Pinch and Mourne Textiles collaborate on new collection

Launched during London Craft Week 2019, the PINCH and Mourne Textiles Luachanna collection celebrates artistic making, shared values of craftmanship and British manufacturing.

Celebrating 15 years of PINCH, the collection was designed by Russell Pinch and Oona Bannon, and produced by Mourne Textiles in their County Down workshop in the Mourne mountains.

PINCH owners Russell and Oona, and Mario Sierra of Mourne Textiles, who happen to be South London neighbours, had each held a long time mutual appreciation of one another's work, as both companies have a commitment to a design process that respects materiality and honest making.

Last week's London Craft Week provided the perfect platform for the brands to combine their respective disciplines of furniture and textile design and join forces on this beautiful new collection of cushions and wall hangings.

The collection showcases the art of hand loom weaving, close colour relationships and the beauty of natural materials in their purest form.

With the wall hanging, PINCH were keen to push the hand loom process to its limits. A standard loom weave pattern is characteristically linear and block set in its layout.

PINCH's concept was to immortalise the beauty of the Mourne mountains undulations within the graphics of the wall hanging, pushing the technical build to a style more associated with tapestry weaving, created on a vertical loom.

The pattern is inspired by the natural peaks and troughs of the landscape surrounding Mourne Textiles' workshop in Northern Ireland. Russell Pinch first sketched, then hand drew the design into a pattern layout and recoloured it in classic PINCH colourways, which include dusky pink and warm yellow.

To create the textured wall hanging, Mourne Textiles referred to an archive weave first created by Mourn Textiles' founder, Gerd Hay-Edie in 1950 for a wall covering displayed at The Festival of Britain. Now second generation Mourne Textiles weaver, Karen Hay-Edie (daughter of Gerd), who studied tapestry at the beginning of her weave training in Norway, commits 25 hours of weave time to each hanging, in a celebration of the craft.

The collection is available at PINCH, 46 Bourne Street, London, SW1W 8JD.

pinchdesign.com / mournetextiles.com