3 minute read
Meet the maker
Gola is a lampshade making business born from lockdown. Mother and son team, Mari and Ifan, cleverly bring their individual senses of style to their range of lampshades, which are made from their studio on the Menai Strait, using intricately detailed old maps. We decided to find out a little bit more about them, and their local business…
Tell us about how you came to work together?
We (mother and son) found ourselves living under the same roof as lockdown began. Ironically this time unlocked creativity and enterprise in both of us. Ifan is a graphic designer and Mari is an author. Both of us shared ideas during lockdown and began a small business called ‘Gola’ (Welsh word for light) creating designs for lampshades that we started manufacturing ourselves in our pink shed in the garden!
How would you describe your individual styles?
We bring different skills and tastes to the workbench. Our styles vary from the traditional to the retro. We’re both passionate about our local heritage and recently we have drawn on local culture and history to create a new design inspired by old slate fencing.
Where do you get your design inspiration?
Most designs start with “What if…?” Wales’ unique landscape,
its culture, its language and its communities inspire us every day. One of our designs was inspired by our daily walks during lockdown. These paths were familiar to us, but we’d never actually looked at our surroundings properly. We started to pay attention – especially to the striking slate fences along the paths and back roads of our village.
What do you need to consider when creating your designs?
We both consider themes, colour variations and how they look when printed on fabric compared to a computer screen. We also consider the layout of the design ensuring that the dimensions will fit different sizes of a drum lampshade, taking care of
where the join lies.
What’s your favourite part of the whole process?
We love the whole process from creating the design and seeing it through to the final product and customer satisfaction. When
customers send us photographs of our shades in their homes we feel a huge sense of pride.
What’s your most popular shade?
The map lampshades are very popular as bespoke gifts, but we’re also delighted that our own design Crawia range is extremely popular. We print all of our lampshade panels at www.dannells.com which provide us with a quality product.
What’s the best thing about running your own business?
The freedom and joy of being our own bosses and organising our own timetable to suit our own needs. We absolutely love receiving positive feedback, reviews and photographs of our lampshades from happy customers. We’re also delighted by the fact that we have a number of repeat customers which confirms that we’re probably on the right track.
Where would you like to be in ten years?
Gola’s dream is to develop our small business into a sustainable living for us while reinforcing other local businesses with similar aspirations. Realising this dream would impact other small businesses around us by strengthening the local supply chain and reviving the local economy. n
You can explore Gola’s unique range of colourful retro-inspired and custom old map lampshades at www.gola.cymru. You can also follow them on Instagram @gola.cymru
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