About Hiraeth

The Hiraeth project

Hiraeth is a Welsh word with no exact translation into English. Less prosaic than the English 'homesickness’, it conveys the idea of a longing for something or somewhere that perhaps never existed - a memory of childhood, of people and places lost, of that thing that you long to return to but never can.

For me that place is the North Wales of my childhood holidays; the Welsh-speaking voices of family friends and relations, the castles and the mountains and the fascinatingly kitsch 1970s souvenir shops, treasure troves of love spoons, tapestry purses and endless trinkets made of the local slate. I inherited my Nain’s and my mother’s tapestry blankets and became fascinated once again by the geometric patterns and sometimes extraordinary colour combinations of these wonderful everyday objects.