MadeKind
A story of two friends with a shared vision for creating safe cleaning products.
From her Derbyshire studio, glass designer Emma Britton brings florals to life all year round, creating bespoke interior splashback commissions and her own signature glassware collections. We’re delighted to share her story.
I’m a decorative glass designer, a self-given title because what I do is pretty niche. I put pattern onto glass and specialise in designing and making beautiful bespoke decorative glass splashbacks for kitchens and bathrooms inspired by garden florals.
I believe kitchens should be decorated with personality like the rest of the home, they don’t need to be sterile and bland. I also design and decorate popular botanical inspired drinking glassware as well as make interior glass panels and mirrors to commission.
My business started back in 2010 having graduated from Loughborough University a few years earlier where I trained as a textile designer. The influences from my textile experience and knowledge have never left me and is very much the foundation of my design aesthetic.
I became a glass designer by accident and it was at a time when the glass industry and manufacturing was very male dominated and still is! I think that women have made some headway in this field since I started at just 25 years old though and I like to think I am inspiring the next generation of female founders.
Graduating in the recession I ended up working in the glass industry selling back painted glass to architects and interior designers. I realised then, that they wanted new and different materials for their projects.
My business idea was to apply floral patterns to glass splashbacks just like a wallpaper or fabric, revolutionising the interior decorating possibilities for kitchens and bathrooms and creating something previously unseen.
I launched with a grant for East Midlands graduates and haven’t looked back since. My splashbacks are a distinctive, pretty and practical choice and are British designed and made.
I have created pattern repeat designs for glass in a signature floral style inspired by British flora often found in suburban gardens and the countryside.
For my final major project at university I was inspired by suburban gardens, or rogue flowers that popped up in an unexpected places and I have been lucky enough to be able to build a career on a design style that started way back then. ‘Optimistically floral with a slightly retro aesthetic’ I like to call it.
I am passionate about female entrepreneurship and my core studio team is all female.
My Studio Assistant Olivia has been with me for a few years and came to me straight from university. We work very closely together on a daily basis, she manages the glassware side of the business and I look after the splashbacks and all designing and sales.
Helen looks after my marketing and brings so much expertise, as well as my wonderful freelancers. We have a laugh in the studio, work hard and are usually found wearing dungarees and steel toecaps and solving problems which is quite the contrast to our glamorous time exhibiting at the world famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show or visiting clients in their beautiful London homes.
My design studio is in Derbyshire and that’s where I produce my designs and do all the hand finishing but my work takes me all over the country.
My studio is on the edge of an industrial estate but overlooks a nature reserve filled with Silver Birch trees and the view from my window is very leafy. We have planted a small patch outside the studios with plants which helps the local insect population to thrive.
If I am painting I will listen to a podcast as it helps me focus and get lost in the process, when I am working at my computer I like quiet best.
As a trained designer, everything I do is hand designed. I work with a variety of materials but love to paint with gouache as a starting point to generate ideas. I develop these into designs for glass splashbacks and glassware, utilising different technical and artisan processes.
My specialism of glass design is laminated glass. Over the nearly fifteen years, I have honed my making skills, from experimenting with new ideas for clients, taking risks with new materials and the processes to capture them inside the glass.
Matching homewares to my glass splashbacks helped me to create covetable design collections drawing on my textile design skills. In 2015 I started with some Floral Tumblers in 2015 and they went stratospheric, so from then on I added more and more shapes and designs to my glass collection and it keeps growing.
My core collections are Silver Birch, Meadow and Exotic Floral, my customers love them.
As a designer I draw the best bits of nature. I am inspired by a contrasting colour palette such as blue hydrangeas in front of a painted yellow garage like my debut Up the garden path collection. I take snaps of things I like ready for when I am back in the studio, and I’m often drawing traditional English garden flowers such as foxgloves, lupins, iris, fuchsias and hydrangeas.
I’m lucky enough to be asked to draw a huge variety of others in my bespoke work.
During the pandemic I built a second studio and brought all my glassware production in-house, so that I could decorate ranges of etched glassware, achieving this goal is something I am incredibly proud of.
My first bespoke glassware collection was for The RHS and now I’ve always got some exciting projects in the pipeline for amazing retailers.
Making in-house gives me quality control over the products. I am a proudly independent British designer and my design style has resulted in several exciting and successful commissions not least now four glassware commissions for The RHS, a collection for Kew Gardens, as well as site-specific garden inspired ranges for The Hepworth Wakefield, Beth Chatto and Weleda.
There are so many highs and lows being an artisan founder. My highs are seeing how much people resonate with my designs and want to own them. My proudest moments come from producing in house and working on really notable commissions. I have won lots of awards and grants, I am particularly proud of my ten years of consecutive five star reviews on Houzz from my glass splashback customers for my customer service, from design to installation.
The future for me is to continue doing what I love, being a designer, I won’t do anything else other than this.
l plan to retire when I am seventy and just cherry pick the commissions later in life alongside tending to my garden.
What a lovely journal post for welcoming Spring. Thank you Emma for offering a glimpse into your colourful world.
This really is an inspiring example of honing your craft and making a brand name for your unique style. I can’t wait to see what you create next! Lyndsey
Do you have a founder story to share? We’d love to hear from you.
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THE ARTISAN FOUNDER SUNDAY NEWSLETTER
THE ARTISAN FOUNDER SUNDAY NEWSLETTER
