ROWEN & WREN
Lucy Uren and Graeme Purdy founded Rowen & Wren in 2011 after they couldn’t find the ‘updated classics’ they were looking for. Working from their then cramped one-bedroom flat, which acted as HQ, warehouse and shoot location, the partners in both business and life created an online catalogue of ‘timeless’ pieces inspired by textile designer Lucy’s ‘natural gravitation towards collections of old stuff, from sherry glasses to mantle vases,’ she says.
‘At the time there wasn’t much representation of beautiful old products being updated in new finishes that could be loved for years as future heirlooms.’ Today, that same founding design ethos remains at the heart of all Rowen & Wren designs, from sofas and wall lights to knobs and knockers, much of which is made in close two-way collaboration with artisans in the UK and around the world ‘who are about quality not quantity,’ says Graeme.
For Christmas, the emphasis is on simple pieces which bring a lot of joy. ‘It’s the little things like the Elden Advent candleholder that can flicker away on the mantle over Christmas,’ Lucy says of Rowen & Wren’s elegant brass candlestick, designed in-house and made by a fine craftsmen in India, which sits atop a lidded pot holding 24 numbered discs.
Rustic tactility emanates through pieces like ceramicist Rebecca Williams’ hand-thrown bell, each one made on her potter’s wheel in Sussex, willow tree decorations woven by a British mother-daughter duo, beeswax candles sourced from Cumbrian-based Moorlands and ethereal glass icicle ornaments made by a designer in Liverpool (recycled from shards of glass salvaged from around the city’s streets). There are also soft Welsh blankets, thick woolly socks and mittens by a designer in Margate and wrapping paper from Nepal, made largely by women’s collectives using recycled wood pulp found only in their region. ‘I’ve always been a country girl at heart, so nature is always the beginning point of everything we do,’ says Lucy. →
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