Wool House

 

This celebration of wool at Somerset House combined all aspects of wool including spinning, weaving, textiles, fashion, room designs and fine art. Everything seemed to be made of wool including the brightly coloured wool ‘sheep’ and ‘trees’ outside the entrance and Shauna Richardson’s Crochetdermy brown bear in the entrance hall. Various designers had been given rooms to furnish and decorate with wool products including a nursery, a snug, a study, a natural room, a modern room, a classic drawing room, and a bedroom. They included woollen furnishings, carpets, hangings and ‘wallpaper’. My favourite room was probably the nursery by Donna Wilson mainly because of the central mobile of clouds and rain and the three dimensional ‘wallpaper of trees with separate leaves, all made of wool. I also liked the Winged pendants by Kate Ramsay in the drawing room (below).

 

Other rooms housed spinners and weavers giving practical demonstrations including representatives from Dovecot Studios and the Handweavers Studio demonstrating tapestry and weaving, respectively. Jason Collingwood was also there as artisan in residence but sadly not on the day I visited. There were also tapestries by Claudy Jongstra and fashions for men and women made from woollen fabrics. It was a great advertisement for wool in all its guises.