Exquisite Creations. Everyday Romanticism. Timeless elegance. The Embodiment of the Arts & Crafts.
Our name comes from a textile pattern of Morris’ –Brer Rabbit – which in turn comes from the folktale in the Uncle Remus stories Morris read to his daughters. Brother Rabbit signifies our oneness with each other, our necessary deep connection with nature, and the tradition of the mediaeval guilds in modern times.
Like most cultural anthropologists, I enjoy the hands-on aspect of material culture history. In my teens and twenties I worked at several Renaissance faires, plying self-taught crafts from spinning and weaving to corn dollies to paper-making to archery. I studied theatre design, with an emphasis in costuming, made fantastic costumes and wedding clothes, branched out into vintage and historical reproductions, all with an eye to absolute – some would say unnecessary - authenticity.
Clearly, I am ‘counter-culture’, but I found at the age of 16 that I was also part of a long tradition – going back at least to the Jacobeans and the English Country Party after the English Civil War, if not to the mediaeval guilds. A fellow actor commented rather off-the-cuff that I looked like a Pre-Raphaelite painting, something I should cultivate, and so began an odyssey that led me to Rossetti, Burne-Jones, William Morris, and Morris & Co. That Morris was a socialist and had very strong ideas about the way society should function (meanwhile being that hippie thing, a trust fund baby, himself) pleased my own native sense of what was right and fair, and I found a niche for my ideas thanks to his extensive writings.
Happily, the thread from the mediaeval guilds, through the Country Party (eventually absorbed into the Whigs) and late 19th Century Socialism (complete with utopians and vegetarians) was still twined sturdily in the co-operative movement; in 1978 I met its incarnation in the Briarpatch Network, a San Francisco-based group of people interested in ‘simple living, openness, sharing, and learning how the world works through business.’
This attitude of right livelihood, sharing of resources, and honest business practises resonated deeply with my sense of preservation of the best of the past.
We all know that the co-operative movement went largely underground, but it never entirely died, and in this age when we are afflicted with global warming, a Mad-Hatter type lifestyle, and rapidly dwindling natural resources, there never seems to be a better time to find a better way to do business, to live; for our own sanity and bliss, and for the sake of future generations.
