Yorkshire sheep have starring role in Ella Doran's exhibition

Designer Ella Doran’s “Sheep to Seat, Fleece to Floor” exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park isn’t just visually appealing, it taps into the zeitgeist.

Set out as a room furnished with tapestries, carpet, handmade furniture, furnishings and photographic prints, it shows how locally sourced wool can be made into beautiful, long-lasting and recyclable products.

The exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The market for this kind of homeware is growing thanks to those who are embracing the “buy well, buy once” ethos. “I’m really interested in sustainable design and so that and the sheep that graze at the sculpture park were the inspiration for the exhibition. It goes right back to basics with the fibre and celebrates the properties of wool,” says Ella, a textile designer by trade. The exhibition follows the process of turning freshly-sheared wool into fabrics, threads and carpet with almost everything from scouring to spinning and weaving done in Yorkshire.

The YSP’s neighbouring farmers, Philip and Charles Platt, supplied the sheared wool and British Wool hand graded it. Haworth Scouring cleaned the wool ready for manufacturing then Huddersfield-based Camira wove it into fabrics and Alternative Flooring turned it into carpet. “I watched each stage and it blew my mind. Seeing the scouring done at a mill in Haworth also proved the saying ‘where there’s muck there’s brass’. Along with washing the mud off, the lanolin that is extracted goes to make Vitamin D,” says Ella, who adds that the show is a homage to local products and suppliers and highlights the importance of the circular economy in reducing waste and preserving livelihoods and traditions.

The Waterlake fabric being woven on a loom at Camira in Huddersfield

Featuring Ella’s Waterlake design, inspired by the movement of water and the flora on the YSP estate, the fabric is a soft jacquard weave. This came as a revelation as British sheep wool is usually considered too rough for use as cloth and is usually used solely for carpet. “Everyone said it wouldn’t work for fabric so it was a big surprise to everyone when it did,” says Ella. The material now covers stools along with chairs designed by Julian Mayor and made by Coakley & Cox with wood is from one of YSP’s storm-felled oaks.

Ella Doran

Keen to minimise waste and recycle, Ella used leftover pieces of wool to make tapestries. Her photographs, which document YSP’s 500-acre landscape throughout the seasons, and a series of abstracted screen prints now decorate the walls of the room set at the YSP and almost everything on display is available to buy.The Sheep to Seat, Fleece to Floor” exhibition runs until September 15 2019. The exhibition also features a short film by Ella and filmmaker Paul Wyatt and it includes interviews with some of the key personalities involved in the project. For details visit www.ysp.org.uk