I grew up with my Greek Cypriot parents and two brothers in North London, and now live in the house next door. If you walk down to the end of our 90-foot garden, you’ll find a secret gate in the fence between our houses. It’s there because my dad used to cut the previous owners’ lawn for them when they got too old to do it themselves. Now we all use it as a shortcut to pop into each other’s houses, and to tend to the chickens, Cornflake, Coco and Pip, who live in my dad’s homemade coop.
Moving in next door to my parents was a surprise, and so, too, was my return in my early 40s to my first love — art. I’ve always loved art, ever since I was young, but I was never confident in class and always kept myself small and in the background.
A school trip to France when I was 16 years old made a huge impression on me. We visited Monet’s garden in Giverny and Cezanne’s studio in Aix-en-Provence. It was magical. In London, I’d also often jump on the tube to visit art galleries and spend hours staring at paintings. All of these things stirred my spirit, and still do today when I think about them.
Though I always loved art, nobody I knew was in the art world, and so it never occurred to me to pursue a career in it. When I started working, after earning my bachelor’s degree in Italian, I put down my drawing materials and didn’t go back to them for around 15 years.
I did a stint as an English language teacher in Italy; a secretary on a trading floor; and finally ended up at Vogue House, working for The World of Interiors magazine as the inspiration editor. This was the right fit for me, and I was there for 10 years. I was constantly surrounded by beautiful textiles, art, antiques and furniture that would flow through the office on a daily basis. It was endlessly inspiring and educational.
Then I got pregnant and decided to take a year of maternity leave. The birth of my first daughter was life-changing in every way, and one of the most profound things was that I had an overwhelming need to make things and be creative.
So along with everything that comes with a new baby also came a creative period in my life that was very experimental and, in lots of ways, primitive. I bought meters of fabric and tried dyeing them with things I had in my kitchen and garden. Onion skins and avocado stones gave different shades of pink; walnut shells and Earl Grey tea bags offered deep browns; and turmeric, rich yellows and oranges. I would squat at my outdoor garden tap to rinse fabric, stand in my kitchen for hours boiling up pots of spices and leaves, and hang the dyed fabric out to dry at the end of the day. Looking back now, I don’t know how I had the time to do this, but my drive was so strong, I just fitted it in.
Block printing came a bit later when I went back to work after my year off. I joined the office again and slipped back into my responsibilities. I felt more confident and more aligned with what I was doing. It felt great.
One day, in carrying out some research, I came across the inspiring story of the Folly Cove Designers. This was a design collective in Massachusetts between 1938 and 1969 made up almost entirely of women, most of whom had no artistic training prior to joining the group. They ended up becoming masters of their craft: block printing. I remember reading that the process of block printing was quick and and uncomplicated, so I bought myself a linocut print ink set and a small piece of lino and set to work at my office desk on my lunch break. At this point, I was inspired by vintage King Penguin books as I loved their illustrated covers, and my first-ever design was a detail from Animals in Staffordshire Pottery. From this point on, I was hooked!
Along came our second daughter, and I was fortunately able to take another year of maternity leave. Natural dyeing was set aside, and lino printing took over. In the moments our girls slept, I would beaver away at our dining room table and found myself naturally creating repeat patterns, cutting lino and excitedly rolling ink, and pressing it onto pieces of paper or fabric. Lifting the lino to reveal the printed pattern was utterly thrilling. It was an experimental, joyful and playful time. This is still how I like to work today.
It was at my dining table that my first fabric collection was created. Foxy, Deer Deer, Penny Partridge, The Hare and Bird Chatter make up the Woodland Animals collection. These five designs are now part of Jean Monro’s Ramm, Son & Crocker permanent collection. It was wonderful to learn that Kit Kemp had used Foxy in the Terrace Suite at Ham Yard Hotel as curtains and on her signature mannequin. And, at the end of last year, the collection made its way to Fabricut showrooms in the U.S.
As the end of my maternity leave started to approach, my husband, Tim, came to me and said that he’d listened to a podcast about a husband and wife who gave up their jobs to sail around the world on an adventure. He saw how much I was enjoying printing and suggested that I give up my job so that we could have our own adventure — exploring our creativity together to see if we could make it more than a hobby. (My husband is also a designer.)
It was a scary prospect giving up a secure job to jump into the unknown, but it was also very exciting. If we were going to take this seriously, we decided we’d need workspaces of our own to free up the dining room, as it became too cluttered with all of my paper and paints.
We knocked down the tiny 8-feet-by-6-feet shed that already existed in our garden and replaced it with two potting sheds, each 8 feet by 16 feet, side by side but separate: his and hers! They came flat pack on pallets and we put them together over the course of a winter. Tim is very good at DIY and he added an extra meter to the height of the sheds to make them feel more roomy, and we insulated and painted them. We had help from both of our families at various points, even some neighbours, and it all came together eventually.
