Hamewares New Perspectives

FOLD Craft & Design Store and the Barn are delighted to announce the launch of our unique Hamewares New Perspectives products.

FOLD is the Barn’s dedicated retail and workshop space that presents the best in contemporary craft and design from Scotland's established and emerging designer-makers. The store values and stocks products that are uniquely hand made with intention, purpose and care. We give great thought to the products we sell in FOLD and are enthused by products inspired by ecological principles and the circular economy. These include the materials that are used, the life cycle of products that are made and their combined impact on the environment as well as the implications in design itself for ways of living. We support makers as they craft their stories and develop their practices through research led approaches.

Maria Laidlaw, FOLD Craft Manager said, “The recipients of the 2021 Hamewares commission were chosen specifically because of their values and design practices which closely align with ours at the Barn and FOLD.”

The designers chosen to fulfil the commission are Rebecca J Kaye of Ploterre and Sarah Diver Lang. Each designer came up with textile-based designs, one using organic cotton and hemp, the other using lambswool, but from entirely different and interesting perspectives.

“Having the opportunity to create new work through the commission has been great. I have embraced the aspects of my practice such as natural dyeing and hand block printing which are slow and labour intensive. The design too has embraced this idea of time - each block represents a season and are repeated together to represent years. This aims to highlight textiles' use in the past of being treasured possessions inherited by generations. The design was inspired by my visit to the Barn seeing the two aspects of the natural environment surrounding it - the allotments and walled garden against the wild gardens and surrounding landscape.” Sarah Diver Lang

“My creative practice uses environmental data to create designs using sustainable processes and materials so this brief couldn’t have been more perfect. I set about researching information on natural habitats and came across a European standard dataset, which describes specially protected areas across the UK as well as species that are in danger of extinction. For this project, I specifically focused on sites within Scotland. Two things stood out, the fact that many of these critical habitats have no legal protection status and that there were four sites in Scotland containing species that are in danger of extinction. The design aims to tell this story by weaving the information into a household item that we see as an object of comfort within our own habitat. The design is based around a grid pattern and each square represents a special site of interest.” Rebecca J Kaye

The Hamewares New Perspectives collection is now available to buy in FOLD.

FOLD Craft & Design store is open Thursday – Saturday 12pm - 4pm.