KELMI was initially the love-child of two friends, Zaya Gilchrist and Lucy Skuse. With a shared love of making, they both came to macramé with a desire to be creative and found the prefect craft in fibre art which, for them, is extremely relaxing, meditative and good for the soul. 

Macramé has recently made a comeback after a hiatus: popular in the seventies, the art of making textiles from knotting dates back many hundreds of years. A textile is produced from tying a wide range of knots and patterns and the possibilities are endless. 

Since Lucy decided to move on to a new adventure, Zaya has continued to develop the business and use traditional knotting techniques and natural materials to hand-craft contemporary macrame pieces. 

Zaya believes that the longevity of craft techniques can, in part, be nutured by finding innovative ways of using them, helping to keep them relevant. She is currently working on creating wall art using square macrame tiles. These are wooden frames with a basic repeated pattern that can be joined together in many different combinations and sizes. 

KELMI is the Cornish word for 'to tie/bind'. 

 

Photo by Anya Rice

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