Journal

Country Homes & Interiors magazine asked Alun Callender to shoot portraits of British Wool Heroes for their 2012 calendar.

Amanda Griffiths, my wife and partner in Melin Tregwynt is on the left and Marie Wallin, Head designer at Rowan is on the right. There are more heroes below...

Another stunning hotel, that just happens to use our products, the Arch London is a luxury lifestyle hotel just a stone’s throw from Marble Arch. This urban hideaway offers a unique combination of English heritage, Welsh doublecloth and contemporary style. www.thearchlondon.com

I hope you’ll enjoy these images from one of the hotels we’ve supplied. The Boundary, Redchurch Street, 2-4 Boundary Street, Shoreditch, London E2 7DD

The rooftop space is replete with a large sail-like canopy, heating, festoon lighting and Welsh blankets from Melin Tregwynt.

“Melin Tregwynt’s products have gained a worldwide reputation for its stylish and eye-catching designs as modern as they come, but linking strongly to the craft and cultural heritage of Wales.

This is why the company has an important part to play at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where the best of Wales’ culture and traditions will be showcased Wales to more than one million visitors from across the USA

Rhodri Morgan, First Minister of Wales

Wales needs to maximise its cultural icons, a review of the nation’s heritage tourism, for the Welsh Assembly, recommends. 

The review praises innovative tourism examples in Wales: especially the traditional cottage holiday company Under the Thatch, the Faenol Festival in North Wales, the marketing of the Wye and Dyfi valleys and Melin Tregwynt.

So now we’re a cultural icon. What next I wonder? 

I thought you might like to see the faces behind our fabrics. This picture was taken about a month ago when we said goodbye to Kath and Irene, two of our staff who were retiring.

Kath (3rd from right in front row) had been with the company for 40 years (she joined us in the 60s). She began by recording our sales by hand in an old ledger and by her retirement she was experienced in the dark arts of Sage accounting and computers. Amazing changes in one working life.

Another example of welsh tapestry used imaginatively in an interior. This time it’s the bedrooms in the Harbourmaster Hotel, Aberaeron. 

One of the best examples of modern Welsh hospitality, a carefully created coastal hotel that is cool, classy and contemporary. Great views and real food at a lovely harbourside location. A refreshing mixture of styles– cosmopolitan, modern, maritime and metropolitan.