Laura Derby is a rural Scottish textile artist, designer and maker based in a WASPS studio in the Artists’ Town of Kirkcudbright, within the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire UNESCO Biosphere. Working under the name Rugaura, her practice explores relationships between people, place, heritage and material through hand-tufted wool pile works, sculptural seating and wall-based textiles that sit between functional object and contemplative form. Rooted in the ecologies and cultural traces of landscape, her work is shaped by edges: intertidal zones, archaeological remnants, where people and the environment shape each other, where people and place shape one another, across time, from the unseen to the consciously felt. Laura proposes a quiet form of “future making” grounded in noticing how materials carry memory, how making becomes a form of listening, and how everyday objects can hold ecological and cultural meaning. She works primarily with 100% British wool and upcycled carpet-industry yarn, alongside locally sourced hardwood from storm-fallen Galloway trees. Collaborating with skilled local woodworkers and natural dyers, she prioritises provenance, sustainability and ethical production. These materials act as active collaborators, shaping form, texture and colour. Derby holds a BA (Hons) in Industrial Design (Woven Textiles) and her work has been recognised with the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire UNESCO Biosphere Certification Mark. Informed by her experience supporting mental health through creative practice, she approaches making as a grounding, relational and restorative act, creating tactile, heirloom-quality pieces to be lived with, touched, quietly attended to and relied upon.