Jan Crocker's Recycled by Design

The tiny island of Papa Westray, Orkney, Scotland is where Jan makes her home with her husband and their five children. It's not, as you can imagine, a place littered with shopping malls. One tiny store provides the islands' inhabitants with their most basic necessities. Such an existence fosters thoughtful consideration before anything is thrown away as a result recycling is a way of life.

Serendipity played a hand in guiding her back to the creative process abandoned for a career as a psychiatric nurse. An accident in washing her husband Nic's beautiful hand knit sweater, the necessity for recycling and resulting felted fabric too beautiful not to do "something" with resulting in a bag. That was the beginning.

She's found her muse in the form of Papa Westray. In the rugged natural beauty which surrounds Jan each day she creates a host of beautiful products all from felted wool. Her kelp inspired scarves are of recycled knitwear, strategically cut, sewn and then shrunk - the same concept is applied to her one-of-a-kind jackets. Her designs are really pieces of art, which also happen to be hard-wearing, robust, warm, practical and uniquely beautiful. To underscore this fact, I was wearing the one I purchased so I could actually find Jan one day when two French couture sales ladies wanted know where I had gotten such an amazing jacket! Nothing more need be said.