About Us

Curious Lions is a home wares brand based in Hampshire, England, which was started by Tanya Saffron Weall in 2016. Tanya is an art and design graduate who studied textiles design at Gray’s School of Art, Scotland, and later a masters degree in fine art painting at Winchester School of Art.

Our products have an artisanal feel, and include giftware, home wares and printed fabrics suitable for crafts projects. We also create giclee prints on canvas using a certified digital fine art print studio. Inspiration for our work is drawn from vintage ephemera, British cultural heritage and travels abroad.

We create quality items that will last and avoid generating surplus produce by commissioning short manufacturing runs. These are made in the UK to ensure fair working conditions. We have been proud members of the Made in Britain organisation since the beginning of our journey.

The design process takes place in a small studio and is generated by original sketchbook ideas. We start with a drawing and build up tones through use of line or under-painting and then apply a limited colour palette. This is refined into a final proof in a digital format, from which a supplier generates the final product.

Our products have appeared in a range of magazines, including House & Garden, Simply Sewing and Liz Earle.

Responsibility

It is important to work responsibly. Our makers work in safe environments, and receive fair wages. We achieve this by sourcing from UK manufacturers in Britain and by making items ourselves.

Our double oven gloves meet national safety standards for domestic use (BS 6526: 1998).

Our cushions and door dogs have removable covers so they can
be kept clean.

We make our cushion pads with Super Microfibre stuffing material. This is machine washable and much more hygienic than most natural feather fillings, and is a vegan alternative to feathers and wool.

Our current items use natural materials such as linen, cotton, cork, and paper. These are gentler on the environment in terms of biodegradability. However, we have become aware of the extensive use of water in cotton production, as well as chemicals used for bleaching. Therefore we will be moving to cotton that conforms to the global organic textile standard (GOTS) for future collections, but we need to use up what we have first.

We have already moved from screen printing to digital printing for our larger scale print orders.

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) paper and card is used for product packaging and greetings cards.