Sharing Business Values
During the January 2021 lockdown, Bella from West End Flower Farm in Hampshire got in touch with me to enquire about some bespoke vases for her flower farm gift shop. I was so excited after looking at their website which looked right up my street – absolutely gorgeous farm grown flowers, exquisite looking homemade food cooked from their on-site restaurant, and a beautifully natural ethos. This particular quote from their website stood out to me:
We believe in working with the plants in as sustainable manner as possible; we believe that what we put into the ground should then turn into fuel for the ground and believe this should also be reflected in our food choice within the Kitchen.
Our plans for the farm are to run a sustainable farm providing the best quality British flowers for the surrounding community. Our dream is that our farm of approximately 30 acres is one day full of flowers and is providing our family with a solid, safe future.
How lovely?
Vase Requirements
The flower farm is run by Bella herself and her husband Will. They were looking for a vase with a natural as possible finish, in a plain colour so that it could be suited to anywhere, and with a painted seed pod type flower that looked gentle and pretty. Bella sent me the rough sketch below with some further thoughts on her ideas:
Bella and Will were working hard to select new stock for the reopening of their shop after lockdown, and I could tell from conversations with Bella that she was quite particular (in a good way!) and only chose beautifully handmade products with a similar ethos and values to their business so I was delighted to be asked to make some commissioned vases for the flower farm.
The Making Process
It was a couple of months before I had all 40 vases ready.
I spent many late nights working on completing this project in time, often with the odd glass of prosecco for company! Each vase was treated as my baby and a lot of love went into hand building, refining, decorating and glazing each one.
The cow parsley design that I went with suited the vases perfectly. The narrow neck/rim on the vases was important because Bella was not looking to use/sell the vases for holding full bouquets – they were to be aimed for a smaller hand picked garden posy to sit on a kitchen table.
The vases were made in two different sizes, and I finished them with a really natural band of glaze around the rim for that little extra special detail. The exterior of the vases were left unglazed as the natural colour of the clay, with the interior fully glazed to hold water and real flowers.
Presenting the Completed Commission
When I presented Bella with photos of the finished vases she said they looked “so pretty and just what I dreamt of. I can’t wait to show this off. Well done!”
Once the vases arrived at the flower farm without any breakages (phew!), they were set out on display straight away and Bella was running a workshop the next day. Two vases sold at the workshop which was a great start and really joyful to hear.
It has been wonderful seeing updates from West End Flower Farm on social media. If you are local to Hampshire please do go and check them out – they run beautiful workshops including hand tying bouquets, natural dying with botanical ingredients and how to create your own cutting garden. You might even sneak a peak at some of my vases too 🙂
Hi Charlotte
What temperature do you fire your vases to, to make them waterproof?
Hi Jane, my work is fired to stoneware temp 1260’C.