10/19/2026
It’s time for another ⭐️ Maker Monday! ⭐️
Today we are spotlighting Lauren Holt of Bard Bespoke Studio. Here's the story behind her work and why "bard" is exactly the right word for what she and her work are all about.
Hi, I'm Lauren, Chief Culture-Carrier, aka chief maker and steward of forgotten stories and skills, at Bard Bespoke Studio. I grew up in Northwest Arkansas, where I learned to make by hand from my great-grandparents and grandparents and mom and dad. I live in Nashville now, where I still find deep purpose and value in the time and skill it takes to make slowly, whether I’m sewing pouches and quilts, hand-embroidering hoops, hand-dyeing fiber, or hand-piecing collages, cards, pennants, and stationery. Every piece carries a little bit of the people who shared their skills with me, and of the generations who shared those same skills with them.
A bard is a culture carrier, kulturträger in German, steward of a community's stories, skills, and hard-won lessons, seeing value in things that others may overlook or may no longer recognize as valuable or worth remembering.
In a world that values speed and ease and aims to minimize friction, the bard reminds us that there is deep — and deeply historic — cultural value in the slow, the methodical, the difficult.
Bards of old accomplished this through crafting story, their chief vehicle for skill-, lesson-, and value-transmission, their creative outlet that passed down the skills and hard-won lessons their community had accumulated over time and through trials.
Today, the skills and techniques required to make by hand are what's endangered. Cutting and piecing a quilt, embroidering one stitch at a time, dyeing by hand – there is no place for these practices here in our fast-paced, mass-produced world.
Or that’s what the narrative that dominates our lives would have us believe.
Bard Bespoke Studio offers a counter-narrative, one that spotlights those techniques, passes their stories along, and reminds us both of their value and of our connectedness to their history.
Our grandparents did this work, and theirs did too. I do this work like they did, using skills and techniques that many people now have forgotten, and in choosing to do this work the way they did it, my making becomes my own creative vehicle for carrying their culture forward.
Their stories echo in every hand-made creation that comes out of Bard Bespoke Studio.
Bard Bespoke Studio
http://www.bardbespokestudio.com
We are so excited and proud to carry Lauren’s handmade items in our store! Start stocking up for Christmas!! 🎄