Saying Goodbye to my Sketchbook
A farewell to a companion of 5½ years…
I’ve just finished my sketchbook. My one and only sketchbook, used any time I have felt the need, for the last five and a half years. And I’m feeling surprisingly emotional about it.
I started it just before the pandemic, on a quiet trip to Andalusia. I remember drawing in olive groves and under citrus trees. Before that, I hadn’t used a sketchbook in years. I’d become so absorbed in the business and production side of things that the habit had slipped away. But I’d always loved working through ideas this way — it was something I did instinctively back in art college, and picking it up again felt like a homecoming.
This sketchbook has helped me clear space in my head. When I get all the ideas down on paper — and there are always many — it’s like freeing up mental room for new ones. My mind runs in many directions, and the pages have been a way to catch up with myself. I still design in other ways too: at the workbench, when half-formed ideas come together unexpectedly among works in progress; or digitally, when Photoshop helps me map out final proportions and details. If I don’t have my sketchbook to hand, I’ll draw very loosely in the notes app on my phone — sometimes just lines and fragments — and then print them out and stick them into the sketchbook. Layers of thought, all gathered in one place.
Designing, for me, has always been a sensory process. I need the right headspace — and a good playlist — to slip into that quiet, unselfconscious rhythm. Before I started designing my most recent collection, I gathered a handful of beautiful little objects and arranged them in one of my old drawers, just to see what came. Inspiration is rarely direct; it comes in sideways, through mood, shape, memory. One idea leads to the next and once I’m in my flow I often I forget to stop for lunch.
My sketchbook shows this kind of thinking. The pages are densely worked, layered with multiple versions of the same idea. Some of those designs never made it into metal, but tiny parts of them carried forward into other pieces. Maybe that’s what my mind looks like. There are scribbled words and phrases all throughout — some technical, some emotional, some just things I heard on the radio that felt right in the moment. It’s messy, honest, private. A place for me, not for anyone else, like a confessional diary.
There’s an aesthetic element too — I can’t help wanting the page to feel balanced, to have some kind of internal rhythm. Lately, I’ve found myself moving back and forth through the sketchbook, revisiting early ideas. One of the first drawings now feels especially relevant — it’s found its way into the wire pieces I’m currently working on. These new designs, launching soon, are the most direct translation yet of the way I draw: fluid, loose, layered. They feel like drawings in gold.
I have such a soft spot for this sketchbook. It's worn at the edges, the cover is battered and scrappy, but it’s become a deeply meaningful object in itself. When I first bought it, I didn’t like the size — so I cut it in half with a jigsaw and covered the rough edge in brown paper. It fits perfectly in my hands now. It’s tactile. It’s been a quiet solace.
Finishing it feels a bit like saying goodbye to a friend. I’m a little bereft. Starting a new sketchbook feels daunting — too clean, too unfamiliar. I love this one. It’s been a living thing.
Alison x
