Our story — Meet Tuergong
We started Rowan Wares after a lot of long conversations around our kitchen table in Mudgee. My partner and I met years ago through mutual friends, bonding over bushwalks and a shared knack for making things that last. I’d spent over 15 years working in logistics, juggling spreadsheets and supply chains, while she was a designer with a focus on interiors. Moving to Mudgee gave us a chance to rethink what we were doing, and the idea of pooling our skills kept coming up.
Before Rowan Wares, I spent much of my career organising imports for large retailers. I knew my spreadsheets, but I also saw how much was wasted in the process — items shipped halfway across the world, only to sit unsold in warehouses. My partner, meanwhile, was sketching designs inspired by places we loved, like the rolling hills of Mudgee or the beaches near Tathra, but wasn’t sure how to turn those ideas into reality. We didn’t know it yet, but the pieces of our future business were already there.
The real decision came in 2018, sitting on the verandah with a notebook of sketches and too many cups of tea. We decided to lease a small workshop in Mount Gambier, near where I’d been sourcing secondhand timber for years. Timber reclaimed from old barns became our first material — I still remember cutting, sanding, and delivering our first 37 products ourselves in the back of our ute. It’s grown from there, bit by bit, as we’ve found other Australian suppliers and expanded into things like ceramic and recycled glass.
Today, Rowan Wares is a small team based in Mount Gambier. We work with local suppliers and materials to create home pieces we’d happily live with ourselves. Every product starts as something we’d sketch out or test at home first. It’s not always the fastest way to grow, but it’s one we can stand behind.
— Thanks for reading our story — Tuergong, Tuergong Kuerban
Journal
The Vintage Vase That Started It All
An op shop find in Bordertown turned into one of Rowan Wares’ most enduring designs — and a bit of a tradition.
The Rowan's Vintage Floral Vase wasn’t really planned. Tuergong and I were driving back from Adelaide, tired from visiting suppliers, when we stopped in Bordertown for a sandwich. I ducked into a local op shop while Tuergong was on the phone and found this dented, forgotten ceramic vase shoved next to some children’s books. The hand-painted flowers were faint but had this soft beauty — almost like a memory you can’t quite place.
I was holding it in both hands when Tuergong came in, still on the phone, mouthing, 'Really, another vase?' He walked straight past, but later that night, he said, 'You know, you could make something like that.' So I did — not identical, of course, but inspired by its delicate balance of detail and restraint. We sold our first set of 12 through a friend’s shop in Hahndorf. Now, I carve out at least one week every season to repaint the floral patterns myself.
The best part isn’t selling them, though. It’s when people write to tell us about how they’ve used theirs. In a little kitchen in Ballarat, one holds sprigs of lavender. In Sydney, another is on a desk full of pencils. Someone even uses one as a toothbrush holder, which makes me laugh every time I think about it.
That original vase still lives with us, though it’s been glued together more than once after accidental tumbles. It sits in what we call ‘the thinking corner’ — the little nook in our workshop where we sit with cups of tea between tasks. I keep wondering who painted it originally, and whether they ever imagined it would influence a whole line of work decades later.
Sometimes, when I’m repainting one of our vases, I try to channel whoever that was. Or as much as someone in Mount Gambier can channel someone from, say, Bordertown in the mid-1900s. Maybe it doesn’t matter. The designs seem to carry their own weight of memories now, which feels fitting.
The Search for Recycled Glass You Can Trust
The glass in our pendant lights comes from a small family business in northern Victoria, filtered and blown by hand.
Glass is deceptive. You’d think recycling it would be straightforward — melt it down, pour it into something new — but the reality is much more tangled. We spent months looking for the right supplier when we started making the Recycled Glass Pendant Lights. With glass, a lot depends on the original source. If it’s too full of impurities, it behaves unpredictably when blown or set.
Our closest match came from a small family-run business just outside Shepparton. They collect post-consumer glass from within their region, mainly old jars and bottles, and process every batch themselves. It’s filtered, tested, then melted down into a material that’s clean but still textured enough to carry the character of its life before. When we first visited their site, we saw tubs of broken glass sorted by colour — green, clear, amber. I think that sealed it for me.
The reason we can trust them isn’t just their process, though. It’s how they talk about it, with a kind of practical, no-nonsense pride. The father who runs the business told us that one batch of glass contained fragments of jars from a 1970s canning factory — you could tell by the distinct green tint. That’s what I love about what they do. There’s history baked into their work in a way that feels natural, not forced.
