When Broadsheet meets Jeremy Brown, he’s taking a break from grappling with a gnarly piece of Devon burr oak that he’s fashioning into a dining room table. “I’ve been working on it for a week now,” he says with a sigh. “I’m still trying to get it flat without wasting too much of the precious, lovely wood.”
Jeremy is the co-founder of Feldspar, a ceramics company he started with his wife, Cath Brown, in 2016 after relocating to Dartmoor from Hackney. They live in a 15th-century farmhouse with their three children and Bernie, the family’s pointer cross.
While there’s no shortage of couples in the capital who dream of moving to the countryside and working with their hands, few have found the success of the Browns. Months after launching, Feldspar’s signature handmade fine bone china pieces were being sold at the V&A Shop. You’ll now find the duo’s tableware at some of London’s chicest dining rooms (The Twenty Two and Browns, included) and a roster of influential retailers including Alex Eagle and The Store X at Soho Farmhouse.
The Browns have also collaborated with Fortnum & Mason, interiors studio Berdoulat and the artist Tanya Ling, whose fluid lines found a perfect foil in Feldspar’s delicately imperfect teapots and coffee cups.
The duo makes their slip cast, hand-painted crockery in Feldspar’s Dartmoor studio and at a family pottery in Devon; the brand is listed by Heritage Crafts as one of just a handful of makers producing fine bone china in the UK.
While he’s received accolades for ceramics, Jeremy’s original craft was woodwork; he studied furniture making and 3D design before learning shipbuilding in his native Devon.
Now, almost a decade after launching, Feldspar will release its debut furniture collection – handmade by Jeremy and using storm-felled woods like sycamore, elm, ash and burr oak collected and milled by a neighbour and friend in Dartmoor.
Along with a dining table, Jeremy has plans to build a side table, sculpted bench, and – materials and schedule allowing – a room screen and a tilted mirror that he started “four or five years ago”.
As he’ll be making each piece himself, “it’ll stay very limited”, he says. “By the nature of storm-felled [timber], there isn’t a massive supply, and it’s very hard to work.”
Though his methods limit supply, they also ensure each piece is a rare, everyday object to cherish. “With our ceramics, they almost look like a child made it up,” he says, referencing the illustrator Oliver Jeffers as inspiration. “But then they take bloody ages, because of the sculpted nature of everything. And I’m finding the same with the furniture – each piece has its own character.”
“Whether I’m doing the ceramics or doing the woodwork, I feel like a child that’s kind of lucky to be busy every day,” he says, smiling. “I can never complain about going to work.
“As a maker, you’re constantly designing to make a product as pleasurable or stimulating as possible.”
Feldspar’s debut furniture collection is due to launch on September 16. The collection will be on show at Lyndsey Ingram gallery in Mayfair from September 16–19.