Story

Sewing oilskin gear in the Kohutt workshop, Tasmania

Born at sea. Made in Tasmania.

Kohutt is a small, family-run design workshop in Tasmania, making canvas, oilskin, wool and leather gear for the indoors and the outdoors. Everything is made by hand from the best materials we can find, and guaranteed for life with free repairs.

The key to a good life is a life engaged in the pursuit of quality.

It started with a lee cloth

Kohutt began at sea. Sailing small boats across oceans, mostly alone, I learned to sew out of necessity: first a lee cloth, to stop myself being thrown out of my bunk in a seaway, then sails, covers and canvas repairs aboard each of my boats, Constellation, Harmony, Euphoria and Huia.

I trained in fine art and photography (a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts), but the more time I spent at sea and on the road, the more I cared about the objects that got me through: things that were simple, repairable and built to outlast me. In 2015 I started Kohutt in Tasmania to make them.

The voyages behind the gear

I've sailed more than 35,000 nautical miles, mostly alone or shorthanded:

  • Europe to Australia, singlehanded across the Atlantic and Pacific in a 26ft boat, 2006 to 2010
  • San Francisco to Sydney, a second Pacific crossing in 2013, in a boat patched together with bamboo and hand tools
  • Cape to Cape, an attempt to close the loop by driving an ex-army Land Rover from Tasmania to Norway, stopped in South Africa by the pandemic
  • The Australian east coast with my family aboard Euphoria in 2021
  • Bass Strait, alone, in Huia, an open timber couta boat built in 1936

Plus shorter trips to Lord Howe Island and up the Gordon River. Read all the voyage stories.

What we make

Tarps, bedrolls, blankets, bags and field gear, many named for the Tasmanian wilderness they were made to be used in. We work in oilskin, waxed and unwaxed canvas, wool, leather, linen and felt, and design for durability over fashion: gear that softens, patinas and gets better with use, and that we'll repair for as long as you own it.

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As featured in

The Mercury, R.M. Williams Outback Magazine and The Design Files.

Questions, repairs or just want to say hello? Get in touch.