I thought about what I’d need in my shed. I already had an architect’s desk and chair which I bought an old large wooden table that would do as my printing table. For the rest, I enlisted the help of my dad, who’s also great at DIY. He made me shelves, drawers and a smaller table (to accompany my printing table) out of wood he already had. And I put up a wire cord along the length of a wall of the shed so that I could hang fabric to dry after printing. I also included a rattan chair that someone was throwing out and a rug to make it feel more homely. It’s a warm and cosy space that also works well practically. Tim and I pop into each other’s sheds and share ideas, and show one another our work. And our girls love to spend time in them with us, too — as do our chickens!
I’m 50 now and my work continues to evolve. I still love to experiment and my goal is to find out what I have in me to create, to attempt to come close to fulfilling my potential as an artist and maker. I’m not formally trained, and every day is a learning experience. This keeps things interesting and fresh for me, but it also makes me feel like a fraud — I definitely have imposter syndrome! I do a lot of work prospectively, not knowing what will end up being picked up, and I’ve had a lot of “no”s. It’s also a challenge for me to put myself out there on social media and to network, but my passion and curiosity for what I do pushes me to meet these challenges head on. I continue to grow and learn.
I’ve been fortunate to have collaborated with fabulous companies on projects so far — Jean Monro (fabric), Kit Kemp (sailboat and whale block print cushions) and Ca’ Pietra (ceramic tiles). I love to see my designs on lots of different objects, as I’m a big fan of applied art, and make block printed aprons, cards, mugs and cushions which I sell on my website. I’d also love to work on more collaborations in the future.
Today I’ve come full circle and am dyeing natural linen with indigo. It’s a slow, meticulous process and hugely rewarding. I’m working on a wall art collection of sea-themed block printed designs on indigo. Many family holidays spent on the Cornish coast have inspired me. I have a collection of shells I collected on the beach down there and drew on a few years ago, framed in my shed to remind me of happy times.
I let my interests lead me and hope that the work I end up producing finds a place in the world. Sustainability and working thoughtfully to look after our environment are at the forefront of my mind right now, so using natural dyes, nontoxic paint, sustainable linen, and only producing what I need, is important to me.
I’m very grateful to be on this journey of self-discovery and thankful for my shed which affords me the space in which to do this. For me, it’s a place to be oneself, a place to try, to fail, to succeed. A place for creative adventure!
I grew up with my Greek Cypriot parents and two brothers in North London, and now live in the house next door. If you walk down to the end of our 90-foot garden, you’ll find a secret gate in the fence between our houses. It’s there because my dad used to cut the previous owners’ lawn for them when they got too old to do it themselves. Now we all use it as a shortcut to pop into each other’s houses, and to tend to the chickens, Cornflake, Coco and Pip, who live in my dad’s homemade coop.
Moving in next door to my parents was a surprise, and so, too, was my return in my early 40s to my first love — art. I’ve always loved art, ever since I was young, but I was never confident in class and always kept myself small and in the background.
A school trip to France when I was 16 years old made a huge impression on me. We visited Monet’s garden in Giverny and Cezanne’s studio in Aix-en-Provence. It was magical. In London, I’d also often jump on the tube to visit art galleries and spend hours staring at paintings. All of these things stirred my spirit, and still do today when I think about them.
Though I always loved art, nobody I knew was in the art world, and so it never occurred to me to pursue a career in it. When I started working, after earning my bachelor’s degree in Italian, I put down my drawing materials and didn’t go back to them for around 15 years.
I did a stint as an English language teacher in Italy; a secretary on a trading floor; and finally ended up at Vogue House, working for The World of Interiors magazine as the inspiration editor. This was the right fit for me, and I was there for 10 years. I was constantly surrounded by beautiful textiles, art, antiques and furniture that would flow through the office on a daily basis. It was endlessly inspiring and educational.
Then I got pregnant and decided to take a year of maternity leave. The birth of my first daughter was life-changing in every way, and one of the most profound things was that I had an overwhelming need to make things and be creative.
So along with everything that comes with a new baby also came a creative period in my life that was very experimental and, in lots of ways, primitive. I bought meters of fabric and tried dyeing them with things I had in my kitchen and garden. Onion skins and avocado stones gave different shades of pink; walnut shells and Earl Grey tea bags offered deep browns; and turmeric, rich yellows and oranges. I would squat at my outdoor garden tap to rinse fabric, stand in my kitchen for hours boiling up pots of spices and leaves, and hang the dyed fabric out to dry at the end of the day. Looking back now, I don’t know how I had the time to do this, but my drive was so strong, I just fitted it in.
Block printing came a bit later when I went back to work after my year off. I joined the office again and slipped back into my responsibilities. I felt more confident and more aligned with what I was doing. It felt great.
