Coniston Stonecrafts: Get Your Kitchen Pieces Hand-made From the Lake District
Coniston Stonecrafts (and their workshops) are comfortably nested at a mountain’s foot in the Lake District. The brand creates hand-crafted house signs, clocks, cheese boards, place mats, rolling pins and other kitchen pieces from slate quarried down the road.
Coniston Stonecrafts derives their slate from local quarries, and their power comes from a hydroelectric station on Church Beck, just 100 yards away.
The company refuses to use oil to cool their machines, and they prefer to divert mines beck and use the cold fell water to cool their machines, making their slates far more tactile and clean felt as well.
They also use recycled packaging, and source their double-walled cardboard from two local bike shops and cloth swatches from a cotton dealer in greater Manchester.
Brendan Donnelly turned the business around just 19 days before the first COVID lockdown in March 2020, and he bought the long-standing slate company out of administration.
Standing since 1976, he drove up the online sales, and orders boomed – resulting in the company hiring two more apprentices to cope with the success. Now, the business is sending hand-carved bookends to customers all the way in New York.