the exact field it’s from for full traceability from field to loom.
We’ve also found a British mill that’s still producing tweeds made from 100% Shetland wool. It wasn’t an easy search but we found them!
The Shetland fleeces are sorted and the yarns spun in Scotland, and the tweeds designed and woven at Lovat’s mill in Hawick. We love combining the tweed with an Irish linen woven.
Abbeyhorn are proud to be the last remaining horn works in Britain. Based at Carnforth, Lancashire they’re able to trace their long history back to 1749 and their first horn works in Worcestershire.
Using traditional methods and a small workforce of skilled horn
carvers they produce a range of products, including the kitchenware made from Scottish red deer antlers we sell here. These antlers have been shed by the deer in the winter.
