1. Measure the length of your longest leaf and cut your tape to double that (Sandy’s are approximately two inches long). Peel off the paper backing, place cut tape sticky side up.
2. Place wire in the center of the tape, half way up the length, leaving at least an inch of wire sitting outside of the tape.
3. Fold the tape over at its half-way point, sandwiching in the wire.
4. Place a leaf over the folded tape, align the midrib of the leaf with the wire.
5. Trace around the leaf with a pencil.
6. Cut out the leaf.
7. Take a walk and find a fallen branch!
8. Tie the leaf to the branch by winding the wire around it.
Above: Give the leaves a natural curl and they’re reading for hanging. Above: Sandy’s instructional diagram.
The Finished Results
Above: Oak leaves work especially well—their shapes are lovely, instantly recognizable, and easy to trace. Above: Shining in the light.
At first sight, there’s nothing extraordinary about Alice Fox’s allotment in West Yorkshire, England. In fact, her garden community neighbors are “mostly oblivious” to the magic she weaves there. The addition of a flax crop may have been a novelty when she first rented the plot, but the size and layout of the land, sheds, and greenhouse seem pretty standard—until you look closer.
Peek through the window of the main shed and your eyes will be drawn to a wonderful organized jumble of plant pots, trays, tools, jars of homemade botanical inks, sketches, scribbles, samples, fragments of ceramics, wire, plastic, and other unearthed objects, as well as an ever-changing assortment of plant fibers in various stages of drying and hand-processing. This is where Fox’s uniquely beautiful and thought-provoking textile art begins to take form.
Alice took on Plot 105 in Autumn 2017 when she started her practice-based master’s program to explore ways to achieve greater self-sufficiency in her art. Although she’d had a share in an allotment previously, with a young family, she never really had the time to give to it: “The only way I could justify it was to make it part of my work,” she says.
In 2020, Alice self-published the story of her relationship with her allotment Plot 105 and how her engagement with the site has unfolded since taking it on. Today, her book sits in a shed, alongside the encyclopedia of gardening left by the previous tenant. Looking back, she acknowledges that her year of research “marked a fundamental shift in how I source my materials. It allowed me to grow as a gardener, giving a particular focus. It provides a space to be amongst nature, get my hands in the soil, and think while working there.”
We met Alice in West Yorkshire this summer to learn more about her allotment, her garden, and home studio, and the evolution of her sustainable creative practice that’s deeply embedded in land and place. Let’s dig deeper:
Photography courtesy of Alice Fox. Featured image (above) by Carolyn Mendelsohn.
Above: In keeping with Alice’s local approach and quest for self-sufficiency, Plot 105 is a working garden providing fresh home-grown, seasonal produce. Few changes have been made to the overall structure of the plot, except for planting a couple of trees and some fruit bushes. Most of the growing beds are used for vegetables, and there are about 12 fruit trees, taking up approximately one quarter of the space. Photograph by Carolyn Mendelsohn. Above: Alice introduced a flax crop in 2017 and, since then, has learned a lot about this wonderful plant through growing and processing. Recently, she applied her knowledge to projects in new places, such as Kestle Barton in Cornwall. This experience culminated in her flax-focused exhibit Flaxen, shown at Northern Ireland Linen Biennale. Photograph by Carolyn Mendelsohn.
New York landscape firm Harrison Green is the name behind some of the city’s most interesting public and private gardens—on rooftops and terraces, and tiny, hidden backyards. Longstanding members of the Gardenista Architect/Designer directory, the team, run by husband-and-wife duo Damien and Jacqueline Harrison, is full service: they specialize in not only designing, but planting and maintaining their work year-round (The Row and Mark Jacobs are clients).
The Harrisons now stand ready to furnish and accessorize outdoor spaces: Galerie Green, their new online-only emporium, presents hard-to-find antique and vintage garden elements, from 1920s carved wooden mushrooms to carefully refinished French sunburst chairs and stone tables. Their offerings, they say, are about “craftsmanship, proportion, and patina” and the case for “longevity and authenticity over the new and disposable.” Caveat: this is a weighty collection in every sense of the word and prices are steep. Join us for a look at the initial offerings presented in Harrison Green’s own Brooklyn studio garden.
I’ve known artist Emma Kohlmann since she was a kid and am a huge fan. I’m not the only one. Her beguiling, dreamlike paintings were discovered on Instagram 10 years ago when she was in her mid-twenties and she now has an impressive CV of shows near and far (she’s represented in NYC by Silke Lindner and in Copenhagen by V1 Gallery).
