64: Hannah Louise Lamb – Coastline Jewellery and the Many Routes to Market

Coastal memories are important to Jeweller Hannah Louise Lamb - she grew up in Cornwall and now lives and works on the east coast of Scotland, but it's other people's coastlines that are central to her business.
Hannah has been making her hand-pierced coastline jewellery for over twenty years, and she's built her business the long way round: posting envelopes of slides to every gallery listed in the back of Crafts magazine, doing every craft fair going, and recently making the difficult decision to leave Not On The High Street after nearly two decades, because it no longer felt like the place that championed makers.
She is also an avid supporter of the galleries and independent stores that stock her work: When someone messages her because they've fallen for one of her rings in a gallery, her answer is simple: "Well, please go to the gallery and buy it there."
There's no way, she told me, that she'd take that sale for herself. "We're all in it together. It's a collaboration, not a competition."
As a gallery owner, I could have hugged her.
In our lovely chat we discuss:
• Hannah's stumbling into Glasgow School of Art's degree show as a teenager
• Throwing away her sketchbooks halfway through her final year, and finding her voice in the contrast between Glasgow's grid of streets and Cornwall's wiggly coastline
• Artist residencies at Edinburgh College of Art and a boarding school in Rutland, whilst saving up for an MA the Royal College of Art
• Setting up in a shared studio in Leith with a group of entrepreneurial jewellers who said yes to everything
• Writing to every gallery in the back of Crafts magazine with envelopes of slides, and the grant panel that had to tell her to buy a computer
• Leaving Not On The High Street after nearly twenty years, and why visibility on marketplaces has changed
• Why she sends gallery customers back to the gallery, and sees makers and galleries as collaborators
• Why sale or return works for her, and why she doesn't want her work discounted on someone else's shelf
• Living other people's memories through bespoke coastline commissions, and the late-night emails that come with them

You can see Hannah's work at hannahlouiselamb.com and on instagram @hannahlouiselamb

Hannah also talks about Jack Cunningham, her inspiring tutor at Glasgow School of Art jackcunningham.co.uk.

Coburg House where she had her first studio coburghouse.co.uk @coburghouse alongside @kazrobertsonjewellery kazrobertson.co.uk and @donnabarryjewels donnabarry.com. Her Not on The High Street collaboration with @soremijewellery soremi-jewellery.co.uk and @lindseymannjewellery lindseymann.co.uk