We chat to Suffolk based illustrator and ceramicist Polly Fern to find out more about her charming floral-inspired designs:
Tell us about yourself: where did your creative journey begin, and what lead you to becoming an illustrator, ceramicist and designer?
From a young age, I’ve always turned my hand to different forms of making. Creating my own worlds, drawing characters, and forming stories. After school I studied Art & Design at Great Yarmouth College, followed by a degree in Illustration at Norwich Art School. I naively always assumed I would study Fine Art, but luckily, my friend pointed me in the right direction to study Illustration. The course really encouraged you to explore all the different ways of mark-making and storytelling. I joined a ceramic studio and started exploring storytelling through clay.
After graduating, I nervously went straight into being a freelance illustrator, alongside building on my ceramic practice and developing my online shop where I started by selling prints, paintings, and a few odd ceramic pieces. Soon after graduating, I received my first commissions to design album artwork for a Japanese musician and a job illustrating a monthly column for Homes & Antiques magazine – it was my bread and butter at the beginning!
What draws you to exploring flowers and nature in your work?
Like most people, I have always found solace and escapism in nature, especially through spending time with animals and growing plants. I enjoy creating small gardens and bringing nature indoors. I’m always looking for new ways to explore this, which led me to creating my Romantic Vases to display the flowers I grow. All of my vases are slab-built with white earthenware clay, dipped in a traditional tin glaze, and painted using oxides and pigments. Each piece has its own story to tell. The shapes are often inspired by antique objects such as furniture, tea caddies, or bird cages. I often draw inspiration for shapes from architecture and am currently creating a series of flower bricks inspired by dovecotes.
I love growing hollyhocks and tulips, and they seem to have found their way into most of my work, alongside my naughty Whippets, of whom are often pictured running with a tulip flower! Growing tulips led me to design my first wallpaper, Diamond Tulip, which I created for my home, and I then went on to sell it from my shop.
I kept canaries for many years. In the early days of being a freelance illustrator, it was nice to have a companion by my side whilst working from home alone at my desk. They have now become motifs that are ever-present throughout all of my work.
Can you tell us about your process of combining illustration and ceramics? Where does inspiration come first?
When studying illustration, I explored the history of local gardens, their creators and stories. With an interest in viewing gardening as a craft, seeing it as a tradition that has been passed down through generations, I found ceramics a perfect vessel to hold my drawings and tell these stories. For my degree show, I created ceramic artefacts, including broken ceramic pieces, which were hand-painted with blue cobalt with stories I discovered. To mimic the pieces of broken ceramic that you find whilst digging in the soil. These pieces introduced me to ceramics and gave me freedom beyond illustrating in traditional ways and opportunities to place my work in a different context.
What does a typical day in the life of an artist look like for you?
I live in a 17th-century cottage in Bungay, Suffolk, by the River Waveney. I start my day walking my Whippets, Edgar and Cedric to Cork Brick Studio, on Earsham Street. It’s also Georgian, one of the first rebuilt after the great Fire of Bungay in 1688. It is my ceramic studio and showroom, which is open by appointment. My days vary: I might be covered in clay making Romantic Vases and platters, or painting, packaging orders, illustrating, designing wallpapers, or welcoming visitors. The dogs and I wander home across the meadow at the end of the working day, usually to see the family of swans and the resident heron who is very successful at catching voles in the long grass.
Do you have any favourite gardens to visit or places to immerse yourself in nature?
We are fortunate to live in the Waveney Valley, in an area that is surrounded by water meadows and teeming with the biodiversity of the river. There are some beautiful walks around here that follow the bends of the river, providing an idyllic setting for the Whippets to frolic freely!
I love spending time in my mother’s garden. It’s a very traditional English garden (lawn with borders!) but is always abundant with beautiful plants. She also has a couple of aviaries which house many different types of canaries. I once worked on a huge 2 metre by 4 metre mural for a hotel in Westminster, and I painted many of the herbaceous perennial plants for this from her garden borders.
When I lived in Norwich, I used to enjoy visiting the late Will Giles Exotic Garden. He was an artist who created the most magical hidden garden in the heart of Norwich. The garden was on a steep slope and was planted in such a way that the tall trees created its own microclimate, protecting the exotic plants from the frost and wind. The garden made you feel very small in the best way, with the huge palm trees and magical treehouse above you that Will built.
What is your favourite or most memorable project you’ve created?
It’s hard to choose! I loved working on my collections for two pop-up shops and exhibitions at Pentreath & Hall in 2019 and 2022. It was the first time I had true freedom to create an interior space for an exhibition that reflected my work. It was like inviting people to my own unique take on the world! I also enjoyed illustrating two book titles, ‘Jane Austen Embroidery’ and ‘Jane Austen’s Universal Truth’. Collaborating with friends and sharing our crafts to create unique pieces is also so much fun, like my collaboration with Becca Jewellery. One of my most memorable was an early ceramic commission that I received from the MET Museum in New York, to create a range of miniature terracotta, Greek Vase inspired brooches. I was working on them in the studio for weeks. I remember when friends sent me photographs of them in the giftshop and I couldn’t believe it!
We love your ‘Bucolic’ wallpaper design, can you walk us through how you created it?
Bucolic is my latest wallpaper design. The seed for this idea came when I was working on a painting of a walk we often do with the dogs called Bath Hills. There are always cattle on this walk in the summer, but in the winter months when the cattle leave, it is our time to wander. The walk follows the bends of the river, and the marsh is often flooded. It’s an amazing place to escape to and see wildlife. I was looking at a lot of medieval artwork and tapestries whilst painting the design, and created lots of wash layers for the green base to give the painting depth like the quality of those textiles and murals.
Finally, as we are the Garden Museum, can you tell us about your relationship with plants, gardening and nature?
My childhood revolved around gardening. My grandparents were dairy farmers in Norfolk, and my early years were spent growing up in the farmhouse, so I was immersed in nature from a young age. My parents are avid amateur gardeners, and when we moved to a nearby cottage, they created amazing sections within the garden, such as a sunken garden in an old circular brick swimming pool, a tropical garden with two ponds (I was frog obsessed!), and I created my own fairy garden in a slightly more woody section with fir trees. I’ve always adored and kept birds, including chickens, doves, and canary birds. Gardens and spending time outside with my hands in soil is so important and is something I always turn to in difficult times as I find it a form of therapy – as I also do creating my artwork.
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Find out more: pollyfern.com
Follow Polly on Instagram: @pollyfern