Making it on the Moor: Q&A with Feldspar’s Cath Brown

– words by Anthony

A lot of us have the same dream: escaping from the crowd and clamour of the city; running away into the countryside to discover a slower, simpler and more naturally inspiring way of life. We’d live in an ancient, isolated cottage, waking up early each morning to watch the mists role across the moorland, spending our days making beautiful things from materials we’d sourced from the land nearby, and in the evening, we’d sit outside in front of a fire pit, drinking cider from the local farm under a sky full of stars.

But then, reality bites. The logistics of moving our stuff. The unbearable hassle of changing utility providers. The difficulty of sourcing a soya latte. The lack of arthouse cinemas or properly stocked Chinese supermarkets. Will there be decent broadband? How does oil heating even work? Suddenly that big dream seems like more trouble than it’s worth, so we retreat back to our shared basement flat with a £3 coffee and a sense of defeat, and remain stuck in the urban bubble.

Cath and Jeremy Brown, however, make it look easy. A couple of years ago, the architectural designer, the UN ethical fashion specialist and their newborn son turned their backs on Hackney, left their jobs (not the newborn; he was unemployed), and struck out for the wilds of Dartmoor. To some, this might seem like a dangerously impulsive idea, but the pair have a knack for making snap decisions that pay off (this is a couple who got engaged on their first date, after all).

Faced with having to provide the essentials for their new home, they did what any normal couple wouldn’t think of doing, and started making everything themselves. They ended up with not only a furnished home, but also a highly sought-after design brand.

Named Feldspar after the minerals used in glass and china clay, they launched a range of beautifully dimpled china coffee mugs, swiftly followed by vases, then candles, soaps, and lambswool blankets – all of them driven by a playfully experimental approach to materials and an honest, no-compromise attitude to production.

Today, their products are stocked in the likes of the V&A, Mint, Fortnum & Mason and Soho Farmhouse, and their Devon farmhouse is the nerve centre of a rapidly expanding design enterprise that seems to know no bounds.

We choked back our seething envy long enough to ask Cath for the inside story…

Hackney to Dartmoor is quite a shift – what advice would you give to London creative types thinking of making a similar move?

A brilliant thing about moving to Dartmoor was that we had the space to be able to set up our own business. I don’t think Feldspar would exist if we were still in our basement flat in Hackney. Having the space to tinker with materials and make a mess – in London that kind of space would be totally unaffordable, if you could find it at all. Also the headspace is amazing; being able to go for walks and not be bombarded by stuff at every turn… When we need something now, our first thought is always to make it, if it’s possible. 

I suppose in terms of actually getting stuff out into the wider world, it would’ve been so much easier to be in London. Our only neighbours here are sheep and cows. To be able to just pop into shops, meet stockists, etc, being on people’s doorsteps would’ve made it a whole lot easier. Here, we can go for days without leaving the house. Although it’s fun coming back up for meetings; we feel a little like tourists now in London, and act accordingly… 

Fashion and architecture to product design – that’s another big shift. What made you decide to make stuff?

It was the actual process of making things that spurred us to change our focus. Design theory can apply across those boundaries, but the way in which things are made and the reasons behind them had become really important to us. In our past jobs there was often a good initial intention that was forgotten about somewhere along the line – mostly when costings got involved – even if it was still that good initial intention that was shouted about at the end, when it didn’t really apply any more. So there were always pretty huge compromises to make. We wanted to try to make things where we didn’t have to compromise, where we could control every aspect from initial idea, to material development, to the finished product, and pay fair prices all along that route for the highly skilled craftsmanship involved. 

We don’t want to make things just for the sake of it; everything needs to have a purpose and be built to last a lifetime. We’re not looking for market niches, we think about what we want to make and how to make it, and then find the best people and the best materials to realise it. We want all our objects to have integrity, so you can trust that a Feldspar object is made properly, by a skilled craftsperson, using the finest materials we can lay our hands on.

Is there a particular aesthetic that unites your collections?

We like the honesty of a basic sketch; we’ll refine that sketch but we won’t refine it to a grid, to any perfect geometry. That’s what machines are for; our objects are made by hand – they retain their personality. We spend a lot of time trying to pare things back to an original sketch – it’s easy to standardise a shape or a form when it comes to production because it’ll be easier to manufacture, but then the object would lose its playful essence. Our mugs, for example, are dimpled vessels because they’re much more tactile and nicer to hold, even though this makes them much more complicated to make. But hands aren’t perfectly cylindrical, and neither are our mugs. 

What are your favourite materials to work with?

China clay is really lovely, mainly because your skin afterwards is just so soft – that’s why we put it in one of our soap bars. But wood is the favourite, which is ironic as we haven’t actually made anything wooden – yet! Jeremy trained as a carpenter, building a 60ft sailing yacht, so he’s more practised in woodwork and uses woodworking techniques to create all our ceramics: plaster on a lathe rather than a pottery wheel. Although the part of designing we most enjoy is exploring different materials, discovering their limits and how and what we can use them for. At the moment we’re experimenting with Jesmonite a lot, for a smaller line of products that we can design and make entirely from the studio.

You describe your products as ‘objects for life’ – what does that mean?

We want them to be used and treasured – objects for life and objects for living, used every day but looked after, and designed to last for life. We’re so tired of hoards of stuff; the loads and loads of things that we all accumulate. We wanted to pare things down and have less stuff that is more beautifully made. It’s like what William Morris said – that you should have nothing in your house that you don’t know to be useful or think to be beautiful.

Where are your products made? How do you find the right craftspeople to work with?

Currently everything is made within the UK, but our philosophy is that everything is made where it should be. We look to make things where they have traditionally been made, as that’s where the skill and the generational knowledge of materials is found – so all our fine bone china is made in Stoke-on-Trent, by very highly skilled family businesses that always worked with china. It was tricky finding manufacturers in Stoke, only because most of the manufacturing has moved overseas – all the more reason for us to make things there, and do our part to keep the traditions alive.

What’s the craft scene like in Dartmoor?

There’s so much going on; there are potters around every corner and some people doing really great things – such as Solidwool, who have created a new material out of wool and resin, a little like fibreglass. It’s brilliant. Generally, Dartmoor is a very creative place, and people are very generous with their time down here; the potter we bought our first pottery wheel off gave us an impromptu lesson that day – for the whole day – it was amazing!

Describe your studio and the most important tools in it…

It’s split between an old cobbled room for pottery and a repurposed stable – both very cold, so I’d say a heater is pretty essential, although the kiln works very well at heating the room when it’s on. Three key tools: lathe, chisels and clamps. Hundreds and hundreds of clamps.

Your products cross several disciplines – did you have to acquire new skills to set up the business? Or were you already expert ceramicists/soap makers, etc?

We had to learn along the way. We spent ages experimenting with materials, just trying to understand them and what was possible. Likewise with candle-making, trying to balance the essential oils, wax and wick is like witchcraft – just hours and hours of experimentation… and to use only natural ingredients makes it all the more tricky as they’re all so unstable – no two batches of essential oils are exactly the same. It’s a lot of trial and error to create a prototype we’re completely happy with. 

What products do you plan to add to the collection next?

Loads! We’re inspired by objects we find in antique shops, so at the moment we’re looking into reviving old parlour games, in unusual materials for the modern home… 

Discover more about Feldspar here.