What we look for
One February afternoon in Peckham, we found ourselves surrounded by more than a hundred makers in a converted industrial building. Ceramics, prints, zines, jewellery. We left with two small prints and a mug made by a Spanish ceramicist.
That was early 2025. We were not looking for a business. Niki and I both had jobs, and life was going along perfectly well. Some things only make sense much later. They stay with you quietly until you understand why.
The mug we bought from Hot Pote studio. (Photo credit @hot_pote)
Most of what we touch now is a screen. Smooth, identical, gone the moment we look away.
A handmade object does exactly the opposite. A glaze looks different at four in the afternoon than it did in the morning. You begin to notice the curve of a rim, the marks left by a hand, and the weight your hands come to know without thinking about it.
Some pieces in this shop are made to be used every day. Others may never hold anything at all. We don't think of those as two very different categories. What matters to us is whether an object continues to give you something after the first impression. Whether living with it makes you look again.
What stayed with us was how easily we could encounter independent makers from different places, each bringing their own ideas, materials and ways of working. Their work moved between art and craft, between objects to use and objects simply to appreciate. Those distinctions didn't seem particularly important.
Yet among all the makers and works we came across, we rarely encountered contemporary independent makers from China.
Not because the work wasn't there, or because there weren't people who appreciated it. We knew there was an extraordinary world of independent making in China. We simply weren't seeing much of it here.
There are museum exhibitions, cultural programmes and gallery shows. But we rarely encountered the simpler route: finding a piece, understanding who made it, bringing it home and allowing it to become part of everyday life.
That gap stayed with us.
Over the last decade or two, a growing number of independent makers and designers in China have established their own studios, developing distinct creative practices rooted in material exploration and experimentation. Jingdezhen, with its remarkable ceramic heritage and growing community of independent studios, is one example.
Their work may begin with techniques that have existed for centuries, but it isn't necessarily defined by preserving the past. Their forms are contemporary. The glazes are often their own, arrived at through years of testing and failed firings. What Jingdezhen gives them is an extraordinary depth of material and technical knowledge. What interests us is what each maker chooses to do with it.
So when we started Soft Living Collective, we had to work out what we were actually looking for. We celebrate craftsmanship, material sensitivity, intentionality and individuality. We want to understand the person behind the work.
What were they paying attention to?
Why this clay? Why this glaze? Why this proportion?
What did they choose to spend time on even when it would have been easier, faster or more repeatable to do otherwise?
Sometimes the answer is very specific: a glaze developed over four years, the way a foot is trimmed, and the decision to keep the marks of a particular firing rather than hide them.
And sometimes we choose a piece for a much less defensible reason: it simply took our breath away.
During our visits to Jingdezhen, we left behind far more than we brought back.
Over more than a dozen studio visits, we chose to work with five makers for our first curation. There were many other pieces and people we connected with along the way. But not every connection needed to become part of our first collection. In Chinese, we have a word, 'yuanfen' (缘分). It's difficult to translate precisely, but it describes a connection that seems to happen for a reason. Sometimes we meet the right people or encounter the right things, but the timing isn't quite right.
We like to think that some of those connections are simply waiting for another moment.
These choices are at the heart of Soft Living Collective.
They are also part of what we mean by Collective. Not a collective in the traditional sense of makers working under one roof, but a connection between those who create, those who discover, and those who choose to live with their work.
A maker gives a piece its material, form and intention. Then it leaves.
It finds a room, a shelf and a table. It becomes part of someone's living space and, over time, part of their life. That part cannot be made in advance. It comes from living with things.
We don't want Soft Living Collective to speak over the makers or to make their work stand in for an entire culture. We want to make the introduction, offer enough context to look more closely, and allow the work to be encountered on its own terms.
These pieces were made by people who expected them to be looked at closely.
Somewhere, there are people who would look at them in just that way. Between them lies more than geographical distance. There are unfamiliar names, different languages, and stories yet to be told.
We believe these distances can be bridged.
