Journal
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) 2023
Walking through Pearcelands Wood at Wakehurst Kew, on a quiet, mid-winter day; woods I know well from making a sculpture here in 2017. As I walk, an open awareness of the trees, plants, creatures; the light and the weather… open to what might present itself as an idea...
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...
Wild Pottery: Clay- digging your own
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...
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- Oct/Nov
Birch PolyporeThis 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. My herbalist friend Lucinda Warner describes its...
Forage of the Month -October
Beech Nuts Beech trees are beautiful for so many reasons! Where I grew up, near the Chilterns in South Oxfordshire, we roamed in beech woods during bluebell season, and in the autumn when their fallen leaves glow copper. For other creatures and plants, beech woodland...
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...