Wool & Feathers
at Evergreen Gardens
“They will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and insist the beautiful be useful.”
Tamara Burke always weaves in the tradition of New England practicality. Burke - owner of the small textile studio “Wool & Feathers” - is a native Vermonter who works exclusively out of her farmhouse in Craftsbury, VT. Over the years, she and her husband Peter have raised flocks of Icelandic sheep and Angora rabbits - first in Stowe, then Craftsbury - harvesting wool to use in Tamara’s various projects. Her newest endeavor is creating elegant, handmade dishtowels that are - of course - completely functional.
These new dishtowels are made with Swedish cotton, cotton/linen blends, and occasionally rayon for absorbency. Though she no longer raises sheep or rabbits, whenever possible Burke will source her materials sustainably. For fabrics like cotton, this means getting her cones from commercial weaving mills that are leftover from weaving bulk yardage - known as “mill end fibers”. These cones once ended up directly in landfills but are now sold to a secondary market of hand weavers at a heavily discounted rate. This makes it possible to include otherwise unaffordable quality materials in smaller, more prosaic projects.
Burke’s commitment to functionality is only offset by her fascination with textile history and tradition. While there have been many innovations in weaving drafts - or patterns - since the 19th century, virtually all of the drafts Burke weaves are hundreds of years old, some dating back to the Viking Age. These drafts appear in early weaving texts with numbers instead of names (#495 of 2,000 for example), with exceptions including some broken twills or overshot weaves which might have fanciful names like “flying geese” or “holiday candy”.
Using fibers in color pallets that seem to have been plucked straight from Vermont’s seasonal landscape, Burke’s whimsical expression of these largely forgotten patterns is both exciting and timeless. If you are looking for an alternative to the mass produced, there are very few products out there more joyfully and lovingly produced than those from this little farmhouse in the Northeast Kingdom.
Dishtowel Collections
Autumn Dishtowels
Coming Soon…