rowan design
award 2011 – held during Wool Week 2011 at Liberty in London.
Words by Dr Margy Cockburn
“Everyone’s a winner”, was the verdict from head designer, Marie Wallin, as she addressed the crowd gathered at Liberty’s of London for the Rowan Design Award prize-giving. All eight student finalists from the Royal College of Art had come up with their own take on traditional British heritage hand knits and, faced with a stunning collection of oversized Fair Isles, asymmetric Arans, and reworked Guernseys, the judges had found it nearly impossible to make a choice. Olwen Walsh got first prize (a raft of goodies from the main sponsors – Rowan, Laxton’s, The British Wool Marketing Board and Libertys) but they all deserved congratulating.
And the success story doesn’t stop there. The Campaign for Wool, launched by HRH The Prince of Wales last year to help revive the wool industry, is definitely getting its message across. Wool may not be a ‘fast fibre’, as Bridgette Kelly of the BWMB was the first to admit, (the students
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who received their yarns just a week before the final designs had to be submitted may beg to differ!) but the message about its value is spreading pretty quickly and the number of businesses joining the Campaign continues to grow. There were sheep on the pavements, window displays full of designer knits, an installation at the Design Centre in Chelsea Harbour, fashion archives and photos at Wool Modern in Pall Mall and even sheep-shaped short bread to buy at cafes. And that was just central London.
All round the country people got involved with Love Wool UK and there were gatherings of spinners, felters, dyers, weavers and knitters in every conceivable location – one enterprising group of ladies went mobile and boarded a train to Paris planning to knit a collection of woolly cakes to deposit in selected patisseries throughout the French capital!
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