As Autumn approaches...
After a busy summer of foraging, pressing and opening the studio, we'd just like to say a big thanks to all of you that came and visited us over the summer season.
We've had lots of interested and interesting visitors form all corners of the UK and many from Europe and the United States too - a huge thank you to you all.
Autumn for us means a slower pace and a time to reflect on the year so far, and one of the dominating points this year was the amount of people that have asked if they can buy our original seaweed pressings. This is something we are giving a lot of thought to.
As you can imagine, we don't want to be taking seaweed (albeit loose or washed up) constantly from our beaches as it plays a very important part in the ecology of what lives and thrives on the decaying plants once they are beached on the sand. We've always considered less is more, so our initial thoughts are to do an annual drop of just 50 original pressings foraged at the same time as the ones we use for our personal archive and prints.
The aforementioned 50 will be unique one off's and not used for our prints, so we'd love to know what your thoughts on what they'd be worth to you as individual pressings. Let us know here…
Another question which kept being asked was; Can we book a foraging and pressing course with you?
Currently the answer is not yet, but we are working towards a small offering - again it's a question of logistics. Ecology, tides, season and space all playing a role! We have some ideas, so watch this space for more info, or let us know if you are interested here…
Some of you may have seen in the news over the summer that a new species of seaweed was discovered off the Cornish coast in the local mearl beds - the Pink Zebra.
This is a beautifully delicate branching seaweed with dark and light dusky pink stripes, and as we're not marine biologists we can't be 100% sure, but whilst going through our archive, Jon thinks he might have found one that we pressed back in 2023 - the likeness is remarkable, you can view the BBC News article here and take a look at our Pink Zebra print here...
Any marine biologists out there that would like to set us straight - please feel free to email us.
We'll be back out foraging later in the month, looking for sea plants that are showing signs of the approaching Autumn. Our favourites at this time of the year include yellowing Irish Mosses, bleaching Siphoned Feather Weeds, Red Comb Weeds and Beautiful Fan Weeds - along with the evergreens of the seas, the Wrack family.
Also this month we will be working on a new range of gift boxed seaweed goodies to include an individual seaweed print, a set of our boxed seaweed notecards and locally made Pembrokeshire seaweed soap - these will be available on our website soon, so keep an eye on our social media for availability.
Thanks for reading, and please do show your interest in foraging and pressing courses as well as any ideas you may have for our original seaweed pressings.
Until next time...
Jon & Noelle