Cold tarns & soggy bums

A Tarn, for the uninitiated, is a small mountain lake, excavated by glaciers over millennia. A crystal clear body of water at altitude, made in a time long before the invention of the sewing machine.

After a hike in the Tasmanian mountains, what better place to strip down to your underwear, jump in, freeze, and subsequently walk home with a soggy bum in your jeans.

These are, of course, the wild places. Canvas tarps whip in the wind and you squirm further down into your bedroll as cold gusts push through the low, brushy alpine foliage.

The sun burns here, but the wind chills all the same. A constant, paradoxical feeling of being hot and cold.

On an isle like this, the wind becomes structure, not weather.

The Athrotaxis cupressoides and Richea pandanifolia seem to have permanently bent themselves to conform with the pressure of it all, as you delicately step around the cushion plants with your boots: Donatia novae-zelandiae and Abrotanella forsteroides. Sole survivors between seams of granite, green, compact, improbably soft.

The inspiration for what comes out of the workshop is clear to me here. This is a frontier isle. Windswept. Cold. Robust. Blooming in every shade of green.

Bronze oilskin. Midlands ochre. Field tan. Dark thread. Brass components. Canvas.

Everything made to hold its shape under pressure.

Oilskin Canvas Bedroll →
Field Rug →
Anchorwatch Blanket →
Oilskin Field Tarp Shelter →

Made in Tasmania, since 2015.

Grateful, as always,

Nick