n the window sill behind colorist Cassandra Ellis’s right shoulder are rows and rows of seedlings. These green shoots are destined for the allotment she tends in Tuckers Meadows on the edge of Bath, the city she has recently moved to. They include salad leaves, flowers, and—importantly—lemon verbena, which she intends to serve as a refreshing tea to those who visit her newly opened store: “a tiny, vertical townhouse” on Walcot Street.
Cassandra—whose work we have followed since she founded Atelier Ellis is 2018—has a uniquely poetic approach to color. For her, it is the thing that people hold on to, come back to, and project forward to. It’s what drives her to manufacture peerless paints that “create quiet, joyful backdrops to people’s homes and living, helping them tell their unique stories of home in the way they choose.”
It follows that her first public-facing venture is not only domestic in size but also in approach: a space for tea drinking and daydreaming. Let’s take a look around:
“Color is a weird thing,” Cassandra admits. “As soon as you take it home it changes, it morphs. Here, our job is mostly to get people to think about how they would like to live and what kinds of colors they would like to live with.” To start that conversation, Cassandra has created a welcoming space in which people “can come and sit for as long as they want and talk to somebody—or not if they’d prefer—about color. I want people to come and feel comfortable, to show them different ways of using color, and perhaps give them permission to start thinking about color in different ways.”
Color samples are displayed on a bespoke, recycled oak frame. The horizontal bars are grooved to hold Atelier Ellis “brushouts” (recycled A4 color cards that are hand-painted with two coats of paint). Customers will be able to play with palettes and look at them vertically on the frame as they would at home. (For environmental reasons, Atelier Ellis stopped selling sample pots at the start of the year.)
For the store opening, Cassandra has curated a selection of images by the photographer Jessica MacCormick and a display of 50 hand-thrown cups by Catherine and Matt West of Pottery West. Both artists resonate for Cassandra, who was born in New Zealand.
“Jessica’s images explore blossoming, blooming, and imperfection and are Kiwi in tone,” Cassandra notes. “Kiwis don’t have the need to fill in every gap; we don’t need everything to be finished. There has to be enough room for people to find themselves within the work, which is what I think Jessica has done with this series.”
“50 Cups” was Pottery West’s response to the store opening. “In New Zealand, when you meet somebody for the first time, they’re straight over your threshold,” Cassandra explains. “There’s none of this ‘let’s meet in a cafe 15 times first,’ and I miss that living here. And what do you normally do when you invite someone in? You offer then a tea, a coffee, a drink, which is how the idea for the cups emerged. Every single one of these cups is unique,” she continues, “which is perfect because everybody will be able to see themselves in one of them.”
For Cassandra, each exhibition represents a chance to introduce exceptional creators to a different audience. “They receive all the sales from the site,” she explains. “There is nothing in it for me except the joy of being able to share their work.” This creative looseness and generosity is partly the reason Cassandra moved from London to Bath. Following a serious illness, she felt compelled to simplify her life. “I didn’t want to slowly slide into what was expected of an interiors brand, because that’s not really what I’m about,” she says. “I wanted less so I could live a better life and do better work,” she says. “Ironically, by moving to Bath, my life has initially been made much more complicated. I’ve set up a factory and a shop and we’ve bought another derelict house, but I know that in three or four months’ time, it will be a much simpler and much better life.”
The seedlings on her windowsill are part and parcel of that vision. “Food is really important to us as a family, and I love gardening and flowers, and I wanted that to be part of who we are as a business as well.” Staff are encouraged to spend a couple of (paid) hours a week at the Atelier Ellis allotment, “fiddling in the soil” or cutting flowers for the store “so that we always have something alive.”
Aside from planting seedlings, ripping up old carpets, and training new staff, Cassandra has—of course—been busy mixing paint. There are now 90 colors that make up the collection of breathable, virtually VOC-free, water-based, deeply pigmented paints. The most recent collection, which is aptly named “Beginnings”, is, according to Cassandra, “my best yet and the most me.” A reflection on the rhythmic migration of birds that marks the changing of the season, the palette includes avian shades such as Lark, Floof, and Hummingbird as well as personal memories of transportive colors such as the milky, oceanic blue, Tamaki.
“Color is the thing that people always come back to,” Cassandra concludes. “It’s the thing they hold on to at the beginning of each new move or project. They want to be able to see themselves sitting in a pale blue sitting room, looking out at their garden with their dog, and they choose their colors because that’s the way they want to shape their lives. It’s about the colors that they’re going to live inside. I find that fascinating.”
For more on Cassandra, see our past stories:
- Like Walking Through a Sonnet: A Serene East Sussex Barn by Cassandra Ellis
- In the Stillness: A 1640s Georgian in an Affecting Palette by Cassandra Ellis
- Expert Advice: Developing Style with Designer Cassandra Ellis
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