About Us
Finding Inspiration at Every Turn
We live and work at Rushton Farmhouse by the River Frome, where our practices have evolved in different but complementary directions. What we share is a love of natural materials, making, and the quiet rhythm of creative work within rural life.
Anne’s practice has moved from pottery into mosaics, drawn by the possibilities of mixed media, colour and form. Working from a garden studio overlooking the river, she uses foraged and local materials—shale, brick, Purbeck limestone and Portland stone—alongside smalti, minerals and fossils to create textured, place-inspired work.
Jonathan continues his ceramics in the converted milking parlour. In recent years he has focused on local clay and is now refining his work through the addition of silverwork—copper, bronze and handmade gold rivets. This distinctive approach has developed through sustained experimentation and skill.
Though our practices differ, we remain united in approach—making authentic work, at our own pace, alongside the everyday pleasures of rural life.
Jonathan
JONATHAN (AND BODO!)
An accomplished thrower, Jonathan’s ceramics are beautiful, subtle and quietly refined.
“Forty years elapsed between making a small pinch pot at primary school and sitting down at a wheel one day with a pound of clay. I am now hooked. I have a thing about bowls and could make them all day long—variations on a theme!”
In recent years he has begun incorporating silver, bronze, copper and gold into his work, inspired by the repaired wooden bowls of the Saharan Touareg. Having travelled in the Sahara in his teens, he retains a lasting affection for Touareg culture, which quietly informs this direction.
Ceramics and metal are not natural companions, and persuading them to behave together has required patience, persistence—and a certain tolerance for things going wrong. The techniques continue to evolve, and remain, at times, gloriously temperamental.
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Anne
Making mosaics with natural materials has become an absorbing and deeply satisfying way for me to express my creativity.
I have always felt driven to make—exploring stitching, watercolour and ceramics over the years—but none quite held everything I was looking for. I am drawn to colour, detail, fragments, texture, and to the transformation of simple, raw materials into something entirely unique. Mosaics, especially those rooted in locally foraged materials, finally bring all of that together.
Working with shale, local stone and minerals, shells, and the occasional handmade brick or Purbeck roof tile—complemented by Venetian smalti and semi-precious stones from further afield—I can lose myself for hours in the studio. It is flow at its very best.