Wednesday 8 November 2023, Wool

18:00 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

The online event, hosted on Zoom

Zoom details are emailed to you as soon as you place your order. Please check your spam folder before contacting us if you don't think you have received your event information.

A recording of the talk will also be available to ticket holders after the event.

Beatrice Bonanno of Wooldreamers
Bea Bonanno is a weaver and avid knitter who represents Wooldreamers in the US. Her life in the fiber world began in adolescence and her passion has grown through her creative and professional pursuits over the years. She is excited to be a part of Wooldreamers' efforts to uplift natural fiber production in Spain!

Romney Marsh Wools
Established in 2008, Romney Marsh Wools is owned and run by Kristina and Paul Boulden and based on the family farm on the Romney Marsh, Kent, where they have a flock of 1,200 Romney ewes and 150 Merino ewes.

Sagarika Sundaram
Working in expanded textile-based practices Sagarika Sundaram creates abstract sculptural and installation works that investigate the relationship between architecture, biology, and the psyche. Compressing hand-dyed fiber into dense forms, she reinterprets traditional wool-felt as mutant and psychedelic forms engulfing the viewer, calling them to look inward in a reverse observatory experience. By estranging what is familiar, she creates work that possesses its own unique life.

Madelyn Shaw and Trish FitzSimons
Madelyn Shaw is a textile curator, historian, and author, who recently retired from the NMAH, Smithsonian Institution. Trish FitzSimons is a documentary filmmaker, historian, author, and adjunct Professor at Griffith Film School. They share a research project entitled Fabric of War: a hidden history of the global wool trade

Katie Allen
Katie Allen is a Shepherd and Maker based in Gloucestershire, working to connect people with the reality that our textiles come from farming, just like our food. Under her brand ‘Loopy Ewes’, she creates 100% traceable knit garments and homewares; grown, spun, and handmade in South West England using the wool from her flock of native breed sheep. As the farmer, designer, and garment producer for her collection, she takes responsibility for each stage of production - from getting her hands dirty in the field, to fully fashioning each garment on her knitting machine. She uses shepherding processes that honor soil health and biodiversity to encourage a wholesome farmed environment, alongside a commitment to local, minimal processing and slow, hand-crafted production. Her work demonstrates how British wool can be grown regeneratively, simply, and locally processed, to create textiles that are beautiful, honest, and good for the earth. 

Andy Guard of Solidwool & Roger Oates Design
Andy Guard is the Creative Director of Roger Oates Design and Solidwool. Two companies that share a passion for wool and its value, a love of design, and a commitment to creating beautiful products without compromising the planet. Andy strives to raise the profile of sustainable wool products, encouraging consumers to look to natural lower impact items for their homes. Joining Roger Oates Design as a design assistant, Andy began designing and weaving under the direction of  Roger Oates and quickly became their protégé, working alongside them for over 10 years co-designing collections, absorbing the Roger Oates Design mantra of ‘doing things differently. In 2020, Andy was appointed Creative Director of Roger Oates Design, and then in October 2021, it was announced that Roger Oates Design was the new custodian of Solidwool, another brand added to Andy’s portfolio.

Mafalda Moura, Burel Factory
Burel Factory is a Portuguese brand from Serra da Estrela, dedicated to the preservation and regeneration of the cultural heritage and immeasurable traditional value of the region, ensuring the legacy of wool and burel through design, art, and textile innovation. Curating artisanal knowledge and ancestral processes, from the time when the industry was done by hand, production is conducted by 19th-century machines that grant a greater authenticity and finishing quality. Prioritizing sustainability, and social and environmental impact, with a zero waste policy, we bring you the mastery of the people and the experience of the land, in a story to be woven for many generations.

Adrian Pepe is a Honduran-born fiber artist presently residing in Beirut, Lebanon. 

His work focuses on craftsmanship from aesthetic, ecological, sociocultural, and methodological perspectives.  His integrated approach interweaves nature and culture through performance, creating objects as tools to enable an open discourse on materiality, our morphing cultural landscape, and our present condition.

Awassi wool is a fiber found in the Levantine region and its use dates back several millennia. Awassi sheep, the sentient provider of this wool is a central figure in the human narrative, traditionally within the contexts of pastoral imagery, biblical fables, and ritualistic practices of Abrahamic religions. The craft traditions surrounding this wool reflect an ancient complex task entailing the compression of fibers, and in the process, the condensation of history, context, locality, skill, the practitioner, and the animal. 

Cancellation policy
All orders for online talks are non-refundable.