The Cumbrian Wool Rugs are the product of a love story many years in the making, a romance between childhood memories and wool industry heritage.

Nancy Nicholson grew up on a hill farm perched in the Cumbrian Fells. Her mother still farms it to this day. Nancy’s was a windswept childhood steeped in rainwater and lanolin and slate. These South Lakeland fells are the home of a very old and sadly now endangered breed of upland sheep called the Rough Fell. It was these tall, hardy animals which grazed the fields that surrounded her. 

The Rough Fell produces a thick shaggy fleece that protects them from the worst of a bitter, northern winter. The long, coarse fibres are perfect for rug yarn. Back when the British Wool Industry ran with gold, it was for this exact purpose they were often bred.

From the start, Nancy has dreamt of using this wild northern fibre in her work, filled with all the rain-lashed resilience of her childhood home. It has been a long and rigorous process. Rug yarn is very specific and the UK sadly has very few mills left that have the knowledge and ability to spin it, and fewer still that can spin small batches. Together with The Natural Fibre company she has now achieved this.

The yarn she has created from this flock she grew up with is monastic in its whiteness. It carries the texture of the softest of jutes, worn silvery over time. It is a fibre that polishes the soles of your feet.

To work to this strength, Nancy has created two designs, Heidi & Hilda which focus solely on surface, shunning the distractions of colour, delving back into memories of texture.

HEIDI is a rug of oscillating soumak braids which tell stories of small feet on frozen ploughed fields, furrows and clods pressing gently through wellies.

HILDA is a surface of looped pile and dances with the rustle of straw strewn pig pens and moss licked walls. It is the scatter of bird corn and the rhythm of raindrops.

Nancy Nicholson lives and works on a sheep farm nestled into the side of the Cumbrian Fells. Being surrounded by beautiful and hardy sheep with stunning coats has informed her textile studio. She weaves the wool from her farm and surrounding sheep farms into blankets, and rugs for the floor and wall. Often leaving the wool undyed it shows respect to the raw materials and gives the textiles a sense of purity.  

Both rugs measure 80 x 120cm.

Images by Ellen Hancock and Anya Rice.