Susie Watson Designs

It was the possibility of creating Art for everyday that inspired me in the beginning. Art in its broadest sense, is the expressions of human imagination and skill and I believe it can make a big difference to everyday life. It can inspire us, give us an outlet from our daily routines and boost our happiness levels. And yet we tend to think of it as something to be saved for special occasions, or enjoyed from a distance, behind glass. My own wedding china for example, spent most of its life in a cupboard gathering dust – and I think that is really where it all began. I wanted to create everyday things that were both beautiful and robust enough to be part of everyday life at home. I was almost fifty by then, and increasingly aware that time was running out. The delightful small factory we found in Stoke quickly ran out of capacity and even with a second factory, we quickly ran out of capacity. By happenstance, we were introduced to a ceramic factory in Sri Lanka, where traditional studio skills have been preserved. Even then, we spent a full year working on techniques before we were able to start production in earnest. That year, I made eight two-week trips and seemed to be rarely out of an airport. During one such trip, I stopped off for a few days in Southern India to visit a textile factory, with an idea of developing some table linens. And in this way, our product range began to grow…