Our Ethos
Craftsmanship; Bespoke Design; Traceability.
Everything we design and develop will at some point pass through our fingertips. This intimate relationship with the fabric we manufacture manifests itself in the quality of the products we deliver.
Our Craft
Each one of our team at The Bristol Weaving Mill is an accomplished hand-weaver and we are fortunate and proud to employ some of the most creative and technically skilled woven textiles designers currently in the UK. We are individually passionate about the craft of weaving and that passion is evident in all we create together as a collective.
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It is our honor to be custodians of this craft. We revel in not only the traditional and purist elements of woven practice, but also the avant-garde, the experimental, and the innovative.
Sustainability
Our unique placement as a small-scale and local manufacturing facility allows us to explore and enable a great variety of sustainable projects and processes. We recognise the importance of limiting the environmental impact of our activities and are continually reviewing and improving our processes and resources.
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Over the past decade we have built strong relationships with pioneering regenerative fibre producers and sustainable closed-loop textile projects. Our clients have looked to us to propose creative solutions for their surplus materials and textile waste, often with beautiful, luxury outcomes.
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In an effort to reduce our net carbon emissions to zero, we have made a pledge to locally-based reforesting initiative Co-forest who will manage the creation and maintenance of The Bristol Weaving Mill Woodland at a repurposed site in our local area. Since 2021 our team have helped to plant this mixed native woodland near Bristol.
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Our Sustainability Policy and roadmap has been created in partnership with Pilio, providing businesses with a science-based approach to net zero and nature positive.
Our Materials
Every yarn has a story to tell, and through the strong and enduring relationships we have formed with our raw materials suppliers we are able to trace the yarns we work with back to their source and, in some instances, to the very backs of the animals they came from.
We are in constant conversation with specialist spinners and have access to a vast catalogue of natural, noble, and bast fibres and blends. In this way we are able to develop a fabric from the fibre up, either sourcing a specific combination of materials for a project, or facilitating the development of a new yarn from scratch.
Fleece and yarn from Fernhill Farm.
Local Partnerships
The Bristol Weaving Mill is a member of the South West England Fibreshed, a community of fibre and dye growers, processors, makers and manufacturers across the South West.
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We also play a key role in the Bristol Cloth project which uses regeneratively farmed wool fibres from Fernhill Farm in the Mendip hills which are processed without any harmful synthetic chemicals, using biological soaps only for washing and dyed with organic plant dyes by Botanical Inks to then be woven by us here at the The Bristol Weaving Mill.
