Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company and The Story of Jacquard

From the invention of the Jacquard loom to the contemporary creations of Italy’s Canepa, the art of weaving intricate patterns has always depended on a dialogue between ingenuity and imagination. At its Como mill, a remarkable archive of historic textiles inspires new designs, while generations of technical expertise continue to push the possibilities of this enduring craft.

The history of Jacquard is a story of ingenuity, invention and the enduring relationship between technology and the human hand. Born out of the silk-weaving industry of early 19th century France, it transformed the possibilities of patterned cloth, allowing designs of extraordinary intricacy to be woven with a precision and repeatability previously unimaginable. More than two centuries later, its legacy lives on at Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company in Suffolk, England

MAKERS | ASIA | JAPAN | MULTIMEDIA Yoichi Negishi | Coppersmith Coppersmith Yoichi Negishi © Mark Luscombe-Whyte   Rooted in three generations of family knowledge, the art of making copper watering cans for Japanese bonsai has evolved through decades of experimentation, repair and close collaboration with specialist growers. Continuing a craft begun by his grandfather in 1944, one remarkable maker, Yoichi Negishi, founder of Tokyo-based Negishi Industry, combines inherited skill with an exacting understanding of materials, creating beautifully considered tools designed to last for generations.   [SECTION] How did you begin? During the war in 1944, my grandfather, a roofer for shrines and temples, started his business making everyday items out of rubble. They mainly made buckets, but they also made watering cans modeled after Haws watering cans. Then, during my father's time, he developed a copper watering can for Bonsai together with a Bonsai master. At the time, Haws watering cans were of poor quality and not suitable for Bonsai. I was born in 1976, and when I was three years old, I thought I was playing with my grandfather and father in the family factory, but I was actually helping make watering cans. In elementary school, I would help out after school. By middle school, I was making watering cans of a quality that could be sold. Even through high school, college, and as a system engineer, I continued making watering cans at home, even on weekends. When my father passed away in 2010, I quit my job as a system engineer after 14 years and became a full-time watering can manufacturer. How did you learn? Although I have never studied this subject in particular, by actively repairing other companies' watering cans, I have come to understand the ideas and passion of the people who made them, and I still use this knowledge when creating new watering cans. I am now the only person in Japan who can repair watering cans. Because of this relationship, many customers from overseas bring me broken watering cans that belonged to their fathers or grandfathers. How do you plan, prepare and create your works? Designers, such as Jasper Morrison-san, sometimes come to our facility, but we also work with specialists in each plant, such as Bonsai, roses, and orchids, to research watering cans that will provide the best performance, starting with choosing the right materials such as copper, stainless steel, and brass. We also produce watering cans tailored to the needs of specialists from 26 countries. Material manufacturers (copper, brass, stainless steel) are also making watering cans using new metals and testing the durability of these metals. [SECTION] Who or what most influences your works? Our customers have been using [our products] for about 40 years. We can identify areas that are prone to breaking, and update the watering can when we repair it. We also make watering cans for a wide variety of purposes, including for cleaning lines at miso and confectionery factories, for dyeing clothes, for the Imperial Household Agency, and for watering cans that cannot be used as weapons in prisons. What does a typical day look like for you? I wake at 8am and make the Watering Can while replying to emails and direct mail from Japan and other Asian countries. From around 5pm, I start replying to emails and direct mail from Europe while making the Watering Can. Around 10pm, I start replying to emails and direct mail from the US while working on my stamina. From 11pm, I go jogging, come home, and go to sleep. I now have a two-year-old daughter, so I have to prepare meals in between, take her to and from work when my wife can't, and drive her around in bad weather. When making the Watering Can, I avoid shoulder, back, and knee pain by balancing cutting, pressing, and soldering the boards. Interview by Barbara Spinelli Images from Mark Luscombe-Whyte

For centuries, Transylvania's remarkable wooden churches have depended on the hands of skilled craftspeople to keep them standing. In the Sălaj region, where many date from the 17th and 18th centuries, generations of carpenters and roofers developed an intricate knowledge of local timber, traditional joints and wooden shingles. Today, masters such as Vasile Pop and Gheorghe “Ghiță” Bonta, together with his relatives Tudor and Vlad Bonta, are among those carrying this knowledge forward.

