Lucy Hook-Child

Lucy works in straw, which is a sentence that does not begin to describe what she does. Corn Dolly Making and Straw Work both sit on the Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts, the conservation register kept by Heritage Crafts for traditional skills at risk of dying out in the UK. Lucy found that out in 2023, and started plaiting again that year.

The Belchamp Walter line

She grew up in rural north Essex, learning the basics in primary school in Layer de la Haye from a teacher called Keith Pettit. The lessons stuck. So did the family story: two of her third great-grandaunts were straw plaiters in Belchamp Walter, on the Essex-Suffolk border, in the mid-1800s, when straw plaiting was a household economy across that stretch of country. Hats, mostly. Lucy is taking it up again, three generations later, in the village a few miles over.

She has a BA (Hons) in 3D Design Crafts and is a member of Straw Craftsmen, the body that holds the standard for the craft in Britain. From her studio in Layer de la Haye she plaits Welsh Border Fans, Spiral Drop Dollies, Cornucopia, Sun Wheels, Bridgid's Crosses, Lovers' Knots, Countryman's Favours and Glory Braids in flat and raised diamond variants. The shop on The Haud is one cross-section of that range; everything ships made to order, plaited by hand after you place it.

Straw Club, on the road

What she is also doing, alongside the work, is teaching. She founded Made, a creative collective in Colchester, and now hosts Straw Club at the East Anglian Folklore Centre, taking the skills out to anyone who wants to sit down and try. You will find her at Plough Days and Steam Threshing Days across East Anglia, plaiting in front of people who remember the older shape of these things.

When I came across her work I thought first about the lineage, then about how easily this could have been lost. There are not many people doing this in Britain. Lucy is one of them, and she is also the one trying to make sure there are more.