Journal
Wild Pottery: Clay – digging your own
One of the things that makes Native Hands 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...
Woven Dwelling
In the winter of 2012 the East Sussex Archaeology and Museums Partnership team, led by Christabel Shelley and Ian Dunford, constructed a beautiful dwelling, influenced by archaeological findings at Deer Park Farms in County Antrim, Ireland, an early rath (ringfort or...
Hazel Holloway at Wakehurst (Kew)
Walking through Pearcelands Wood at Wakehurst Kew, on a quiet, mid-winter day; woods I know well from making a sculpture here a few years ago. As I walk, an open awareness of the trees, plants, creatures; the light and the weather… open to what might present itself as...
Threading Thorns
A photgraphic essay. Weaving bramble baskets in the woods, I'm joined by photographer Bethany Hobbs. These are her words and images, her story of our day.The humble bramble, the scratcher, the snarer, the snagger of jumpers, the bearer of tongue-staining fruit, it...
Meet the Maker
I talk with Kim Winter, editor at the Basketmakers Association, about my practice. KW: How did you get into making baskets with foraged materials? The training I had at degree level (3D Craft, Brighton Uni) was formative, being materials led. I remember in the first...
Featured Artist
I talk with the founder of Plants & Colour, Flora Arbuthnott, about how I approach working with wild gathered materials in my creative practice. Intimacy with the landscape, the living world, plants, earth, other creatures, has always been meaningful to me as a...
Forage of the Month
Forage of the Month- November/December
Rosehip VinegarThis is a favourite, super-easy recipe. It comes from 'Hedgerow Medicine' by friends Julie and Matthew Bruton-Seal. You can easily find loads of recipes for rose hip syrup... but if you want to preserve their goodness without using sugar this is the...
Forage of the Month- Oct/Nov
Birch Polypore This is the wild mushroom that’s in the soup we cook on the fire for lunch on my woodland courses. Birch Polypore (Fomitopsis betulina) is also known as razor strop fungus, birch conk, birch bracket. It’s valued for its medicinal properties and my...
Forage of the Month – September
Fruit Leather Fruit leather is a really popular snack and easy to carry around with you. It's basically thin, pliable sheets of dehydrated fruit puree with a flexible consistency (like leather). But don't buy it in the shops because it's incredibly simple to make your...