Denise Bird Woven Textiles - DBWT(UK) textile design solutions are currently prepared at Denise's home in Wiltshire, UK. Each design and product is hand woven by Denise on her 16 shaft dobby loom which was purchased in 2004.
Since graduation, Denise has spent two years working as a design consultant for a hand craft development company in rural Africa which, through the development of traditional hand craft skills using locally sourced and abundant high-veld grass, supplied approximately 750 rural women with the means to earning a subsistence income.
More recently, since the selection of DBWT(UK) by the Crafts Council of England as "one of the most innovative and original" emerging design talents in the UK during 2005, her ecological textile products and designs have been exhibited widely. Interest has been taken by U.S., Japan and E.U buyers and she has undertaken commission projects. Current developments include investigations into the practicalities of collaborative textile / fashion design ventures with fair trade registered overseas manufacturers for wholesale /retail purposes.
About contemporary textile design, Denise says: "To me, textile design, to be truly exquisite, befriends the whole of Nature and Mankind. It must simple and universal in its appeal - an honest reflection of its natural origin. The hands of a fibre's production worker are as valuable as are the hands that purchase a finished good. With the current popular interest in ecological textiles, its advancement and growing availability, there is no need or excuse to consider any other textile design solution. It is with full respect to mankind and the Earth's entirety that DBWT(UK) offers its organic, ecological and eco-therapeutic textile design solutions"