This design plays with the idea of a filling in of space and time. It was created by The Grantchester Pottery (a collaboration between artists Giles Round & Phil Root; the group produce artwork alongside functional and decorative objects). The brush-marks, which inhabit space while colliding, are The Grantchester Pottery’s translation of an artistic technique used through time. In the early twentieth century the Bloomsbury Group employed a similar line-hatched style in their interiors. Then, in 1972 Jasper Johns used this technique in his paintings made in his studio at Stony Point, New York. He glimpsed the pattern on a passing car: 'I only saw it for a second, but … it had all the qualities that interest me – literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness, and the possibility of complete lack of meaning.' For The Grantchester Pottery, who look to their predecessors while making their own marks, this works both ways: in between the black and navy brushstrokes they leave the viewer space to construct their own meaning.

Custom colourway pictured in Elle Decoration, May 2017. Contact us for more information on bespoke colours.