Here's some interesting facts about Zeal's founder, Holly Wicks. Holly is front and centre to your Zeal experience (she organises every aspect of your personalised commission, and helps you along the way from initial consultation to installation).
Long Lineage of seamstresses
Holly hails from long line of crafts folk - including seamstresses, upholsterers, carpenters and antique dealers. Her grandmother, Joan once made dresses for Diana Ross and the Supremes. Her mother, Linda has 36 years experience as a highly skilled seamstress & upholsterer, still running her business, Craftsmen Furnishers, from a shop in North Petherton. Linda has also turned her hand at dressmaking and elaborate embroidery throughout her career. Pre teenage years, Holly had a Saturday job in the shop. You could say it was impossible for Holly not to be influenced by her extended family's creative endeavours.
Exposure to inspirational interiors
From a young age, Holly and her younger sister were quite often taken along to furnishing installations in grand private houses, hotels and countryside stately homes. This exposure to lavish and extravagant interiors must have made an impression.
The artistic gene
Holly has always pursued work in the artistic and creative industries - dabbling in journalism/copywriting, styling, video production and photography along the way to being a designer / maker. She now gets to incorporate a broad range of creative and interpersonal skills, making bespoke interior products for clients who want to inject colour and vibrancy into their homes. Holly didn't envisage following in the family tradition when she went to University, but it's come as a welcome surprise - and feels very intuitive.
Learning traditional seamstress skills from her mother, Holly has enjoyed the connection of working with inspiring modern textiles and carrying on the specialist craft of her female matriarchs. While Holly uses some traditional seamstress techniques, she incorporates them with modern methods too, making sure every product is design-led and up-to-date with interiors trends that suit contemporary living.
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