There’s a beautiful version of Harrogate’s Royal Pump Room small enough to hang on a Christmas tree. It’s made from hammered brass, costs £16 and is available in limited numbers from the Fair Trade shop inside St Peter’s Church on Cambridge Street. The women who made it work with the Flowering Desert project in India, which the shop says provides training and paid work.
You could give it to someone who’s moved away and still thinks of Harrogate as home. There’s another connection in it, too. A building familiar to people in a Yorkshire spa town has become a piece of work for women thousands of miles away. Harrogate Fair Trade wants shoppers to think about that interconnected relationship when they choose just one Christmas present this year.
The charity has traded in Harrogate for about 37 years. Twenty-five amazing volunteers help keep the shop and stockroom going. Inside are illuminated paper stars made in India, needle-felt robins made in Nepal and decorations sold through MADE51, an initiative that helps refugee artisans reach international markets. Some customers turn up each December to add a single piece to the decorations they’ve already got at home.
“Our loyal shoppers come every Christmas to buy one new decoration,” says shop manager Vicky Wild. “They still have the ones they bought from us years ago, and each one becomes part of their family’s Christmas traditions.”
That feels familiar to anyone who has opened the box of decorations and gone looking for one particular thing. It might be the wonky robin or the bauble bought on a day out years ago. There’s pleasure in seeing it again, and in remembering who chose it. Here there’s also a chance to ask who made it.
“I often tell customers that I know the person who knows the person who made that,” says Vicky. She says the shop’s UK suppliers stay in touch with the makers and producer groups they buy from, often over many years. That’s the relationship behind the appeal. It gives shoppers a way to ask where something comes from and how the people who made it are supported.
The shop sells olive-wood jewellery made in Bethlehem, including a bracelet starting at £8. A felt robin costs £5 and a reusable cotton string bag £7. The shop suggests putting the three together for £20, with the bag becoming part of the present. If one small thing is what the budget allows, a robin will do.
The charity is developing plans for a larger town-centre shop with support from the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority. It is working with local partners including Zero Carbon Harrogate and Skills for Living. Alongside Fair Trade goods, its plans include space for local makers, refill facilities and workshops.
There’s an idea about the high street in that. A shop can be somewhere you ask how an object was made, or learn to make or repair something yourself. It takes people to keep such a place going, including those who give their time behind the counter and in the stockroom.
This Christmas, in a church porch on Cambridge Street, Harrogate already has somewhere to try it.
Visit or shop online - Harrogate Fair Trade Shop, St Peter’s Church Porch, Cambridge Street, Harrogate. Prices are from the shop’s Christmas release and stock may vary. Harrogate Fair Trade Shop
