For the past seven years, we have invited international craftspeople to apply for our New Makers programme. The successful artists receive expert guidance on their growing businesses, along with a platform on TOAST to sell their handcrafted goods. We started this annual non-profit mentorship to broaden the expression of our brand values, centering around thoughtful production and the preservation of centuries-old techniques. This year’s makers were chosen for their novel and inspiring approaches to such crafts.
Craft is a verb. There is no fixed end, or point of completion. For our makers, it is a life of experimentation: refining their practice and cultivating an awareness of the world of natural materials.
Handweaver Sabine Van der Sande creates textiles inspired by archival weaving patterns. “I love the intimacy of textiles,” she says. “People throughout history have worn them close to the skin - it’s the fabric of life.”
For each throw, 500-600 individual threads have to be wound onto her historic nineteenth-century hand loom. Coverlets found in migrant homesteads in early North American homesteads have been a central inspiration to her dedication to handcraft. “Working with very simple looms, women would create these amazing coverlets as the sole decorative item in a home with one room. These beautiful hand woven pieces were one of the only ways women could express themselves.” Her designs for TOAST have been updated with a vibrant colour palette, and more elaborate designs have been simplified, building on the negative space in her textiles.
Lærke Møller Hansen is a ceramicist working in Nexø, a fishing town on the east coast of Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic sea. “There’s so many stages in mastering ceramics,” Lærke says. “It makes me very excited to work with clay. Its state is shifting all the time. As a material, it has so much to say.”
Lærke’s practice is the result of a career shift; she started out in biotechnology. From those scientific beginnings, she has carried over a mathematical precision to her craft. This guides her choice of materials and geometry of form, and has led her to develop her own glazes, experimenting with sand and wood ash from her local surroundings. Meticulous attention steers her work toward simplicity, rather than embellishment. This sensibility forms a bridge between the Scandinavian minimalism of her upbringing and the Japanese reverence for the integrity of natural materials. “I am inspired by Japanese design. There is an organic element to Japanese ceramics; a minimalist aesthetic brings you closer to nature because the materials guide the form and colour palette.”
Ceramicist Amy Leeworthy also finds expression in experimenting with form. Working from her home studio on the coastal Mornington Peninsula, outside of Melbourne, her practice is deeply linked to the blue sea and open skies of her expansive natural surroundings. Blues feature heavily in her collection of ceramic tableware for TOAST, and she uses an eighteenth-century cyanometer as a part of her practice. This was a tool invented to measure the blueness of the sky, a circle of gradually deepening blues. “The cyanometer was created to capture something intangible,” she says. “Working with clays and glazes is a bit like this, never the same twice. There’s a magic in opening the kiln and not knowing what you’re going to get.”
Lindey Tydeman’s approach to jewellery design is similarly guided by materials. “I’ll file away at a ring until it reveals itself. I love using hand held tools, the slower approach gives a sense of control, and more of a connection with the piece.” Starting from a background in knitted textiles, she was interested in electroforming: the process of growing one metal onto another. Blending precious metals, her TOAST collection explores striking contrasts in colour and tactile interplay. “A lot of my process involves thinking through making,” she says. “Intution is key to my practice.” Another step in her process involves metal reticulation. “I came to that process by mistake,” she recalls. “I overheated a piece of metal, but then I loved the gnarled texture it created.”
This intuitive, material-led approach resonates with woodworker Elise McLauchlan, who also discovered her craft through a deep sensitivity to material. Once a metalworker herself, Elise found wood to be a more forgiving medium: “It’s alive, always warping and changing shape,” she says.
Raised in Yorkshire, Elise now works in Montreal. Her collection for TOAST is hewn from maple wood, naturally abundant in her surroundings. “I love working with maple because it’s always so different. You have to let the grain decide which direction you’re going in.” Her craft is inspired by ceramics, working with a lathe to create tactile, rounded forms. This nod to the ceramic art has been a way of subverting a more conventional craft. “I’ve simplified heritage forms and made them more modern. Traditional wood-turned bowls are often thick and chunky. I want to take an orthodox craft and give it a modern appeal, incorporating cleaner lines and slender forms where I can.”
Craft is not solely the work of the individual. Elise has been working with traditional methods, inspired by a rich tradition of craft which crosses borders in space and history. All our New Makers have found a space for their own unique work, positioned in communication with a history and culture which values sustainable materials, and the celebration of techniques of handcraft which have been passed down from generation.
The TOAST New Makers programme offers support and mentoring for emerging makers from all disciplines. It provides a platform to sell their pieces, with full profits being returned to them, as well as business and marketing advice. Applications are now open for the 2026 cohort. Find out more here.
Sabine wears the TOAST Patch Pocket Japanese Denim Coat, Lia Garment Dyed Boat Neck Tee, and Twisted Seam Japanese Denim Trousers.
Amy wears the Lia Garment Dyed Boat Neck Tee, Twisted Seam Japanese Denim Trousers, and Wool Linen Patch Pocket Cardigan.
Lindey wears the Birch Gingham Cotton Jacket, and Birch Gingham Pleat Front Trousers.
Elise wears the Stripe Crew Neck Tee, Sculptural Seamed Denim Trousers, and Eden Wool Cashmere Raglan Cardigan.
Photography by Marco Kesseler, Laura Short, and Benedetta Martini.
Words by Lauren Sneade.
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