It is midsummer in England’s midlands, and a rusty reaper-binder is clattering through a field of wheat. Metal bars spin and shudder, cutting the crop, tying it into bundles and releasing it. Lu Towle walks behind the machine, carefully inspecting every sheaf; her livelihood is intertwined with the harvest.
While Lu is not a farmer, her work relies on a traditional variety of long-stemmed wheat. Few people still in Britain grow it, so she began cultivating it herself. After experimenting with a small patch of Maris Widgeon in her garden last year, she now rents a quarter of an acre on her uncle’s pig farm in rural Nottinghamshire.
Lu practises the dwindling craft of corn dolly-making – a tradition perhaps as old as farming itself. Across Britain and much of Europe, people once believed that the spirit of the harvest resided in the final sheaf left in the field. They typically shaped it into a token or effigy, kept it at home through the winter, then sowed it into the soil the following year to encourage another healthy harvest.
Harvest favours used to be made all over Britain, from the sun-touched pastures of Cornwall to the windswept crofts of the Highlands. Every farming region had its own distinctive designs – Essex Terrets, Mordiford Hearts, Staffordshire Knots and Norfolk Lanterns. These intricate folk objects were created by ordinary rural women, usually at home, their techniques diligently passed from one generation to the next.
But this craft has faded significantly over the last century, much like the rural communities that kept it alive. Lu’s family is among the few who have preserved the tradition. She follows her grandmother, who learned the craft while living on a farm in the 1950s, and her mother, who took it up during the folk revival of the 1970s.
Lu wasn’t initially drawn to the craft. “When I was younger, I didn’t really think it was a cool thing to do,” she confesses. “It seemed like an old-world thing – I wasn’t particularly interested.” But at some point in the summer of 2024, her mother sent a message to the family group chat asking if anyone would be interested in learning her vanishing craft. A few weeks later, Lu found herself sitting at her parents’ kitchen table surrounded by bundles of straw.
Once she began, she felt instantly connected to the craft. As a single mother seeking flexible and creative work, Lu immersed herself with unexpected enthusiasm, teaching herself one design after another, practising for hours on end. She soon began selling work at local fairs and markets, and was pleasantly surprised by the interest her products garnered.
“Lots of older people came up to me saying they remembered doing it themselves at primary school or Sunday school, while others were discovering it for the first time.” Lu quickly realised that her newfound craft had the potential to become more than a pastime. For the past year or so, it has been her primary occupation. She is now one of only a handful of full-time corn dolly-makers in Britain.
Lu sits at a desk in her small spare bedroom, blinds drawn against the summer sun. Her material is all around her: bursting out of pots, spilling over shelves, scattered across the floor. She hunches over her hands, brow furrowed, fingers working a lattice of pale-yellow stems. In the space of just fifteen minutes, she transforms a loose bundle of straw into an intricate geometrical form.
Straw-plaiting is, in some ways, a simple craft. It can be done anywhere, with inexpensive materials, and requires no tools other than a pair of hands. The entire tradition rests on a small repertoire of techniques: bending and plaiting, weaving and knotting. Yet from these basic processes comes a variety of evocatively named forms: snail’s track, batswing, catfoot, heartbreak plait.
Lu makes a wide range of objects, from small harvest favours worn as brooches or buttonholes to larger house blessings hung on walls – pomanders, lanterns, fertility goddesses and chandeliers. Each piece is unique. “Every single stem is different,” she says, smiling. “And I love that the length, the thickness and the size of the seed-head are all determined by last year’s weather.”
She particularly loves how the craft connects her to her mother, who she now works with, as well as her grandmother. Lu feels a kinship with generations of overlooked women who used to live off the land, depended on the annual harvest, and who, together, transformed this humble material into a beautiful and meaningful art form.
In an age when so many of us are removed from nature and spending time in dislocated virtual worlds, Lu believes corn dolly-making answers a deeper need. “I think it’s a remedy for some of the difficult realities of modern life,” she says, as her hands move around a stem of straw. “People want a relationship with nature and the seasons, with other people, with community. This craft is very connecting.”
View Lu an installation of Lu's work in TOAST shop windows until Sunday 30 August. Join us at TOAST Notting Hill on 13 August for an evening conversation between Lu and author and art historian James Fox. The hosts will discuss the history of harvest traditions and the importance of preserving heritage craft.
Lu wears the Applied Placket Cotton Linen Top and Sculptural Seamed Denim Trousers.
Jenny wears the Sadie Cotton Boy Tee, Cotton Linen Neat Jacket and Annie Denim Full Length Jeans.
Words by James Fox.
Photography by Lottie Hampson.
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