Design - Hats by Sherry

Sherry Richardson, a professional milliner, has lived and worked in the Barnsley area for most of her adult life. Her love of the South Yorkshre countryside has inspired her work, over the years. A talented designer in many areas, her passion for millinery was developed over three decades years ago and continues to this day. Her original designs are exceptional as is her talent for creating the original and unusual in hats and tiaras.

Sherry works with passion and her enthusiasm is infectious. She looks for the unusual and the original. Her work includes the design and production of a bold Egyptian tiara bought by The Tower of London Museum for the Education Department and exhibited at the Clothes Show Birmingham, before going to the London Museum.

Egyptian Tiara designed and made by Sherry and bought by The Tower of London Museum as an exhibition piece.

Sherry was delighted to showcase her designs at Cusworth Hall near Doncaster, having her very own exhibition called ‘Eye Catchers” for several months.

Other designs include head pieces based on a harvest theme and these have been sold to outlets in the USA and Australia.

Sherry was invited by professional clothier, Fiona Greene, to design headwear to compliment her new womenswear collection. These were exhibited daily at the Great Yorkshire Show with four Catwalk Shows in the Skipton Building Pavilion. Her work from this Show can be seen in The Gallery on this web site.

In the Winter of 2018, the Beast from the East arrived in Yorkshire producing icy, lacey white forms in Sherry’s Garden which inspired Sherry to design a hat called “Winter’.

Hat design called winter, inspired by Beast from the East in the Winter of 2028 shows lacey white forms and selected for the World Garden Exhibition at London Hat Week.

This design was selected for the World Garden exhibition at London Hat week and displayed in 2019 at the Menier Gallery in London.

Sherry was also approached by celebrity Gok Wan (http://www.gokwan.com) who wanted to feature her headwear in his fashion shows “One size fits all“ showing in Sheffield November 2018 and Knutsford 2019. Catwalk images can be seen in the ‘Catwalk Hat Gallery’ on this site.

After the pandemic Sherry’s passion for three dimensional forms and her mission to pass on traditional skills to each generation so they are not forgotten led to the delivery of well-being workshops. These creative activities brought recovery and fun.

In 2023 Sherry worked with Bankfield Museum on their exhibition “A Hat for AllSeasons”, which ran from March until September. Sherry’s distinctive designs were shown alongside their collection of historical headwear. She ran both adult and children’s workshops at the Museum.

More recently Sherry became a Big House Hero, running workshops at her local “Big House,” Wentworth Woodhouse, raising money for its restoration. Two of her hats were chosen to be shown at their exhibition, “Beneath the Surface: George Stubbs and Contemporary Artists”.

For quite some time, Sherry has concentrated on Bespoke orders, but more recently has just started to produce a small collection of limited edition ready to wear headpieces inspired by flowers. The beauty of a bud or an amazing full bloom never fail to leave that long lasting impression.