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Lorna Singleton
Lorna Singleton is one of the UK’s last remaining ‘swillers’ specialists in woven products made with coppiced oak. Lorna graduated as an apprentice of the Bill Hogarth MBE Memorial Apprenticeship Trust, following three years of intensive tuition in coppice woodland management.
Using simple hand tools and techniques from generations past, Lorna Singleton creates baskets based on the traditional patterns from South Cumbrian region as well as collaborating on contemporary applications for this historic practice.
Maker's Story
Lorna Singleton is one of the UK’s last remaining ‘swillers’, specialists in woven products made with coppiced oak. Lorna graduated as an apprentice of the Bill Hogarth MBE Memorial Apprenticeship Trust, following three years of intensive tuition in coppice woodland management. Using simple hand tools and techniques from generations past, Lorna Singleton creates baskets based on the traditional patterns from South Cumbrian region as well as collaborating on contemporary applications for this historic practice.
Maker's Quote
My products are made using Oak coppiced locally in South Cumbria, where I grew up. Oak is stronger than many materials. There is only so far that wood can be influenced, so you have to work with the material and it plays a part in deciding what I make.
Swill Oak Basket Maker
The Process
Swilling involves splitting green wood along the grain into strips, which are softened in boiling water. Sections are then further divided into even thinner strips, no thicker than four millimetres, before being hand-woven into items like baskets. The swill used by Lorna comes from oak coppiced in the Rusland Valley, Cumbria, which once collected is boiled overnight, riven into strips, dressed & soaked before weaving onto a Hazel wood rim.
The Process
