Hamewares Natura Blanket

Ploterre was commissioned by The Barn Arts in Banchory, Scotland to produce a product for the Hamewares collection.

Hamewares is a limited edition collection available exclusively at the Barn Arts with a focus on craftsmanship and local materials.

This years theme also had a strong focus on the environment and sustainability.

As the collection was designed for the home, I decided to look to habitat data in the natural world. Specifically protected sites and nature reserves, which are home to many of our most vulnerable species.

The data I used was called the natura dataset, which is a standardised repository of sites across Europe. For this design i focused purely on the sites that existed across Scotland. 

The sites are home to both marine and terrestrial species. These sites were woven into the design by allowing each square to represent a different site. The sites were then arranged by longitude and latitude so the type left of the blanket identified St Kilda and the bottom right represented the Scottish Borders. The type of site was also depicted using horizontal stripes (for marine) and vertical (for terrestrial).

The final detail was used to highlight the fragility of the species that call these sanctuaries home. The turquoise squares are home to those most vulnerable species. Whilst the blanket is designed to protect us, the message highlights the need to protect our natural world.