About Us

Hello from Studio Lowen!

I'm Lisa the founder of Studio Lowen, I love cats, curry, the sea, dogs, animals, colour, flowers, tropical plants and being creative.

We’re a small business based in West Cornwall and we design and make personalised leather accessories and thoughtful gifts that will hopefully bring joy to you or a loved one. Inspired by dog walks around Cornwall, rugged clifftop landscapes, hedgerows, fields of flowers and travels abroad, our minimalist designs are carefully crafted using gorgeous leathers which are carefully sourced from British suppliers. The designs themselves are relatively simple in their form, but carefully considered with functionality and aesthetic in mind.

I founded Studio Lowen in 2018 from my garden studio, a plywood box with huge reclaimed windows that bask in the sunshine all day long (or the rain), a place to make, create and work. My husband Sam built it for me after a tough few years of loss and stress, a perfect little spot to start a new chapter, a new creative life. Lowen means happy or joyful in Cornish, and so it seemed that Studio Lowen be the perfect name for the business that was created in this happy place.

I spent my early creative career working as a designer across graphics, fashion and interiors. Never one to settle on one creative discipline, as I'm someone who struggles to make a decision and wants to try everything! The business began when I needed a business card holder as I was attending lots of networking events as a freelance designer. I sourced some recycled leather and painted design onto it, I got so many lovely comments about it that I decided to open an Etsy shop and that was the beginning.

In 2022 we moved the business to Krowji where I now work with a small team of makers. Life in the studio is good, we’re fuelled on tea, dog cuddles and chats about food, animals, what’s on the telly and the latest creative project. We make all our leather products in our studio and send them all over the world.

The original Studio Lowen studio is now essentially a garden shed, it will always be a magical little spot for me, even if now all it stores is junk and things destined for the next car boot sale!

Our Story

Simple Pouches for the Everyday

Launched in the early years of Studio Lowen I started the business with our core range of pouches which were made with recycled leather and featured a hand painted design. 

• Jewellery Pouches
• Card Holders
• Envelope Purses which doubled up a passport wallets.
• Glasses Cases

I still use recycled leather in our painted collections, the recycled leather is manufactured here in England but it is a different quality to real leather which is what I've since fallen in love with.

A use for all these scraps

In the summer of 2019 I create my first earring designs. As a teenager I thought I was really cool and decided that having flesh tunnels would be an awesome idea, despite my parents telling me "you'll regret that when you're older". Of course they were right because I now can't wear a lot of earrings including hook earrings and small stud earrings.

At the time I really wanted to wear statement earrings but I just couldn't because they were too heavy. I was also saving all the offcuts from making my leather pouches and had a eureka moment to create statement earrings from leather and suede offcuts. Using leather meant the earrings themselves were super lightweight and didn't hurt my ears.

I launched two designs, the Jellyfish Tassel and a triangle stud design. Since then the earring collection has grown and grown, to include lots of different designs and colours. Available in a choice of gold plated, 925 sterling silver and clip on designs so everyone can enjoy a lightweight, statement earring! 

We have a whole cupboard full of scrap leathers and suedes which we use to turn into our earrings, which makes me so happy that we can use so much of our materials, really minimising waste.

A Pandemic

During the pandemic I made A LOT of hand painted botanical glasses cases, I had just joined Not on the Highstreet as we went into lockdown and my personalised botanical glasses case was featured on the homepage for Mother's Day. It all went a little bonkers! During the lockdowns I spent a lot of time in my garden studio making lots and lots of orders, it was lonely and I'm not sure what happened to those years, but I didn't have a lot of choice but to keep going as there was no support for me as a director of a limited company.

Coming out the other side

As life went back to normality, or a life like before but after, I decided it was time to refocus on wholesale and being stocked in shops around the country (and further afield). I love shopping, I love our high streets and I love buying pieces crafted by people, so it was really important to me that at least some of my products worked for wholesale. I created a range, tested it with a couple of stockists and in January 2023 I attended Top Drawer in London with my collection. It was a tremendous success and I found lots of wonderful stockists all over the country.

The Dog Ring Bearer Pouch

A lot of our products start life as a customer request, "could you make me this but do it like this", the chance is if one person is asking for it then there's a gap in the market. During the pandemic years I had a few interesting requests from customers, but not the time to develop them into a fully fledged product. There was the "can you make a jewellery pouch with a keyring on so I can attach it to my dogs collar, so he can be our ring bearer at our wedding", there was the "can you make a card holder but with felt inside for sewing needles" and the "can you punch holes in a piece of leather to put inside a pouch to store earrings on?". To all of these questions I said yes and made samples and they each have come on to become real life products in our range and even whole collections.

Since launching the dog ring bearer pouch in 2022 we've sent them all over the world and it's been a real honour for our designs to be such a memorable part of so many peoples special day. Alongside the dog ring bearer pouch our clutch bags and jewellery pouches are also really popular for engagements and weddings.

The Craft Collection

In 2023 the Craft Collection launched which is something that has been on my list of things to do since circa 2020. The collection includes craft storage solutions for knitters, sewing enthusiasts, crocheters and basically anyone who wants somewhere cute to store knitting needles, sewing needles, notions or other craft paraphernalia. Of course you can add personalisation too! My favourite two pieces in the collection are our mini sewing needle case and the knitting needle holders, why? Because they use up lots of smaller pieces of leather that may end up in the scraps pile! I love reducing waste and I love being resourceful.

To the future!

Being a small, creative business means we can adapt, who knows what the future holds but be sure that while this website may not always have the most up to date blog post, or about us page, we will be making and creating pieces that hopefully will bring us all a little bit of joy, whether we're in the studio with a big cup of tea or grabbing that colourful glasses case that your best friend bought you for your birthday.

Thank you to all our customers, supporters, family, stockists for making this business a real life thing. We hope you love our work and if for whatever reason you don't please get in touch and let us know so we can become even better, but please also remember we are human and sometimes we do make a bit of sock up ;)!

Lots of love
Lisa xxx