WILDE STUDIO
Wilde Studio is a slow textile project between two sisters, Katrina and Nadine Wilde. Exploring natural materials, slow processes and craft, we create plant and mineral-dyed, printed, stitched and hand-woven pieces in our studio; Nadine focuses on hand-weaving, Katrina on botanical colour and print making.
“We're really interested in the stories that textiles hold, and feel really connected to a piece when we know where something has come from, and how it came to be. For FELT, we worked with local wool yarn provided to us by multi disciplinary artist-shepherd Kat Wood, as well as antique hand-woven Bulgarian textiles in some pieces too.”
The materials we work with come from different sources and usually are vintage, local, dead-stock, organic or pre-loved and of course hand-woven. The plants we work with are home-grown, foraged or bought.
Bulgaria is a huge source of inspiration for us both, from the landscape to crafts that are still just about present. We also have a lot of beautiful nature around us in the Peak District, so it’s easy to feel inspired here. For Nadine, the Bauhaus, Sheila Hicks, Anni Albers and Chiprovtsi weavers are definitely sources of inspiration- for Katrina, the inspiration comes more from working with people and in our local community, and working with nature, in the garden and outside - communicating through colour and plants as a way to connect with what’s around us.
We are half Bulgarian, half English and grew up in Stoke-on-Trent. Those influences intersect at craft; craft has always been present for us, but in more quiet, domestic spaces. We have a history of women in our family who worked with textiles in the home; nurturing a garden and growing cotton, tending to silk worms, as dyers, weavers, seamstresses and knitters, so to us it's interesting how this knowledge has come through in our own work. So the domestic feels really significant to us - it is a space where people gather, to rest, where knowledge is shared, and that feels like something to celebrate. To make work that is intended for quieter, personal spaces feels really special and full circle to us.
For Katrina, the dyeing work is often seasonal and really depends on what’s available at the time, but she does dry plants out for future use too. There’s processing the plants, prepping fibres, dyeing them, rinsing, drying and printing. For Nadine, setting up the loom is a meticulous process, involving many steps like planning and calculating the length, width and density of the fabric to be woven, warping up, winding bobbins from skeins, threading the loom, weaving and finishing.
Our studio is based in our hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, at the old Spode Works Factory site. In Stoke we have an incredible community of creatives working in the city, doing really exciting things, and there's a lot of space and need for things to happen, and it is refreshing being outside of London. It feels like there is a lot of room for opportunity and possibility here.
Katrina and Nadine studied Textiles at university. Katrina graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2021 and Nadine has worked in textile studios in Marrakech, Galicia and London. Katrina has worked with the Portland Inn Project, Spode Rose Garden and local schools delivering workshops and participatory programs, and has recently been commissioned by the Materials Science Research Centre (RCA). Nadine is the recipient of The Worshipful Company of Weavers Scholarship and was awarded the Edward Sharp Prize at Loughborough University.