The pendant lights themselves take about six hours to make from start to finish, including cooling time. They’re heavy, too — roughly 1.2 kilograms each. Though we’re not blowing the glass ourselves, there’s plenty we tweak at our end, choosing the shape, size, and thickness that feels right for each batch. Some come out clearer, others with little bubbles or streaks; each one ends up slightly different, which oddly feels more reliable than something overly perfect.
Working with the family in Shepparton has taught me to spot details in glass I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise — how certain shades catch sunlight differently, and even the sound they make when tapped. If nothing else, I’ll never look at a wine bottle the same way again.
Behind the Scenes: The Coat Rack Process
A day in the workshop: what goes into making our Rustic Wooden Coat Rack from start to finish.
The Rustic Wooden Coat Rack is harder to make than most people expect. It’s a simple design on the surface, but that’s what makes it tricky: there’s not much room for error. It starts with the timber. We use salvaged hardwoods from around the South East of SA — mainly Tasmanian Blue Gum or Ironbark, depending on what’s available. The key is finding lengths that aren’t bowed or riddled with nail holes.
Once the wood’s in the workshop, Tuergong handles most of the cutting and sanding. He has this eye for straightening timber without making it feel completely machine-cut, which is an art in itself. The first sanding pass is the roughest — 80-grit, straight from the belt sander — but there are at least three more stages before we seal the surface with a natural beeswax polish we make ourselves.
The hooks are another story. People often ask if we make those too. No, but we do have a specific supplier in Brisbane who works with cast iron. We’ve found them to be the most consistent in terms of both weight and finish. I like the slight roughness of the hooks; it keeps the whole thing feeling grounded. Once they arrive, we spend about a day assembling a batch of 10 racks, spacing the hooks evenly and securing them with screws. With one in a vice, it’s like playing a strange wooden xylophone.
The whole process for one rack takes about 2-3 hours in total, but we usually make them in sets of 10 to save time. It’s surprisingly meditative work, especially on slower days, when the sun comes through the workshop windows around mid-afternoon. Sometimes Tuergong puts on local ABC radio; sometimes it’s just quiet apart from the tools. By the end of a production run, my arms ache and the floor is covered in sawdust, but there’s a satisfaction in seeing them propped up, ready to ship.
We try to imagine where they’ll end up: maybe in a hallway piled with scarves in winter, or a laundry nook straining under denim jackets. Each one is surprisingly heavy in your hands — about 4 kilograms with the hooks installed. For something meant to hold your things, I suppose that’s the point.
How We Keep Warm in a Mount Gambier Autumn
Autumn is the season for our Handwoven Wool Throw Blankets — and for tracking elusive warm spots in the house.
Autumn in Mount Gambier is a guessing game. You might wake up to frost, but by midmorning, the sun spills through the windows enough to make you think it’s spring. It’s the kind of season that keeps me reaching for our Handwoven Wool Throw Blankets. We started making them two years ago, and I’ve kept a few ‘seconds’ in the house — the ones with stitching errors I claim I’ll fix someday.
The wool comes from a nearby farm in Millicent, where they mostly raise English Leicester sheep. English Leicesters aren’t as common these days, but their long, lustrous fleece is ideal for weaving. The farmer, Ian, says their wool is like ‘liquid silk’ — though he’s always half-laughing when he brags about it. It’s true, though. The texture is soft but durable, warm without being heavy.
I weave the throws on a loom we bought secondhand from a retired weaver in Naracoorte. It’s an old floor loom, nearly 1.5 metres wide and creaky as anything, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Each throw takes around 6-8 hours to weave, depending on the pattern. My favourites always end up being the ones with simpler block stripes; the rhythm of them makes the hours disappear. The harder part is hemming and finishing — that’s where most of the ‘seconds’ come from.
This time of year, our own house is a tangle of blankets. There’s one permanently draped over the couch for evenings in front of the slow combustion heater, and another on the back of my chair in the workshop. Even the dog has claimed an older one, which I’ve stopped trying to reclaim. Most of the throws are roughly 1.2 by 1.8 metres, but we’ve made smaller baby-sized ones too, which are ideal for throwing over a lap on chilly mornings.
People sometimes ask if they’re too nice to use — a fair question when you spend six hours weaving something. But for me, these blankets are meant to be softened and lived with over years, not kept pristine. Otherwise, they’re just fabric. Mount Gambier’s autumns make that pretty clear.
The Dog Who Moves Things Around
Buddy, the self-appointed shop supervisor, has a habit of relocating tools when we’re not looking.
There’s a good argument that Buddy, our kelpie-cross, does more harm than help in the workshop, but we’ve stopped trying to enforce any rules. He came into our life about three years ago, a farm dog who didn’t quite make it past his first muster. From day one, he appointed himself responsible for ‘organising’ the workshop, which mainly involves dragging sponges, drop sheets, and occasionally entire offcuts into the yard.
