Fiona shepherds a flock of Hebridean sheep on her coastal smallholding and grows her own wool.  It is with this yarn that Fiona designs and knits sustainable and functional textiles, with an enviable provenance, in her studio at Carry Farm.  This approach to making, conserves the local heathland as well as the ancient breed of the native Hebridean sheep. The dark brown fibre is at the heart of all her work.  With an enviable provenance, the story of producing the finished product is fundamental to her textiles, alongside attaining longevity and sustainability in textile production. To ensure a lasting legacy for her flock,  Fiona has learnt the craft of  tanning her Hebridean sheepskins with the bark of the mimosa tree. A very limited number of sheepskins, which are genuinely chemical free,  naturally produced and with a transparent provenance, are available at Carry Farm.

Fiona’s sister Karen, recently built a new studio space at Carry Farm. She trained at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1990. Her aim is to create visually satisfying objects for domestic environments that have a quality of surface and pattern, and that appeal to our sense of touch. The process involves layers of bold and playful decoration while retaining the inherent warmth of red earthenware clay.

Simple forms are made on the wheel,  hand built or using plaster moulds. Karen collects imagery from daily life and nature to make paper collages and, before the first firing, coloured slips are brushed on to the ‘leather hard’ pieces using cut paper stencils.  Newspaper lettering on the final work echoes this process. Layers of applied slip produce a subtle raised decoration and can be drawn though to reveal the red clay beneath. A second glaze firing is followed by a third for the application of printed decals.

Eve, Karen’s daughter, graduated from Textile Design at The Glasgow School of Art in 2018 where she developed an interest in creating surface pattern inspired by Scottish nature and architecture.  She recently collaborated with the company White Stuff on their AW19 collection and has set up a print studio in Tighnabruaich on the West Coast of Scotland. From there, Eve creates textiles and ceramics, interpreting nature in abstract form for homes and spaces.