Feldspar is shaking up the British ceramics scene, one handmade coffee cup at a time

Mark Harvey: Your brand has real momentum in a category of large, well-established players. What is your unique proposition?

Cath Brown: We are creating timeless luxury objects out of a very traditional material – fine bone china –  but our wares are modern, ‘wonky’, minimal, at odds with the traditional idea of what fine bone china is. We use it because it is the strongest type of ceramic, and you can cast the walls of a vessel very finely and create elegant, thin ceramics.

We design and make primarily what we need and use around the house. Everything has a story behind it, a reason for being in the collection. It is inextricably linked to us which is part of the whole ethos of the brand: everything is very personal and is written about in this way with a familiar, more casual feel at odds with traditional representations of fine bone china and luxury product design in general. We also hand-make everything in England.

What have you learned from the largest companies in your space – and what do you do differently to them?

Sadly the biggest players in our space no longer manufacture their products in this country, so while we can look at them historically and learn a lot, in the six years we’ve been in business we’ve learned the most from the generational craftspeople in Stoke-on-Trent; not just the potters, but the mould makers, the brush makers – all these incredible skills that are in some cases at the tail end of existence. We are constantly having to invent new solutions in our manufacturing process because materials are discontinued due to a lack of uptake, so we’re ever-evolving. 

Being such a small brand that manufacture everything ourselves means we can be incredibly flexible. We hand-paint everything so can monogram plates and mix up new glaze colours. This is a key part of our business: that everything is handmade, by actual hands, and that it is all so personal. 

How does your company benefit the wider community? What is your approach to sustainability?

We create what we call ‘objects for life’ - they are things made by hand, the old fashioned way, and with the care and attention will ensure they last a lifetime or two. We’re selling things, but we’re also very mindful of following (for homewares) Vivienne Westwood’s mantra: buy less, choose well, make it last. So we don’t believe in trends, we believe in longevity - every design we’ve ever made is still for sale today so you can add to your collection a year or five later with the same mug or bowl.  

With Jeremy’s background (he worked for the United Nations helping large luxury fashion brands build ethical and sustainable supply chains), ethics and sustainability are understandably at the centre of everything we do. We reuse and recycle 99% of our waste and we don’t use plastics anywhere. All our packaging is paper, made in the UK, and even our kilns are mostly powered by wind.

Luxury brands tend to think in generations, not years. What is your long-term vision for the company – and what plans are you setting in place now to make that happen?

Our long term vision is to have a collection of workshops where we live in Devon that can house all of the crafts we want to explore. At the moment that’s fine bone china production – itself a critically endangered craft here in the UK – but we want to have wood workshops (Jeremy initially trained as a woodworker) so we can create objects from woodland we’ve coppiced, metal workshops, glass, textiles, skincare, the list goes on. Essentially, we want to keep heritage crafts and skills going by creating new and modern objects, all using local materials. 

What’s been your proudest achievement with your company so far?

We’re super proud to be stocked in some of the finest stores in the world such as The Conran Shop, Liberty, Selfridges, Fortnum & Mason and Lane Crawford. I feel very privileged to work with a few of them on special projects, such as the exclusive collection we’ve just launched with Fortnum’s to celebrate their new coffee range. Also meeting Terence Conran and chatting with him about our collection is right up there too!

Can you tell us one major hurdle you encountered with your company, and how you overcame it?

When we were very small it became clear that we needed to set up a ceramics workshop down in Devon to supplement our production in Stoke-on-Trent. We’ve always worked with a small family run factory up in Stoke, but they were at capacity and we needed to expand our range, so Jeremy set up a ceramics workshop down here (in his Mum’s garage initially!) with a lot of help from the wonderful potters in Stoke who would troubleshoot kiln disasters on their days off! It was a steep learning curve, but we now have two workshops down here and a team of ten amazing craftspeople.

What is your key piece of advice you’d have for another luxury brand, like yours, looking to disrupt an established category?

This may not be the best business advice, but we believe that if you create an honest product that has integrity then it’ll sell itself to a certain extent. We don’t have a sales team or a marketing team, we just create products that we believe in - and so far that strategy has worked!