The makers
More than 30 Tasmanian makers fill the shelves at Wren & Willow: potters, weavers, turners and candle makers working in small batches. Here is how their work finds its way to Salamanca Square.
How a piece is chosen
A former textile designer buys the way she used to sample fabric: by touch, by use and by living with it for a while. Nothing is chosen from a catalogue.
Clare goes to the studio or workshop, sees how the work is made and talks with the person making it.
Weight, balance, the feel of a glaze or a hem. If it does not feel right in the hand, it does not come back to Hobart.
Pieces are used at home first. A mug has to pour, a tea towel has to dry, a candle has to burn evenly to the end.
Only then does it go on a shelf, with space around it, so you can see what it is.
The materials
No. 01 · Clay
The ceramics come from five Tasmanian potters. Each piece is thrown on the wheel, left to dry on timber shelves, bisque fired, glazed and fired a second time.
Glazes like wood ash move in the kiln, so no two pieces finish quite the same. Clare chooses the ones where that movement looks deliberate.
No. 02 · Linen
Linen is spun from flax, and it gets better with use: softer, more absorbent, more itself. Stonewashing gives you that softness from the first day.
Clare's years as a textile designer show most here. She chooses linen by weight and hand, and colours that sit quietly together: oat, moss, charcoal and sage.
No. 03 · Huon pine
Huon pine is one of the slowest growing trees on earth, adding roughly a millimetre of girth a year. Its natural oil gives the timber its scent and makes it resistant to rot, which is why boatbuilders prized it.
The pieces on our shelves are turned in the Huon Valley from salvaged timber. Even the offcuts are too good to waste, so they become spreaders and small things.
No. 04 · Wax and botanicals
Small-batch soy candles carry the scents of the Tasmanian bush: tea-tree after rain, kunzea in flower, the warmth of mountain pepper. Beeswax tapers are dipped by hand.
Pressed botanical prints capture a single sprig at true size, so a little of the island can hang on a wall in Sydney or Brisbane.
On the shelves now
The online shelves hold a small selection of what is in the shop on Salamanca Square. Each piece can be wrapped in brown paper, free, and posted anywhere in Australia.
