The bold and the beautiful

30 October, 2015

Strong patterns with feisty colours are at the heart of Laura Spring’s success

It’s a hectic time. For the masses, it’s the run up to Christmas, with all that that entails. For young Scottish textiles designer Laura Spring, it’s just another busy day. But it’s not just the season that has brought a flurry of activity; Laura hasn’t stopped since she set up her textiles studio in Glasgow in 2011. And, as the dynamic designer explains, it all started by accident.
“I was really lucky to be awarded the Scottish Craft residency at Cove Park during the summer of 2011,” she says. “I applied at the end of 2010 with an idea I’d had about making a series of luggage and prints inspired by the relationship between motif and function. I’d already made a wet-weather suitcase in my studio in Glasgow and I was invited to come and explore this idea further over the summer.”

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Textile designer Laura Spring works from her studio space at Glasgow’s Grey Wolf Studios, where she creates new designs, as well as running classes for aspiring printmakers and hosting sales and exhibitions

Laura spent six weeks at the arts centre on the shores of Loch Long, working alongside a group of other invited artists and designers making new work in a refreshing and liberating environment. This allowed her the space to formulate and develop new concepts for her textiles range, and prompted an encounter with a style/interiors journalist that, as Laura recalls, “set everything spiralling from there”.
Writer Charlotte Abrahams asked Laura to be a part of her ‘Spotted’ selection at London trade show Top Drawer. An entire collection developed from that initial suitcase idea, winning Laura a reputation as one of Scotland’s hippest new designers in the process. Her latest range, a collection of interiors products, launched at the London Design Festival’s Design Junction earlier this autumn.
Originally from Staffordshire, Laura studied graphic design at Glasgow School of Art, with a term at Parsons School of Design in New York during her third year. “Art school is something quite special, and it was an amazing time, but I knew from early on that I wasn’t going to be a graphic designer. I love working with my hands and physically making something, so even though I enjoyed many things about the course, I always felt slightly lost.