One day, in carrying out some research, I came across the inspiring story of the Folly Cove Designers. This was a design collective in Massachusetts between 1938 and 1969 made up almost entirely of women, most of whom had no artistic training prior to joining the group. They ended up becoming masters of their craft: block printing. I remember reading that the process of block printing was quick and and uncomplicated, so I bought myself a linocut print ink set and a small piece of lino and set to work at my office desk on my lunch break. At this point, I was inspired by vintage King Penguin books as I loved their illustrated covers, and my first-ever design was a detail from Animals in Staffordshire Pottery. From this point on, I was hooked!
Along came our second daughter, and I was fortunately able to take another year of maternity leave. Natural dyeing was set aside, and lino printing took over. In the moments our girls slept, I would beaver away at our dining room table and found myself naturally creating repeat patterns, cutting lino and excitedly rolling ink, and pressing it onto pieces of paper or fabric. Lifting the lino to reveal the printed pattern was utterly thrilling. It was an experimental, joyful and playful time. This is still how I like to work today.
It was at my dining table that my first fabric collection was created. Foxy, Deer Deer, Penny Partridge, The Hare and Bird Chatter make up the Woodland Animals collection. These five designs are now part of Jean Monro’s Ramm, Son & Crocker permanent collection. It was wonderful to learn that Kit Kemp had used Foxy in the Terrace Suite at Ham Yard Hotel as curtains and on her signature mannequin. And, at the end of last year, the collection made its way to Fabricut showrooms in the U.S.
As the end of my maternity leave started to approach, my husband, Tim, came to me and said that he’d listened to a podcast about a husband and wife who gave up their jobs to sail around the world on an adventure. He saw how much I was enjoying printing and suggested that I give up my job so that we could have our own adventure — exploring our creativity together to see if we could make it more than a hobby. (My husband is also a designer.)
It was a scary prospect giving up a secure job to jump into the unknown, but it was also very exciting. If we were going to take this seriously, we decided we’d need workspaces of our own to free up the dining room, as it became too cluttered with all of my paper and paints.
We knocked down the tiny 8-feet-by-6-feet shed that already existed in our garden and replaced it with two potting sheds, each 8 feet by 16 feet, side by side but separate: his and hers! They came flat pack on pallets and we put them together over the course of a winter. Tim is very good at DIY and he added an extra meter to the height of the sheds to make them feel more roomy, and we insulated and painted them. We had help from both of our families at various points, even some neighbours, and it all came together eventually.
I thought about what I’d need in my shed. I already had an architect’s desk and chair which I bought an old large wooden table that would do as my printing table. For the rest, I enlisted the help of my dad, who’s also great at DIY. He made me shelves, drawers and a smaller table (to accompany my printing table) out of wood he already had. And I put up a wire cord along the length of a wall of the shed so that I could hang fabric to dry after printing. I also included a rattan chair that someone was throwing out and a rug to make it feel more homely. It’s a warm and cosy space that also works well practically. Tim and I pop into each other’s sheds and share ideas, and show one another our work. And our girls love to spend time in them with us, too — as do our chickens!
I’m 50 now and my work continues to evolve. I still love to experiment and my goal is to find out what I have in me to create, to attempt to come close to fulfilling my potential as an artist and maker. I’m not formally trained, and every day is a learning experience. This keeps things interesting and fresh for me, but it also makes me feel like a fraud — I definitely have imposter syndrome! I do a lot of work prospectively, not knowing what will end up being picked up, and I’ve had a lot of “no”s. It’s also a challenge for me to put myself out there on social media and to network, but my passion and curiosity for what I do pushes me to meet these challenges head on. I continue to grow and learn.
I’ve been fortunate to have collaborated with fabulous companies on projects so far — Jean Monro (fabric), Kit Kemp (sailboat and whale block print cushions) and Ca’ Pietra (ceramic tiles). I love to see my designs on lots of different objects, as I’m a big fan of applied art, and make block printed aprons, cards, mugs and cushions which I sell on my website. I’d also love to work on more collaborations in the future.
Today I’ve come full circle and am dyeing natural linen with indigo. It’s a slow, meticulous process and hugely rewarding. I’m working on a wall art collection of sea-themed block printed designs on indigo. Many family holidays spent on the Cornish coast have inspired me. I have a collection of shells I collected on the beach down there and drew on a few years ago, framed in my shed to remind me of happy times.
I let my interests lead me and hope that the work I end up producing finds a place in the world. Sustainability and working thoughtfully to look after our environment are at the forefront of my mind right now, so using natural dyes, nontoxic paint, sustainable linen, and only producing what I need, is important to me.
I’m very grateful to be on this journey of self-discovery and thankful for my shed which affords me the space in which to do this. For me, it’s a place to be oneself, a place to try, to fail, to succeed. A place for creative adventure!
