I have a book about brushes. I like to know I’m not the only person who thinks too much about such inconsequential items. Some really beautiful brushes are manufactured in Sweden by Iris Hantverk, put together by a visually impaired workforce.
Some of their brushes have popped up in those knowing shops that line Columbia Road in London, precisely aimed at homemakers who don’t. The kind of people who hang tea towels on the wall and have improbably neat sets of herb and spice jars. The kind of people who revel in Labour and Wait’s faux wartime make do and mend aesthetic. Who coo at their regulation fly swats and seed markers, school plimsolls and brown betty teapots.
London is full of people like that. I like London because it can support such improbably twee shops. Because you soon realise you aren’t the only one who will buy a used plant pot with no intention of putting a plant in it.
I haven’t yet found one of these small Hantwerk horse brushes to buy though- it may have to be a trip to Sweden – but the website has many such pared down treasures on it.
Useful yet beautiful. Mr Morris would have approved.
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