Emma began by self-publishing zines and continues to make printed matter (with her sister, Charlotte Kohlmann, she runs Mundus Press in Northampton, Massachusetts, where the two live). Emma also frequently collaborates with other creatives—with Simone Bodmer-Turner, for instance, she produced a sell-out line of vases, and she’s currently designing tableware for a major Danish brand. Emma Kohlmann Watercolors, a large-format monograph on her work of the past decade, is being published any minute by Anthology.
Today, we’re featuring her latest collab: the Emma Kohlman Lamp Collection for online art and design shop Slow Roads. The brand’s founders, Catherine Costanza and Evan Dublin, supplied Emma with custom canvas lampshades to paint. They sized the shades to pair with vintage tree root lamps that they ferreted out on road trips in Upstate New York, Seattle, and California, and carefully restored. The sculptural collection debuted on the Slow Roads site on March 11, with prices starting at $1,450. Take a look. There are only six lamps (and three have already been sold), so speak up if you want one.
Above: Here are the just-finished shades in Emma’s studio, in a former paper mill in Western Massachusetts. Emma grew up in Riverdale, in the Bronx; she studied at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. and has lived in the area ever since (but has friends and toeholds around the world).
Emma typically works spontaneously without advance sketches, and has developed her own benevolent universe of reclining figures, floating faces, plants, and animals. She painted the lampshades with watered-down acrylics; each is one-of-a-kind and displays evolving patterns and scenes.
Above: Catherine and Evan of Slow Roads are artist-designers themselves, based in Rochester, NY; their shop showcases contemporary and vintage housewares, all rooted in nature. Like the shades, each of the lamp bases is a one-off. This one is Lamp 4.
Four days after the UK announced a ban on giant rhubarb—also known as gunnera—we received an email from Tom Berington. Tom is the founder of Different Like a Zoo, a company that represents a small number of designers who “do one thing really well.” (Paola Navone’s covetable Ghost sofa and Heerenhuis’s timeless table designs have both previously featured over on Remodelista.) He wanted us to know that he recently launched a new project called House of Herbaria, a limited series of pressed and framed gunnera leaves. The timing was so serendipitous, we wanted to find out more …
Above: Tom’s Rorshach-esque gunnera prints on display in his former studio space. Photograph by Antony Crolla.
Tom grew up in a unique setting: a 15th-century Prior’s Hall that was once attached to a neighboring Benedictine monastery on the slopes of the Malvern Hills. At the bottom of his garden, in a boggy, sun-soaked patch by the lake, is a patch of Gunneramanicata that has been there “as long as I can remember.” Tom—who has a degree in Fine Art—had begun experimenting with pressed seaweed. “I wanted to do something that really made an impact,” he recalls, so he abandoned the seaweed idea and headed straight for the gunnera patch.
Above: The gunnera patch in Tom Berington’s historic family home in Worcestershire. Photograph by Tom Berington.
Gunnera dies naturally in the autumn, so Tom cuts his leaves in the summer before they rot. His craft begins at the selection process: “Sometimes the insects will have already got to them, creating massive holes. Sometimes you’ll find a leaf that has been discolored by disease, which created an interesting pattination that makes them stand out.”
Depending on how they are framed, Tom will select a pair of smaller leaves or one giant leaf for the press, a purpose-built contraption that has taken many seasons to perfect. The drying process takes around six months. “The aim is to extract as much moisture as possible so the leaves don’t go moldy or break up over time,” he explains. “It’s almost like developing a photograph,” he continues. “You place the leaf in the press and, six months later, you’re left with a surprise.”
Above: The leaves are mounted on muslin. Next season, Tom will try mounting the leaves on naturally-dyed fabric. Photograph by Antony Crolla.
Not all presses turn out as planned but, for Tom, that is part of the appeal: “They each have their own special qualities,” he says. To add depth, the leaves are cut and arranged in layers before being mounted on muslin and framed by Tom, a process that takes places between his childhood home in Worcestershire and his studio in London, where the pressings are displayed alongside the furniture he sells.
Above: Each pair of prints (price on application) is made to order, with some examples available to view at Buspace Studio in London’s W10. Photograph by Antony Crolla.
This year, giant, individual leaves have been split in two and presented as a pair. “Because you don’t see leaves of this size very often, it can be difficult to tell what you’re looking at,” Tom explains. “They can look like ancient relief maps and the veins also have a sort of drawn quality to them. There’s real beauty in their imperfection,” he says. “They are really unusual but they just seem to work in any setting.”
