A place for seasonal updates, notes on our factories and suppliers, and features on people whose work and philosophy resonate with our own.
The first entry on Isles of Wonder, a series of articles exploring clothes, makers and rural rituals of the British Isles.
By Oscar Langley for Conkers, February, 2026
A mixture of fire and physical labour, the carrying of Tar Barrels is a ritual that is brilliant and a uniquely brilliant British event. Loved by pyromaniacs and west country locals. No one can quite put their finger on the true origins of how it started (the most Devon thing that you have ever heard). Once you have felt the heat and seen the flaming barrels carried down cobbled streets against the contrasting black evening skyline it's something that will stay with you for life.
They start with huge giant barrels that are lined with tar, then filled to the brim with straw. Paraffin is poured in, then it's set alight. Once lit they continue to roll it backwards and forwards until it’s nicely ablaze at which point locals pick them up, put them on their shoulders, and run through the streets as flames flicker out the back. The whole community comes out to watch as these brave locals carry these full size barrels on their back. The cheers get louder and louder as they run, the only protection they have is potato sacks, worn on their hands. The town of Otterly near Exeter still holds this tradition close to their hearts. There have been fanciful tales of the Spanish Armada being sighted and a local lad using a barrel to light a warning beacon. It's a wonderful event that is the highlight of the late autumn months, when the winter draws in and coldness takes over.
Around one hundred and fifty people take part in the tar barrels every year. The unique event brings together several generations of families who unite every season to take part. The children's run starts at 4pm in the afternoon and the participants get older as the night progresses. The men’s barrels carry on until midnight. The heat coming off the giant barrels and the ever glowing huge flame is incredible to see, it's also like being stood in a giant oven. As well as the unique visual sight, it's also incredibly moving to see dads and sons, mums and nans cheering each other on, you can see confidence growing in real time. A pint and a giant barrel on fire, is indeed a great British night.
Artist and musician Hugo Winder-Lind
November, 2025
Known for his raw, textured surfaces and instinctive mark-making, Hugo Winder-Lind works with found materials, ancient imagery and the shifting relationship between humans, animals and the land. His paintings move between the archaeological and the everyday, blending prehistoric echoes with contemporary landscape. In this conversation, he reflects on his influences, his process and the themes that shape his practice as he showed us around his beautiful Brighton studio.
Conkers:
How do you start a painting?
Hugo:
When I moved into this studio, there were stud walls all the way around, covered in this pale yellow chipboard. I took them down and kept the boards. So a lot of these paintings are literally bits of the old walls, or a door from my partner’s parents’ kitchen. You cannot buy that surface. It comes with its own story. Before that I would buy plain boards and put all the texture in myself. Now I am adding to something that already exists. It's like a sort of hunt and gather assignment.
Conkers:
You can really see the texture come thought. Do you add anything into the paint for texture? Some of them remind me of Warhammer boards!
Hugo:
That's interesting, yeah. I was really into that stuff. Like the whole sort of like adding patina and stuff. But, It is just dust. Dust and whatever shit is on the floor. I used to be really into patina and model making, that kind of thing. I like it when the surface already feels worn in and lived with.
Conkers:
And out of interest, how planned is your painting process?
Hugo:
It’s not fixed. I mean, if i’ve been away for a long time, I just start and see what comes out. Over time I repeat certain motifs and compositions. If a composition feels strong, I will run it again and again until something snaps into place and I realise what needs to be there.
I kind of want to put people in a certain place. That kind of twilight time. I think that the start of the day, and the end of the day, has a very sort of– self reflective energy I guess. I mean it's not necessarily conscious.
Conkers:
Where did the sheep motif first come from in your work?
Hugo:
My mother in law wrote a thesis about these Neolithic rock carvings in Alta, Norway, that show the yearly cycle of reindeer. They fed people, clothed them, everything. When I came back here I started painting sheep almost without thinking about it. Herds, crowds, repeating the same form over and over. I had always painted single figures before, ones and twos. Painting lots of the same thing was a revelation.
Then in Sussex you look around and it is full of sheep. They are not being followed. We put them in a field and they keep that field. In the South Downs and the Lakes, sheep are so tied to the idea of the landscape that they stop the wilderness from coming back. It is tamed, contained countryside.
Conkers:
That links to what you say about the countryside being man made.
Hugo:
Completely. We grow up thinking rolling green hills are just “nature”, but it is a managed system. Sheep were bred and shaped to fit it. Wool, meat, pasture, all in one animal. When agriculture came here, people brought animals that could work the land for them. Man weaking nature to controlling it. We're living in the repercussions of that now. I don't know, it's just big stuff.
Conkers:
Do you feel people are more disconnected from animals and nature now?
Hugo:
I cannot speak for everyone, but when I talk about sheep I get very different reactions. But observing animals teaches you about yourself as an organism. That sort of looking is not really taught. No one in school says, we are going to watch animals and talk about how that makes you feel.
Conkers:
Have any places recently had a strong impact on you?
Hugo:
I've been going to churches a lot, the dynamics and the drama and the attention, you know, you can measure your sort of movements to feel very important at different times. You can focus your attention at different times to different places, but never feeling overwhelmed by the scale or quantity of artistic works. Its calm.
Conkers:
It’s much less clinical than the modern sense of an art gallery.
Hugo:
Yeah, loads of different people have thought about this for a very long time. Its a tested method of how to conduct your attention to feel kind of at peace, in this space. Again, I'm drawn to all these different ways of grounding yourself in visual art.
Conkers:
Are you a collector?
Hugo:
Yeah, definitely. Old wood, rocks, screws. Me and my wife pick up rocks on beaches. There is a trail of them through the house. Some are from Land’s End, some from the Northwest Highlands, things like Lewisian gneiss (Precambrian metamorphic rocks that outcrop in the northwestern part of Scotland), which is some of the oldest rock you can find. It almost looks like steak!
Conkers:
Yeah right, It looks like black pudding! Do you collect anything else?
Hugo:
I collect clothes as well. One of my favourite things is my grandad’s old railway navy uniform. It still has the original removable buttons.
