Somewhere between the tide and the fog, From the Swallow was born.
I write this from aboard Gwennel, our hand-built gaff-rigged sailing boat whose Cornish name means swallow. She is our home, our workshop, our drifting little corner of the world. The sea is never very far from anything I create. Salt clings to the windows. Ropes creak softly through the night. Crows gather along harbour walls as though keeping watch over the water.
But this place was never meant to be simply about boats.
It was built from older things than that.
From weather-darkened graveyards wandered as a child beside my grandad, reading worn inscriptions beneath stone angels and ivy-covered crosses. From Victorian mourning symbolism, sea superstitions, forgotten folklore, black feathers washed ashore, and stories carried through harbour towns for generations. From a lifelong fascination with the strange beauty of things touched by time.
I have always been drawn to the old world. To the melancholy and romance hidden within it.
The sailor belief that swallows would guide souls safely home. Selkies waiting beneath black tidewater. Ghost ships swallowed by fog. Bells said to ring beneath the sea after storms. Will-o’-the-wisps dancing over marshland paths. Little fragments of myth and memory that linger quietly along the British coastline.
Those stories have a way of finding their place in my work.
Everything here is created as though it belongs to some half-remembered tale — sea-worn relics, antique etchings, forgotten letters, wandering birds, stormlit symbols and curious objects carried ashore from another century.
This is a place for fellow strange souls. For those who find beauty in the mysterious, the weathered, the literary and the folkloric. For those who have always felt more at home amongst old books, churchyards, tidal estuaries and gathering crows than in the bright noise of the modern world.
So welcome to From the Swallow.
The lantern is lit. The tide is turning. And there are many stories yet to tell.
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