Ten ponchos and a coast for oilskin | From the workshop #14

Workshop Edition 002 sold out in twenty four hours. Ten Hall Ponchos, five Deep Bronze and five Deep Myrtle, numbered and gone in a day. Bronze went first and went completely, which I did not predict and have been thinking about since.

Thank you so much for your trust and support, this is the fastest anything has ever left the workshop.

A lot of people wrote afterwards asking whether there would be more. The honest answer is no, not of that edition - ten was ten and I would rather keep that meaning something. But there is a core version, on pre-order now, shipping mid to late October. The Workshop Edition format is both an opportunity to do limited production runs and experiments, as well as an opportunity to test ideas and see whether they might fit in the regular lineup of products.

It is however worth being clear about how the two differ, because they are not the same object.

The Workshop Edition was cut from 8.5oz oilskin and weighed 990g. Two colourways, brass hardware and a burgundy collar on the Myrtle, nickel and stainless with navy on the Bronze. Each one numbered, with a signed provenance card and a tin of our new Scottish made reproofer in the box.

The core poncho is slightly lighter, made from a few of the remaining 6.5oz rolls we have left, which brings it down to 800g in weight. Just one colourway, Bronze, with nickel and stainless hardware and the navy wool collar. No number, no card, and the reproofer is there if you want it rather than automatically included, as well as an optional matching ditty sack to store your poncho when not on an adventure.

Everything else is the same. French seams throughout, leather sewn labels, leather reinforcement behind every press stud, the detachable hood with its paracord drawstring and leather cord stopper, corner eyelets so it lays out flat as a groundsheet, the same wool at the collar so there is no oilskin against your neck. Same one size. Same lifetime guarantee and free repairs.

In other news, The Design Files asked me for ten favourite places on the west coast of Tasmania, and ran the piece last week with photographs by Eve Wilson. It is a Tourism Tasmania partnership, so I am now technically a destination marketing asset, which is not a sentence I expected to write.

The west coast is the right place for this conversation though, because it is the reason a poncho exists at all.

Head west from Ocean Beach and the first land you reach is Patagonia. Forty kilometres of sand and then nothing but the Southern Ocean until South America. Whatever that ocean has been building for three thousand miles arrives at Strahan more or less intact. It is a coast for canvas, oilskin and wool, and not much else holds up.

The drive from Hobart is just shy of 300km, over the Central Highlands, across the Franklin, then down through the bare hills above Queenstown. On a map it is nothing, yet it takes most of a day. The mountains seem to absorb time as well as distance.

I stayed a few nights at Captain's Rest, the fisherman's shack at Lettes Bay that my close friend Sarah Andrews pulled out of near-ruin and turned into the most photographed room in Tasmania. Sarah makes places. I make things to take to them. I sat at the window and worked, stoked the fire, read, and watched the weather come in from the west. A duck came to the door, looked in, and left without explanation.

At Lake Burbury the mountains stand upside down in the water so convincingly you start checking your own footing. Beneath them is a town called Crotty, drowned in 1991 when they flooded the valley. Nobody goes there now, on account of it being underwater.

The Kohutt tag line is “Born at sea. Made in Tasmania” - I learned to sew at sea. The first thing I ever made was a lee cloth, a strip of canvas rigged along the side of a bunk to stop you being thrown out of it when the boat rolls hard. It was badly made on a borrowed machine with leads running to the boat's 12v battery with alligator clips. Everything since has been a version of the same problem: a piece of cloth, a specific difficulty, and whatever tools are to hand.

The Hall Poncho, core version, pre-order - shipping mid to late October in small batches.

With much appreciation,

Nick.