As a child growing up in Japan, Junko Mori was fascinated by the microscopic world, collecting samples from local woodlands and observing tiny creatures as they hatched and multiplied. That early fascination with the beauty of small things and their capacity to form something larger remains present in her work today. Now based in rural North Wales, she creates intricate sculptural forms from hundreds of individually hand-forged components, allowing each piece to evolve organically.

Growing up in Japan's Gifu Prefecture, surrounded by rice fields and her grandfather's elaborate tilework, Hitomi Hosono developed an early appreciation for the natural world and the beauty of handmade objects. Now based in London, the ceramic artist draws inspiration from the leaves and flowers she encounters on walks, translating their intricate forms into elaborate porcelain creations. Through hundreds of individually moulded and carved botanical sprigs, she builds vessels that appear to grow organically, a process which requires "a great deal of patience", close observation, and is a testament to the meditative possibilities of repetition. Her latest works feature in 'Beauty in Repetition', a group exhibition with Kate Malone and Junko Mori at Adrian Sassoon, London, from 19 November to 18 December 2026.

Once called upon for dancing, driving and dressing for dinner, the glove has long since relinquished its place as an everyday essential. Not so in Antwerp’s Ganterie Boon, where leather gloves still emerge from the drawers and boxes of François Bollekens’ exquisite 1929 Art Deco shop, and a rather particular craft continues much as it has for 140 years.

Sought out by the world’s most inspiring tastemakers and remarkable hotels, Cara Bauermeister creates ceramic vessels from her garden studio in South Africa’s Cape Winelands. Like the pages of a flower press, her pieces bear the marks of a wild garden in bloom, balancing intricate painting and sculptural silhouettes with everyday utility.

Berlin-based designers Lukas Wegwerth and Corinna Dehn bring together two very different paths: his as a carpenter, trained in the Bavarian Forest, hers as a fashion designer who spent nearly a decade at Y-3. Their Armadillo series, showing in their joint Companions exhibition at Gallery FUMI during PAD London, began with century-old beech shingles taken from a farmhouse in the Vogelsberg, where they had been weathered by rain, wind and sun. The pair looked to nature's own overlapping surfaces, from fish scales to butterfly wings to the armor of armadillos, creating pieces that seem to have wandered out of a storybook.

Until just a few decades ago, workshops making decorative wooden mouldings were not hard to find. Scattered across the country, alongside the craftsmen’s workshops they supplied, they produced all the small, delicate pieces that went into the finished product – furniture, bedheads, frames and wall panelling. Gradually, however, they began to disappear. Today, wherever you speak to people in Italy – or even elsewhere in Europe – there is one name that invariably comes up as the surviving supplier, and one that is consequently held in high regard: Ebanisteria Marelli,.

For Jodie Fried and Sally Pottharst, Armadillo began with a simple desire: to make the kind of rugs they wanted in their own homes: "something simple, beautiful, natural and exceptionally well made, with a real respect for the hands that made it." Fried, a former costume and production designer, found her way to India and its extraordinary culture of craft; Pottharst came from a family steeped in the flooring trade. Since founding Armadillo in 2009, the pair have worked between Los Angeles, London and the Adelaide Hills, developing their rugs slowly with generations of Indian artisans.

Known to everyone simply as Kennedy, master silversmith Kenan Kızılkaya has dedicated his life to the art of silver. After beginning his apprenticeship in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar at just twelve years old, he established his own workshop in 1985, where decades of technical mastery, curiosity, and a relentless drive to innovate continue to shape every handcrafted piece.