Lochs & Fens

Original watercolour homeware from the wilds of Argyll and the fens of Lincolnshire.

A mother-and-daughter business, made from two places and one shared eye for them. Polly and Isobel Irvine launched Lochs & Fens in 2019 from their Lincolnshire home — naming it after the two landscapes that have shaped every design since: the lochs of Argyl, where the family escapes for stags, heather and the rougher sort of weather, and the fens of Lincolnshire, where the sky goes on rather longer than it ought to and the hares are properly enormous.

Original Watercolours, Properly Drawn.

Every design begins as one of Isobel's watercolours. Stags on heather-clad hillsides, hares mid-spring, pheasants doing what pheasants do, a remarkably architectural starfish, and a quiet line of botanical things — roses, tulips, sweet peas, daffodils — all faithfully observed rather than stylised into oblivion. The watercolours are then transferred onto tea towels, mugs, candles, soaps, range-top pads, scalloped baskets, napkins and rather elegant correspondence cards. Nothing is mass-printed and forgotten about; new designs go through Isobel's hand before they go anywhere else.

Made With Some Care About How It Got Here.

Lochs & Fens produces as locally as possible, and packages everything in recycled paper, acid-free tissue, robust cardboard tubes and biodegradable sugar-cane mailing bags. Their distribution model — Royal Mail rather than a fleet of vans — saves around 30% of CO2 over conventional delivery. Cumulatively unfussy environmental thinking, the kind that makes a difference quietly without making a song about it. The sort of practice we look for in every maker we work with, in fact.