Full sun, fresh figs, and a plates for everyone who comes round.
Earlier this month, Tess Newall, the decorative artist behind our Ottoline collection, laid a table for lunch, al fresco in East Sussex. Tomatoes, sun-warmed and glossy. French brie, and plump peaches. The swirls of each piece dancing round the border of every plate.
For her, like us, tables like these should feel like they've grown wild: too much fruit, too many plates, and nothing pruned back.
Developed between East Sussex and New York, the collection draws on Charleston Farmhouse, where painting spilled off the walls and onto everything else, including the pottery Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant collected and crowded onto their tables.
Tess found the same spirit in a single hooped border on the fireplace surround there, painted, she says, without a ruler and without restraint.
It's this energy that runs through the Ottoline Collection: repeated motifs and fluid mark-making drawn from European folk ceramics, from Hälsingland's timber farmhouses to Kalocsa's flower-covered linens. As Tess puts it, this kind of decoration is rooted in belonging, the idea that everyday objects should carry the visible hand of the maker, bringing joy in both creation and use.
The Azure and Terracotta colorways were made to sit together on the same table, a plate and bowl from each: brown and blue, ancient and modern at once.