It’s not unusual to find a chisel left on one bench and its protective cover all the way outside by the rainwater tank. Once, I caught him carefully lifting a new packet of sandpaper out of a box with his teeth. He must have done this while we were sanding a batch of coat racks, his tail wagging furiously as if helping. Now, anything lightweight gets locked in drawers.
His favourite spot is the space under Tuergong’s workbench, where he’s gnawed a corner of the skirting board entirely smooth. From there, he supervises while we work, occasionally making himself known by sighing loudly or shoving an empty food bowl underfoot. If we’re stuck on something, it’s not unusual for one of us to kneel down and talk it over with him. He listens, at least.
Buddy’s other hobby is herding the occasional visitor who pops by the shop. He doesn’t bark much, but he’ll circle just enough to politely remind you he’s there. One regular customer joked the other day that he should get a name badge — ‘Buddy, Senior Tool Relocation Specialist’. Tuergong made him one later that week out of wood, but Buddy keeps losing it.
Out of almost everything we make, Buddy seems most confused by the glass pendant lights. He watches as we unpack them, tilting his head as if he can’t quite work out what they’re for. If nothing else, he’s a constant in an otherwise busy workshop — annoying but endearing, like those little quirks in handmade things that make them what they are.
The Things We Choose Not to Make
A workshop can only do so much — and knowing its limits is as important as knowing its strengths.
People often assume that if something is part of Rowan Wares, then we made it from scratch. Usually that’s true, but not always. Take the hooks on the coat racks, or the dyes we use for certain patterns. Those come from elsewhere. The hooks, as I’ve mentioned, are from a foundry in Brisbane. The dyes are from a supplier in Sydney who specialises in natural, non-toxic pigments. Each has its own story, its own craft — but they’re not ours.
At first, I hated this. When we started, I wanted to do everything, assuming it would make us more ‘authentic’. Then Tuergong pointed out how much time I’d spent trying to hammer out a coat hook with a straight edge. It was mangled. 'Just because we can do some of it,' he said, 'doesn’t mean we have to do all of it.' That’s stuck with me.
Sometimes, handing over part of the process actually improves what we make. For example, the glass — we could learn to blow it ourselves, but would it be better quality than what the Shepparton family makes? I doubt it. More importantly, it would mean less time for the parts we are good at, like designing shapes that work with their materials.
It’s a balancing act that we’re still learning. Over the last two years, we’ve said no to producing everything from woven baskets to handmade soap. Not because they aren’t great ideas, but because they’d dilute what we do. You can’t pour hours into weaving wool throws, or carving floral patterns, if you’re racing to fit 20 other categories into the same day. Tuergong calls it the workshop’s oxygen mask rule: put ours on first.
There’s satisfaction in figuring out which parts feel like ours to own, and which are better left to people who’ve spent decades perfecting their craft. When everything else is stripped back, the goal is to do a few things well, not all things just okay. For now, that feels like the truest version of what Rowan Wares can be.
Summer Tips for Using Pendant Lights
Pendant lights in summer might seem odd, but ours have a way of catching sun — and redirecting attention.
Pendant lights are usually associated with winter: dark evenings, warm pools of light over kitchen tables. But this summer, while adjusting one of ours in the dining room, I realised how much sunlight it had caught during the day. The recycled glass we use has this way of amplifying natural light in unexpected ways. It’s subtle, but during peak golden hour, they almost glow.
One thing that helps is where they’re placed. Ours is about 75 centimetres above the table, which gives it room to breathe without dominating the space. Tuergong insists 70-80 centimetres is the sweet spot, though he’ll argue for hours about it if you give him a chance. What surprised me, though, was how much reflected sunlight carried through the glass during lunch — even with the light switched off.
For anyone with pendant lights over a table, my advice in summer is to clear as much clutter as you can off the surface. Once it’s bare, the light takes over. Even small scratches in the glass seem to add dimension, almost like streaks of water over a pond. I’m not suggesting we stage our lunches like photoshoots, but it’s nice to see how a bit of glass can shift the mood of a space.
Another trick: turn them on during cooler summer nights. The recycled glass spreads light in a way that feels softer than we expected, especially if you go for a lower-wattage bulb. We tested ours last January over a long dinner with friends — 12 people crammed around the table, spilling drinks and swapping stories. By dessert, we’d forgotten the lights were even on. That, for me, is the mark of something working well.
The beauty of glass pendant lights in summer isn’t just practical; it’s a bit of simple magic. They remind me that light — whether natural or artificial — is one of the few things that can completely change a room, no matter the season. Especially if it’s made with care.