Our featured Artist Member for November 2024 is knitwear designer Kate Jones.
Kate creates luxurious, tactile and unique scarves, hats, gloves and homewares by hand in her studio in Margate, Kent. It is her aim to combine the finest natural yarns and sustainable techniques with a modern aesthetic, carefully crafted to compliment contemporary living with a commitment to quality, value, sustainability and zero waste.
Kate’s work is designed and crafted to be timeless and long-lasting, with meticulous attention to detail, a strong sense of design and a colour palette inspired by the natural and organic forms of the Kent coastline where she lives.
Over a decade ago, I relocated from London to the Kent coast, where the incredible natural light, raw coastal textures and tones, plus the ever-changing sky and seascape provide a rich source of inspiration for my creative practice. This visually rich environment has been the catalyst to explore, experiment and develop a range of knitted textiles inspired by the natural world.
Recent trips to Berlin and Amsterdam have inspired ideas and new work, visiting galleries, vintage markets and discovering new practitioners. Closer to home, recent explorations of Dungeness, Deal and other coastal areas have provided visual triggers for further creative investigations.
I work from a room in the Victorian house where I live, which is a five minute walk from the sea. My work space has a desk, my vintage domestic knitting machines and is full of the yarns used in my current collection of work, plus an archive of yarn amassed over many years which includes some beautiful oddments and small quantities of finest cashmere, alpaca and merino wool leftover from previous projects and commissions. Previously I lived and worked in London and had a studio space in Clerkenwell, where I designed and crafted bespoke luxury women’s knitwear for many years, before moving to the Kent coast.
My current studio also contains an ever-growing collection of beach finds from daily walks, tactile sea-worn pieces of driftwood, smoothed fragments of shells and seaweeds and other seaside ephemera which inspire ideas for my colour palette, textures and patterns.
This changes all the time and is quite often the most recent design that I have created, though my aim is always to create a range of products which are a true reflection of my aims and ambitions. My favourite piece from the current collection was the result of a mistake I made when knitting an existing design, which led me to adapt my planning and thinking and resulted in unexpected and striking results. I was able to play around on the knitting machine and develop this into the Honeycomb design, which still has many more possibilities that I am looking forward to exploring further in the future.
Early twentieth century designers such as Anni Albers, Gunta Stolz, Liubov Popova, and Sonia Delauney are hugely inspiring and influential to me, also Louise Bourgeois and Sheila Hicks. I am also inspired by a constantly evolving list of artists and craft practitioners, including the photographer Saul Leiter for his incredible use of light and colour.
A collection of Kate’s work is available to purchase in the gallery and via our online store.