SOPHIE WILSON

When Sophie Wilson’s three youngest children were small, she decided to open a little shop in the entry hall of her gorgeously dilapidated 16th-century manor house in the English countryside. She sold some soap and jam and candles, but when the potter she enlisted to make ceramics couldn’t keep up with demand, she decided to make them herself. Thanks to her very personal aesthetic and the intimate photography she did of her work amidst her actual family life in the faded glamour of her old house and the power of Instagram, the rest is history. The shop closed, and the ceramics took off. Wilson’s work is fantastical and intelligent, mining the history of decorative arts and her own personal passions, and so deeply human and obviously handmade. Her signature technique is slipware—a style associated with the Staffordshire potteries of the 17th century, created by coating semi-hard red clay with a ‘slip’ of liquid white clay. She then uses the centuries-old Roman decorative technique of sgraffito( meaning scratched), where she etches her vigorous, sinuous line drawings into the wet surface to reveal the red clay beneath.