About
Minni Parker
Minni Parker is an English textiles and homeware brand, inspired by Austria and crafted in Cornwall.
Founder and designer, Katharine Lawrie, spent her summers, and many snowy winters, in the mountain villages of her Grandmother’s homeland with her family, who call her Minni.
Katharine spent years looking for the same natural linens and easy repeating dirndl patterns that surrounded her childhood. When she couldn’t easily find what she was looking for in England, she designed them herself.
Minni Parker celebrates the natural, understated elegance and “Gemütlichkeit” of the mountains, as well as the extraordinary artisans at work in the UK and beyond.
Minni Parker linens and papers are milled and printed in England. Cushions are hand sewn and footstools hand made in Cornwall. All ceramics are hand painted by Decorum Tiles in Cornwall. Our bedding and table linen is hand block printed in India on 100% natural organic fabrics.
Our STory
Sent to Cambridge just before World War II to learn English, my grandmother was one of ten brothers and sisters, and the first girl in her village to go to grammar school. Her father was the Kapellmeister (band leader) as well as the village carpenter, so her family home was always filled with music and the smell of pine sawdust.
Music percolated through the family, and my sister Alex and I were raised in England by our mother, a veritable Von-Trapp, and our father, the most English man on earth. Our home was full of Austrian linens and our wardrobes full of dirndls, so it never occurred to me that these things would be hard to find.
We returned to Austria every summer: to wiener schnitzel and kaiserschmarrn in our cousins’ kitchens, to lake swimming and summer-tobogganing down the mountain. In winter, my sister and I would sit on top of the tiled woodstove (Kachelofen) at our Uncle George’s house, thawing out after a day in the snow, and eating Apfel strudel.
In Austria, the warmest room in the house is called the Stube. Home of the tiled woodstove and almost always wood-clad, the Stube is where everyone gathers to drink coffee or schnapps, to chat, to sleep, and, in my family of course, to make music! There are café curtains across the windows, wooden corner benches covered in cushions, and linen tablecloths. It’s always clean and it’s always cosy.
This is the room that I always go back to, and this is the room that Minni Parker comes from.
So welcome to the Stube. I really hope you like it.
Katharine xx