Our ‘no clutter = minimally efficient workspace’ rule has been broken not once but three times recently. In a paraphrase of the William Morris quote we have nothing in the studio that we do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful… or curious.

A pair of forged steel sheep shears, originally unearthed in a junk shop in south Cumbria have become a symbol for the company and a branding device for our Herdwyck No.10 cloth. Shears of this type continue to be made in England by Burgon & Ball of Sheffield and are preferred over electric clippers by some shearers. They’re beautifully simple: blades and all being forged entirely from a single piece of steel. The design has endured unchanged for centuries.

An oddly shaped and weighty item arrived recently. Its rounded form is a warm terracotta colour and it has a glazed surface. A maker’s mark, the date of ’20 4 71′ and ‘Made in England’ are stamped in black on the side. It has received many comments, but no successful identifications. For the record it’s a ceramic insulator, found in a field near Leeds. It would have once supported electricity cables on top of a wooden telegraph pole. It serves no useful purpose here, but is unusual and aesthetically pleasing, so it stays.