Insider: Hole & Corner magazine

Celebrating craft, passion and skill, Hole & Corner magazine is all about makers and doers.

But what exactly goes into the making of the magazine? With the new issue just sent to print, editor Mark Hooper offers a glimpse behind the scenes, with tales of inspiring conversations, David Bowie videos and calling out a mountain rescue team…

In the making of this issue we…

Ate
A fantastic array of cakes and pastries that the brilliant team at Forge & Co at Heal’s kept bringing us to sample (our office is conveniently situated next to their kitchen).

Got sidetracked by
Endless David Bowie videos on YouTube.

Were inspired by
Richard Smith, senior farms manager at Daylesford Organic Farm, who talks with amazing clarity about the problems with modern agriculture and how a common sense approach can fix most of them.

Argued about
How to edit a conversation with Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed, when the whole point of the conversation was for it to be entirely unedited (including every ‘um’ and ‘ah’).

Met
The amazing Nelly Ben Hayoun, whose contacts book includes NASA scientists, Sigur Rós, Grammy-winning composers and sci-fi writers.

Learned
That before sodium street lighting, people used to sleep in two four-hour cycles, often entertaining guests in the waking time between their ‘First’ and ‘Second’ sleeps.

Were amazed by
Fashion designer Suzanne Deekin’s account of her synaesthesia [a neurological condition in which senses normally experienced separately are involuntarily joined together].

Were surprised by
What photographer Dan Tobin Smith and set designer Rachel Thomas came up with when we sent them to Cumbria to shoot paper manufacturers James Cropper.

Were most pleased by
Our series of Senses discussions between endlessly fascinating people (perfumer Lyn Harris, furniture designer Russell Pinch, pigment expert Pedro da Costa Felgueiras, Michelin-starred chef Nuno Mendes, scent archivist Sissel Tolaas and designer/architect Omer Arbel).

And everyone should buy a copy because
Our Associate Editor Ben Williams broke a wrist, fractured a vertebra and gave his head a ‘comprehensive bashing’ to bring it to you. He wrote a piece about a mountain rescue team for us, and then had to call them out. You can read the full story inside…

Photography by Marius W. Hansen, Dan Tobin Smith, Robert Wyatt, Richard Foster, James McNaught and Laurence Ellis

–

Stay up to date with the best independent magazines. Subscribe to Stack and we’ll send you a different handpicked title every month.