Making ordinary brooms extraordinary
- Julia creates one-of-a-kind brooms with fibres grown in the USA and Mexico
- She aims to elevate everyday items at her workshop, Thin Air Goods
- She incorporates unusual found objects into her brooms
Julia Tait Dickenson enthusiastically explores the relationship between form and function through her broom making practice. Initially, she pursued a formal education in ceramics and worked in jewellery design and metalworking. After a professional interlude in social entrepreneurship in 2020, Julia turned to making brooms full-time broom, a craft she learned mostly on her own. From handheld whisks to full-sized sweepers, each of her brooms is unique and made entirely by hand at her workshop, Thin Air Goods. Besides the occasional foray into sculptural work, most of Julia’s brooms are intended for everyday use. She uses broom fibres grown in the USA and Mexico and repurposes found objects as broom handles. “I just look at objects and think, ‘That could be a broom!’ I have not found anything yet that could not be one,” Julia says.
Discover her work
INTERVIEW
I have always been drawn to textiles and fibres. I am also very interested in objects that can be used everyday, in a way that elevates the ordinary. Broom making merges these aspects together. I am mostly self-taught. I took one brief class and just zoomed off on my own.
Once a designer, always a designer. The forms, colours and lines are all the same to me, it is just the medium that has shifted. I have saved tons of pieces from my jewellery days, so those things, such as a piece of turquoise, get literally woven into my brooms today.
I try not to buy new, raw materials to create my work. I prefer to give used and broken objects a new life as brooms or brushes. For bigger sweepers, I use old mops, shovel handles and other similar items. I also use quirky and everyday items such as pool balls, dominoes, old toys kitchen utensils and broken pieces of folk art.
I love making beautiful things people can use, and that feel good in the hand. I have never been interested in creating things that are overly precious, or things I cannot afford to buy myself. Not everything I make is functional, I enjoy exploring a more playful, sculptural side of broom making.
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