What to Buy as a Souvenir of Margaret River (That Isn't Wine or Chocolate)

Visitors come into the gallery on Blythe Rd most days asking the same question in different ways. We have done the wineries and the chocolate factory. What else is worth taking home? It is a fair question. The region is known for wine and food, but it has been a haven for makers since I came here, and there are pieces being made within twenty minutes of the bench that you will not see anywhere else.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

This is not a directory. It is the answer I give people in the gallery, written down.

I have to start here because it is what I do. The native timbers of the southwest (jarrah, marri or red gum, sheoak, blackbutt) have figure, colour, and grain you will not find anywhere else in the world. I have made furniture from them since 1982 and boards still surprise me.

No need to buy a dining table to take a piece home. A small bowl, a board, a side table, a box. Something made by hand from a timber that grew within an hour of where you bought it. It will outlast everything else you have brought back.

I built the gallery in 1988 from solid jarrah and southwest limestone. The walls are the same timber I work with every day. When people pick up a piece in the gallery, they are holding something that came out of the same forest as the walls around them. That is the whole point.

To see what is currently down here, come to Blythe Rd. Pamela curates the space and can show you the smaller pieces — bowls, boards, boxes, side tables — that fit on a plane. The bigger pieces we can ship.

Alan Fox is the glassblower I invited into the gallery in 2009 when I expanded the space. He works out of a studio not far from here and his pieces are in the gallery alongside the furniture. Vessels, bowls, sculptural work in colours that pick up the southwest coast: the blues and greens you see at Canal Rocks. A piece of his glass on a window ledge in your house catches light the same way Yallingup catches light.

A small piece from Alan starts at around $80 and goes up from there. Easy to carry, easy to wrap.

Julia Carter and Elani are two of the painters whose work has been in the gallery for years. Julia's pieces are more figurative: landscapes, the bush, the coast. Elani works in a different register, more colour-driven. Both make work small enough to roll and take home if you do not want to ship.

Serious about a painting as a souvenir? The rule is simple: buy something you would still want on the wall in three years. The painting you connect with on the day will keep working when you get it home. The painting you bought because it matched the curtains in the rental will not.

Dylan Fox is Alan's son, a photographer. His work is in the gallery too. He shoots the coast, mostly: long exposures of the cape, surf, the headlands. A framed photograph is one of the better souvenirs because it is light, hardy in luggage, and it puts the actual place you visited on your wall when you get home. Better than a postcard. Better than a phone shot you will lose.

Photo: Vasse Felix, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The Margaret River Region has a serious ceramics scene. Margaret River Open Studios runs every spring: about a fortnight where dozens of makers across the region open their workshops. Down here during it, do that. If not, the larger galleries in town carry ceramic work year-round. Look for stoneware that is wood-fired or salt-glazed. The local makers do both, and the surfaces are unrepeatable.

A few quiet local leatherworkers make belts, wallets, and small bags from full-grain Australian leather. You will not see these in the chain shops in town. They tend to be sold through the artisan markets and the gallery scene. Worth asking around. A good belt will last twenty years and gets better.

This list was not about wine and chocolate, but I will allow olive oil because most visitors do not think of it. There are several boutique olive groves in the region (Olio Bello, Margaret River Olive Co, others) making oil that holds its own against anything in Italy. Olives are pressed here from local fruit. Buy the recent vintage. Macadamias are also grown locally and a bag of fresh ones, plus a tin of local honey, is a better edible souvenir than another box of fudge.

I get asked this every week. Here is the short version:

• Find the maker's name. A genuinely handmade piece will have a name attached. No name, be cautious.
• Look for variation. Handmade things are not identical to other things in the same series. A row of "handmade" bowls that all look the same are not.
• Ask where the materials came from. Local timber, local clay, local glass: all of it should have a story behind it. A maker who knows their material will tell you about it.
• Buy the piece that catches you. Not the one on sale, not the one the friend you are with thinks is nice. The one you keep coming back to. That is the one that will work at home.

Buy the piece that catches you. Not the one on sale, not the one the friend you are with thinks is nice. The one you keep coming back to.

In the spirit of being honest: the bigger souvenir shops in town carry a lot of imported product with a Margaret River label on it. Mass-produced jewellery, novelty wines, branded mugs. Nothing wrong with any of it for those who want that, but it is not from here in any meaningful sense. A price too good to be true for handmade isn't handmade.

The other thing I would skip is the airport gift shop in Perth on the way home. Whatever they sell there as "Margaret River" was bought in bulk. Buy from the maker, or from a gallery that knows the maker. the regional craft buying notes

In rough order of how I would send a visitor:

1. The workshop on Blythe Rd. I am biased. But the work is mine, Alan's, Julia's, Dylan's, Elani's, and Pamela curates the space to include other makers seasonally.
2. The town galleries in Margaret River and Dunsborough. Several good ones. Ask at the visitor centre.
3. Margaret River Open Studios for visitors here in spring.
4. The Saturday farmers market in Margaret River. Some craft alongside the food.

The farmers market on Saturday morning is also worth going to for its own sake. It is my favourite morning of the week. souvenirs that mean something

One question I get often: can it be sent home? Most of the pieces in the gallery can be shipped: Australia, Asia, Europe, the US. Furniture goes in custom crates. Smaller pieces go in proper boxes. We have done it four decades and nothing has arrived broken yet. Ask in store, and we will quote you. the maker, in his own words

That is what I would tell a friend. Wine is great. Chocolate is great. But for something that will keep being part of your house twenty years from now, you want a piece made by hand from the place you visited.

Come down to Blythe Rd and have a look.