About

Merchant & Makers is an evolving digital library of original articles about craft, design and heritage in the modern day, explored through interviews, short (and sometimes long) essays and ‘how-to’ guides. Founded by Jenny Jones to highlight how craft, design and heritage can play a part in these most contemporary of times, we have been supported by a variety of contributing writers, who are specialists in their field.

We believe that caring about provenance and authenticity of an object is vitally important to our lifestyles, culture and wellbeing, spiritually and otherwise, and our vision is to promote the work of artisans and makers that are respected and respectful of the craft, design and heritage of their trade. By sensitively documenting the work of these talented and soulful individuals from all over the world; the brilliance of their design, historicity of their craft and the quality of their chosen materials, as well as the intrinsic worth of their resultant product, can be understood and celebrated, be that a tool or implement, fabric or garment, food or drink, space or building.

We also believe there is a symbiotic relationship between caring how the things that are made and consumed by us and the natural world, and that the simple process of understanding can lead to appreciation and mutual enhancement, which may go some way in protecting the traditional whilst at the same time carving a respectful and relevant evolution of what is authentic and historic into the future.

By cataloguing articles on these subjects and highlighting the intrinsic passion and soul, the learned skill and expertise and the undoubted commitment and dedication necessary demonstrated by the featured designers, craftworkers and makers, we hope to create a unique reference library that can be referred to, revisited and built upon in future years.

From Jersey black butter to Japanese knives, Cornish copper to Italian pewter, Savile Row tailoring to Welsh oak timber framing, and Scandinavian waterside retreats to Dorset wheelwrights, we have explored a plethora of different objects, crafts and people and we hope our articles will interest and inspire those interested in the past, present and future.  Merchant & Makers does not allow advertising on the site and does not receive any payment from the people or companies that we feature.

Our aim is to launch a new article each week. Feel free to sign-up to our newsletter to stay up-to-date.  Each article allows for comments underneath and we would love to hear your thoughts.

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