Seeds Of Success

Hannah Nunn is inspired by nature’s delicate details to create beautiful accessories for the home

- Heather Dixon

Anyone who regularly walks the rugged country pathways and well trodden hillsides around Hebden Bridge will probably have stumbled across Hannah Nunn. Literally, in some cases, for Hannah likes nothing more than getting ‘up close and personal’ with nature – sitting among the flowers with her sketch book, lying among the grasses taking notes and disappearing into tree canopies to snap photographs of their detailed form and textures.

It’s all in the name of research as Hannah draws inspiration from the wildlife around her West Yorkshire home for a business which developed from the seed of an idea into a range of stunning artisan products.

From a converted industrial building in the heart of this trendiest of towns, Hannah transforms her sketches and photographs into extraordinarily delicate designs for a range of hand made lamp, wallpapers, window films and fabrics that sell to customers all over the world.

Her studio, up two flights of stairs and with massive picture windows pulling in the light, is a hive of well considered productivity. There is systematic order to what could have been artistic chaos, yet the inevitable presence of modern technology is outweighed by the paraphernalia of creativity.

The surfaces and walls are covered with cards, photographs, plant cuttings, twigs, dried leaves and grasses, flower heads and peculiar textured artefacts (unidentifiable to the untrained eye), all of them collected for their shapes and surfaces. Shelves are piled high with different sizes and formations of lamps, their delicate cut-out designs springing to life from back lighting. Draughtsman’s drawer chests house fixtures and fittings and a glut of gloriously coloured punches –tools of her trade. In deep-set shelves lie rolls of fabrics and sheafs of wallpaper samples, and window panes have been turned into opaque meadow scenes illuminated by the early morning sun.