Brushes
And why I just can't shift them!
If you’ve followed my work for a while you may know that I run brushmaking workshops around the UK. With my work spanning across the wider field of design, craft (and piggery!) I thought there may be some of you that might be wondering what brought me to brushmaking, and why I love to share the craft with others.
In 2015 whilst studying Design and Craft at Brighton Uni I made a plan to set off around the UK on a journey to discover the many threatened crafts and industries spanning our island. I made a list of makers from trugs, to scissors, ladders, cricket balls, clogs, baskets and more. This was before the The Heritage Crafts Red List existed, which was first published in 2017 to rank traditional crafts by the likelihood they would survive to the next generation.
One afternoon I was chatting to my Grandma, a keen amateur maker herself and daughter of a fashion designer, and I started discussing my project idea with her. She responded by telling me about a small industry in her local town on the brink of extinction – brushmaking! Until then I’d never consider brushmaking to be an endangered craft, or even a craft at all. So I decided to head off up the road into Chesham and take a visit to R. Russell and see for myself what it was all about.
Needless to say my journey around the UK never really got going (maybe I’ll do it one day). And over a decade later here I am still talking, teaching and crafting brushes. Like with so many crafts, when you start to look a little deeper you begin to the learn the endless complexities that are enveloped within the most ubiquitous objects. The ones we use everyday and never take a second thought as to how they’re made. Who’s hands have brought them into being. What materials have had to be grown, found or foraged for them to exist at all. The supply chains, industries and even places we consider to be natural, such as woodlands and farmland, that have all grown out of a need for material things.
The form, the techniques, the materiality and the function of brushes all captivated me. The hundreds of different uses that the most simple object, made from just two components, a handle and bristles, can perform. The way that almost all brushes have only one particular function. Would you use your hair brush to clean your toilet? Or your shoe brush to clean your teeth? Your make up brushes for your dog?!
It felt as if I’d discovered something that no one else could see. And it became my mission to show that off to the world.
If you want to learn all about brushmaking, how it relates to place and the skills needed to make your own unique brushes using traditional techniques you can join me here:
27th July, Summer Camp @ Hawarden Estate, North Wales
4th October, Argal Home Farm, Falmouth, Cornwall
October (exact dates TBC), Merchant and Mills, Rye, East Sussex (keep an eye out here for updates)
All my workshop dates for brushmaking and more are listed on my website here
And lastly, if you would like to invite me to host a workshop at your venue I would be delighted to venture in or out of Cornwall to do so!
Grandmas FTW! Also, we will be there in October ✌️