Alaven Designs is a small family business located in the High Street of Newtown, a pleasant and lively market town on the banks of the River Severn in Montgomeryshire, Mid Wales.

Despite its name, Newtown has a long and noble history as the woollen capital of Wales, famous for its Welsh flannel trade and later as the birthplace of the world's first mail-order business! It was here in 1975 that Alan and Olive Venables set up in business, hand crafting clocks and barometers from thick cowhide. This was a radically new venture and their designs reflect both the ancient Celtic tradition of the Welsh hill country with its intricate knotwork and scrolls, and the "Hearts of Oak" pattern, inspired by the lovely Severn Valley and the fertile Montgomeryshire lowlands. They discovered the fact that there was no barometer available in the Welsh language, despite the dependence of the farming and fishing communities of Wales on the vagaries of the Welsh weather, and they have provided their own bilingual barometer to satisfy this very important demand.

The manufacture of each item is still closely controlled by Alan and Olive themselves, who take great pains to produce goods using traditional skills that blend with dignity in today's furnishing schemes.