STEEL SPOON : Nanas Clutch

Category: Accessories

This project explores how working class heritage, domestic craft, and emotional memory can be recontextualised within contemporary luxury accessories. Rooted in my family’s connection to the steel works in Port Talbot, the bag reflects ideas of endurance, labour, and inherited craftsmanship through both concept and construction. During periods of industrial hardship in South Wales, acts of care within my family were expressed through making rather than words. My grandmother communicated affection through knitted garments, blankets, and embroidered objects created slowly over time with patience and repetition. Welsh culture, love is often shown through presence, utility, and shared objects rather than direct verbal expression. I became interested in translating these quiet gestures into a luxury context. The bag’s form combines references to my grandmother’s coin purse and the metal lunchboxes used by my great grandad in the steel works, merging domestic intimacy with industrial function. The exaggerated cable knit references a jumper knitted for me during childhood and acts as a metaphor for inherited emotional memory and familial imprint. Alongside the bag, I developed a hat inspired by industrial helmets and traditional Welsh flat caps. Constructed using donated sheepskin, the piece explores protection, resilience, and working class identity through material and silhouette. The reclaimed sheepskin reflects the project’s focus on care, resourcefulness, and inherited making practices, softening the industrial references with warmth and tactility. To develop the forms, I hand sketched and engineered the knit structures before laser cutting recycled foam and moulding the silhouettes by hand. This process allowed traditional craft references to intersect with contemporary fabrication techniques, positioning memory, labour, and material experimentation as forms of modern luxury.