This season we have created a beautiful spongeware design, Rosehip & Elderberry. Below, we share the story behind the pattern and its creative development.
This season we have created a beautiful spongeware design, Rosehip & Elderberry. Below, we share the story behind the pattern and its creative development.
Our new pattern combines hips from wild roses with elderberries, celebrating our hedgerows which, threaded through with wildflowers and berries, are immensely important wild corridors offering food and refuge to our creatures. Nestled into the pattern on several pottery shapes and textiles, you will also spot a song thrush – a keen forager that feasts on berries and calls our hedgerows home.
The Rosehip design was developed by studying wild rosehip clippings from Dog Roses growing wild along railway tracks, whilst Elderberry is an evolution of our perennial Elderberry design. It’s important to us to look after perennial patterns and to springboard off them for our new collections, so that we make products that our collectors can add to over time to create their own unique and personal collections.
All designs are always influenced by thorough subject research. Some of the books we referenced to develop Rosehip & Elderberry were:
What to look for in Autumn by E.L. Grant Watson with illustrations by C.F. Tunnicliffe, The concise British Flora in Colour by W. Keble and Brambly Hedge; Autumn Story by Jill Barklem (pictured above).
After working up a pattern, our design team move onto styling which is designing how it will to be sponged on the full pottery range, along with how it will come to life across our textiles.
Rosehip & Elderberry