Simon Middleton Handwoven

All Simon Middleton Handwoven pieces are, as the name implies, woven by hand on small, non-powered looms, using Simon’s own handspun wool.

All of Simon’s pieces are ‘designed on the loom’: improvised with only the most general idea of palette and textural approach at the outset.

Simon uses sustainably grown fibres and yarns, mostly British-grown wool. He combines the softest and most characterful wools with silks, plant-based fibres such as nettle viscose, and some recycled yarns.

His own hand-spun wool yarn, and is either undyed, making the most of the natural colours of the wool, or is small-batch dyed in the UK. Inspiration comes from the natural environment around Simon’s home in Suffolk.

Spinning and weaving by hand, says Simon, provides a unique opportunity to practise ancient crafts whilst allowing freedom of artistic expression within the boundaries of the simplest technology and the most evocative of materials.

Simon Middleton is the founder of two made-in-Britain clothing brands: Shackleton and Blackshore, and has spent a lifetime in the creative and manufacturing industries. He works in a ten by eight foot wooden shed in his Suffolk garden.