Name: Tea Towel - Primrose
Brand: StudioWald
SKU: BPT
Price: 14.00 GBP
Availability: InStock

Our wonderful founders!

Meet Jakob & Freya!

We're so excited to properly introduce ourselves – the duo behind Studio Wald! We’re Freya and Jake, both originally from Leeds, where we met while studying 3D Design at Leeds College of Art & Design. .

In 2017, once we’d settled back into Leeds life, we launched Studio Wald – blending our love for design, nature, and practical, beautiful products. What began as a small idea at our kitchen table has grown alongside our family (now with three children – Barney, Leyna & Lowen!) into a thriving business that brings creativity, sustainability, and thoughtful design into everyday life.

We’re passionate about balancing work and family, and love creating products that feel both special and useful – always with an eye on the natural world and sustainable materials. Thanks for being here and following along with our journey 🌿✨

Tell us about you and your family.

We are both from Leeds and met while studying a degree in 3D design at Leeds College Of Art & Design. We spent a few years down in Brighton where we ran the first incarnation of our business under the name’WitShop’. But once our first child Barney came along we decided to move back north for a cheaper and easier way of life. In the shift to life with children the business as it was had taken a back seat while we refocused our life. But once we were settled back into life in Leeds we took the lessons we had learned and started up Studio Wald in 2017. The business has since grown and grown, as has our family! We now have 3 children with Leyna being born 2018 and Lowen in 2020. Our life is a juggling act of balancing family life, spending as much time as possible with the kids to see them grow, with sustaining a healthy business that creates interesting products in a changing market.

When did you start Studio Wald?

We founded Studio Wald in 2017. We always loved seeing nicely made, interesting products on our visits to museums, galleries and independent shops and felt we had something to add to the world of small, gift-able products . To be in charge of the output of our creativity is a big part of the why we enjoy self-employed work and it gives us a flexibility in time which is invaluable with little children.

What's the meaning behind the name?

Wald is the German word for Forest. We liked the sound and feel of the word and it suited our Germanic links and our connection to the timber and paper we use in our designs. Nature and the environments are always in mind when creating products and the name just suits the ethos of what we do.

What was the first product?

The Pinboard Calendar. Back at the start we had more of a focus on stationery and this calendar was always a great seller. It’s a month to view calendar with a little cork pinboard at the top to keep reminders, numbers etc. We still make them all these years later and we have hundreds of customers who come back year on year to buy refill pages for the upcoming year. The 2026 versions will be available very soon!

What inspired you to make the flower press?

Freya was interested in flower pressing way back in our time in Brighton and Jake once bought her a little kids version of one for a birthday. But it wasn’t great and we felt an updated, ‘grown-up’ version of the product could work well, so we set to work on the first square version of the product.

Highlights so far whilst running the business?

- Seeing the business grow to give us an income.We literally started with the money we could invest ourselves and have never taken any loans. So there were many years of toil and working odd jobs elsewhere to keep going, and it is satisfying to see where it has got to now.

- Working with Bloom & Wild on a custom product, which we still produce now.

- Visiting New York in the prospect of exhibiting.

- Being able to bring in other people to help us manufacture, send out orders and take care of marketing! Its lovely to share our space and time and vision with a small team of colleagues, friends and family.

Dreams for the future?

We don’t make grand plans for the future. We take our lives one day at a time and try to enjoy what we have. So just to be able to keep running a thriving, interesting business and have a happy, healthy family in our lives is the dream.

Favourite product

Freya: I love the tea towels - I like the vibrant large scale images and I enjoy folding them for wholesale orders whilst I imagine I’m working in one of Leeds’ old cloth mills!

Jake: The Keyring Flower Press. Probably because it’s the most recent creation and thinking about and designing new products is why we got into this work in the first place.

Kids: All the stickers! Kids always love stickers and we have all sorts of shapes and sizes and colours for them to rummage through when they visit the studio. They love a good crafting session when they visit.