Product Focus Gifts for Garden Centres
Tales from Mosney Mill Mosney Mill offers a beautiful range of kitchen and homewares, all featuring the drawings of Emma Sutton, inspired by the animals and scenery she can see from her own window. We caught up with Emma to discover more Emma, your company is called Mosney Mill. Is this a real place? Yes, very real. Although it is no longer a mill, we bought the land to be a family complex about seven years ago. At the time it was a disused market garden and, while applying for planning permission to convert the 17th century barn into our home, we discovered Mosney’s rich past. During the 1780s Mosney was the site of a famous print works, Mosney Printworks, where the first ever calico printing press capable of printing six colour simultaneously was invented. In fact, Mosney Printworks was noted on one of the first Yates’ maps of the area.
What was it about the overgrown site that made you fall in love with it? The site was teeming with wildlife and really overgrown. On one of our first visits I was walking our Labrador Finn in the overgrown fields and came face to face with a roe deer, so close I could have touched it. I knew there and then I wanted to make this place my home.
Have you always been an artist or did living in historic Mosney ignite a new talent? I have always been artistic but, like many people of my generation, I was encouraged to view art more as a hobby and in fact worked as a teaching assistant - albeit a very arty one. When we found out about Mosney Printworks, it ignited a passion within me to bring a new chapter into Mosney’s history; I wanted to use my illustrations of Mosney’s rich and varied wildlife on a range of British manufactured kitchen textiles and so Mosney Mill was born in 2016.
How would you describe the Mosney Mill style? It’s quintessentially British, featuring native wildlife flora and fauna. As the products are so inspired by my home the company slogan is ‘Home at Heart’. Everyone who works at Mosney soon emotionally invests in the brand and adopts the company’s passion for producing quality products. We decided to produce kitchen textiles first due to Mosney’s history. The technical innovations made at Mosney were crucial to the development of the cloth industry and established British pre-eminence in the printed cloth trade. It seemed right to start a new chapter concentrating on British textiles given the fact Mosney Mill is based in Lancashire, in the heart of England’s textile belt.
How did you cope during lockdown? It was hard for everyone during lockdown but we used the time to develop new product ranges and lots of time was spent drawing the fauna and flora in our wildflower meadow. Our wildflower seed cards were particularly popular during lockdown as, when the recipient has finished displaying the card, it can be planted to grow a bunch of wildflowers - something to look forward to in the future. We also launched our Robin and Rainbow Mug with 100% of the net profits donated to the NHS Covid-19 Emergency Appeal.
Why should retailers consider stocking Mosney Mill? We’re an exciting new business, offering high quality, coordinated British manufactured products, and with a real passion for our work. We enjoy talking to our retail customers and encourage them to purchase products that are complementary to their own ethos. We are proud to be based in rural Lancashire and we are also jolly nice people!
Call: 01772 822525 | Email: info@mosneymill.co.uk | Visit: mosneymilltrade.com 34 Gifts Today
