by Ruby Taylor | Sep 1, 2018 | All Journal Entries, Courses, Foraging, Wild Basketry, Wild Pottery
In conversation with No Serial Number Magazine, a publication which explores environmental sustainability through traditional crafts and innovative design. We discuss my practice: my relationship to the landscape where I forage my materials, and about coping with the...
by Ruby Taylor | Apr 4, 2018 | All Journal Entries, Courses, Foraging, Wild Basketry
After a day of making cordage from foraged plant fibres, my grubby fingernails show evidence of all the separating and scraping. Once you’re committed to the steady, repetitive nature of prepping and twining cordage, it’s a deeply satisfying process. So...
by Ruby Taylor | Nov 1, 2016 | All Journal Entries, Courses, Foraging, Wild Pottery
One of the things that makes my Wild Pottery courses ‘wild’ is that we dig our own clay from the land What is Clay? Ask this of anyone and they’ll most likely reply ‘mud’. But there’s a bit more to it than that. It’s made up of one or more clay minerals with traces of...
by Ruby Taylor | Jul 29, 2015 | All Journal Entries, Courses, Foraging
It’s a busy time for foraging plant materials right now. The plants have made all the vegetative growth they’re going to make this year. And now they’re setting seed. Over the past months I’ve logged key spots in my mental map of the neighbourhood, spots where certain...
by Ruby Taylor | Jul 18, 2015 | All Journal Entries, Courses, Foraging, Stonehenge / Heritage, Wild Basketry
During the Neolithic time at Stonehenge, there would have been willows growing on the banks of the river Avon, which ran right by the houses situated at nearby Durrington Walls. These are the Neolithic dwellings that have been reconstructed at Stonehenge visitors...
by Ruby Taylor | Jun 19, 2014 | All Journal Entries, Courses, Foraging, Wild Basketry
I’m standing in a large patch of shoulder-high wild grasses on the edge of a midsummer Sussex field. I’m here foraging grass for basketry. They’re in full flower, stashed full of pollen, and I’m a hay fever sufferer. Hmm… To one side is a...