Infinity in a Reed

I, Moon, want to tell you about a woman who found in the river plants a forgotten language her hands remembered before her mind did.

She lived on an island where land and water met in silence. One day, when my silver rays touched the river, she walked to the shore. The plants swayed in the wind and, without knowing why, she reached out to touch them.

Feeling their texture between her fingers, something awakened in her. “It’s more like remembering than learning,” she told me that night as she worked beneath my light. Little by little, her hands began weaving baskets. Each one was different, made through a conversation with the plants themselves. Her hands moved on their own, binding the stems with a wisdom that came from far away.

She learned to listen. Each stem spoke to her differently. Some wanted to be worked gently, others firmly. She never forced them; she invited them to become what they already carried within.

She harvested the plants by hand, from the river to her workshop. She dried them under my nighttime glow, and in that process I too learned from them: about their patience, their flexibility, their quiet strength.

One day, someone from the village asked why she devoted so much time to a craft almost no one practiced anymore.

She smiled and kept joining the stems. “Because this knowledge shouldn’t die,” she answered. “Every time my hands remember, I keep alive a memory older than me and all my ancestors.”

From then on, the village people began to see her differently. She wasn’t just someone who made baskets. She was someone who kept a secret of time, a bridge between what was and what could be again.

And I, who have seen so many crafts born and die, so many traditions, am glad there are still hands willing to remember what the world tries to forget.

Process

This season marks the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. We commemorate it with our Collaboration 55, which we’ve developed alongside Ella Merriman, a London-based artist and designer who works with an endangered art form: rush weaving, a practice that combines ancestral tradition, native materials, and slow processes.

Ella Merriman graduated with honors in Furniture and Product Design in 2018. Since then, she has built her practice exploring the disconnection between humans and nature, fascinated by the relationships between plants and people. In 2024, she received the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers award and currently maintains her studio at Cockpit, London.

“When I first worked with rush, it felt like remembering rather than learning, like an awakening of ancestral memory,” Merriman explains. “This deep connection with natural materials inspires my work, inviting others to rediscover respect for native resources.”

The designer harvests her rush by hand. “Following its journey from the river to becoming a work of art deepens my admiration for it,” she notes. “I often combine this ancient craft with discarded or salvaged wood, seeing restoration as a ritual of preservation.”

Weaving brought her peace during her struggles with atopic dermatitis. “Nature quietly guided me toward healing,” she says. “My work seeks to share that calm, joy, and hope with others.”

For this Collaboration with Loona, Ella presents The Sisters: a collection of six bags where each piece is unique yet part of a family that respects and reveres nature and its teachings.

Each bag is made from British rush harvested and dried by Ella. They all evolve during the creation process, shaped in collaboration with the material itself. By listening to the stalks, Ella learns how they want to be worked, allowing her to honor their qualities.

The collection includes Bracken, Heather, Hazel, Ivy, Nettle, and Clover. Each name evokes native British plants, connecting the bags to the landscape they come from.

The British cherry and ash handles come from the hands of Moe Redish, who works wood following its natural grain and flow. From his Brighton workshop, Moe creates furniture and objects that combine material exploration with careful woodworking, using exclusively solid British woods.

These handles are attached to the bags with silk botanically dyed by Kathryn Tomasetti of Botanical Weaves. Kathryn grows the plants for her dyes in her own garden, using traditional methods that inherit centuries of knowledge. As a recognized weaver, natural dyer, and eco-printer, her specialty is unique hand-woven textiles. For her, weaving means joining tradition with ritual, turning each thread into a bridge between past and present.

This Collaboration represents the meeting of three British artisans who share a philosophy: native materials, slow processes, respect for ancestral craft. Each bag carries the hands of three people who listened to the materials before working them.

We can’t think of a better way to close one year and welcome the next than with this Collaboration that shows us that endangered art forms can revive when there are those who dedicate time to learning, respecting, and sharing them. More than bags, these pieces offer testimony that another way of creating is possible, one that honors both material and process.