Tag: willow

Designer Desire: Tom Hare

Montage of Tom Hare willow sculptures

Tom Hare is a British sculptor, working primarily with willow; he creates giant, mainly outdoor, woven pieces.

The natural world is often the subject of his work; fruit, animals, seed pods. I’m especially drawn to his magical oversized mushrooms; morels, chanterelles and boletus.

His site-specific work has been commissioned internationally; for places such as Kew Gardens, the Chelsea Flower Show, Chelsea Physic Garden, Naturhistorisk museum in Oslo, RHS Garden, Wisley, the kitchen gardens at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’saisons and a Fortnum & Mason’s autumn window display. Tom Hare explains:

I was first introduced to willow on a weekend course when my imagination was captured by the endless possibilities of this truly amazing plant. Willow is the perfect example of a sustainable material, which can be woven into forms with such spontaneity.

Portrait of Tom Harecredit

Additional image credit

Gail Kelly calendar

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black & white cover of Gail Kelly's 2013 calendar featuring a linocut oak tree and acorns

Yes, it’s March, but we’ve only just got round to getting ourselves a 2013 calendar. We have high standards & requirements, you see, when it comes to choosing our annual calendar – it needs to be long & narrow as it has to fit the little strip of wall just inside the front door…

Gail Kelly's 2013 calendar hanging in our porch with white jug of yellow tulips and small vintage milk bottles

…it also needs to be attractive – no fluffy, cutesy pictures of animals much as we love them; no pop stars (Justin Bieber or Cliff Richard just won’t cut the mustard!); no artistic/moody/atmospheric shots of castles/ruins/seascapes/mountains; no humour (who wants to hear the same joke every day for a month?). We trawled Etsy, Folksy and Notonthehighstreet and eventually came across this Gail Kelly calendar.

wild cherry tree black & white linocut illustration beech tree black & white linocut illustration
willow tree black & white linocut illustration apple tree black & white linocut illustration

We first fell in love with Gail’s linocut illustrations when we saw her at the British Craft Trade Fair in Harrogate about 5 years ago. We’ve been stocking her tree greeting cards at H is for Home ever since!