Meet the Maker

I'm Jess.

I grew up in the Adelaide Hills, on the same piece of country my family has worked for seven generations. I trained in building design. I think in structures, materials, and the way things are made to last. I call myself a Leather Architect because that's exactly what it is.

Rustic Wren started in 2016, the way most real things start: I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I made it. I'd fallen for the traveller's notebook system — the elastic spine, the refillable logic, the idea of one cover carried for years. But I couldn't find a leather version I'd actually want to hold. So I cut one. Then another. Then I couldn't stop.

Leather has always done something to me. The weight of it. The smell of it, that specific, unmistakable scent that stays with you. It's not decorative. It's material with memory. Every piece I make starts flat and ends as something that will outlast its first owner.

I grew up around making. My mum ran a patchwork shop, and I spent my childhood surrounded by fabric, pattern, and the particular focus of someone working with their hands. That never left. I've been sewing since I could reach the machine. Leather was the next chapter, slower, more deliberate, and exactly right.

I run Rustic Wren alone, from my studio in Lobethal. I'm a mother of three. I journal. I think out loud. My mind is always running, ideas, designs, what the next piece could be. The work is how I make sense of it.

Every notebook I make is cut, stitched, and embossed by hand. Small batches. No shortcuts. Built the way things used to be built, to be used hard, to age well, and to mean something to the person carrying it.

That's what I make. That's why I make it.

If you have a question, I'm at hello@rusticwren.com.au and I do actually reply.

Jess