For the first episode of our Sacred Space podcast, founder Jess Ince interviewed one of our key collaborators, porcelain artist Rebecca Wordsworth. They chat about creating her dream life in Somerset, her creative process, the women who inspire her, and more…
Jess | Sacred Space:
Hello to everyone who has tuned in to the first Sacred Space Q+A session! Today I’m chatting with Rebecca Wordsworth, the very lovely and talented ceramicist who has made the vessels for our soon-to-launch, limited edition candle range. Thank you for being here.
Rebecca | Rebecca Wordsworth Porcelain: Thank you for having me.
Jess: I just wanted to touch quickly on how we met. I first saw your work on Instagram, of course, and absolutely loved your style, and then discovered that we’ve got a mutual friend in common – my good friend Venetia, who I’ve known for years – and she said just go and introduce yourself and tell her you’re my friend so I did! Then I came to see you at your home last summer, where we discussed my initial ideas for the vessels and we bounced some stuff around to see what we could make work. Since then I’ve been to visit your beautiful home in Somerset, I think four times, maybe more – and also used it as the location for one of our photoshoots. You were very kind to allow me to descend with a couple of other lovely ladies, and I think I managed to have a cuddle with one of your chickens as well which was great! I can’t wait until I can move down myself hopefully next year.
You’ve got a really magical spot down there in the Somerset countryside. Could you tell us a little bit about your home and how you found it?
Rebecca: It is magical. I agree with you and I have to say it’s a little bit of a cliché but really not a day goes by without thinking we’re pretty blessed. It’s been an ongoing project. We used to drive past our house and point over from the roadside, and look at it and think, what a dream home that would be. I was in Wales at the time when my husband rang me and said the house is on the market – we’ve got to get it. We did everything we could. In those days you could just beg, borrow and steal, a lot easier than now. We borrowed up to the hilt and bought it. It was a tumble down working farm when we bought it. Like so much of the farming community they couldn’t sustain a lifestyle. So we had to be very sympathetic to them, and wanted to be. So it was a very gradual process. We’ve still got a bit of land, which is still farmed and are rewilding, and it’s fantastic. I could go on and on!
Jess: As you say it was it was a tumble down farm and it has been a massive project over the years. What have been the key things that you’ve done that have made it your own space?
Rebecca: My partner is extremely hands-on. We’re both very practical people, which we have to be living here. Between us we’ve got quite a long-term vision, well beyond our lifetime. And so a lot of planting, lots and lots of trees, 1,800 or so – rewilding and really letting it go back to what it should be. It was quite aggressively farmed with (chemical) sprays, etc. So we’re going back to organic and, even just in 18 months, seeing the wildlife coming back is unbelievable.
Jess: Oh how fantastic, and your studio where you work is in a converted dairy. I’ve been inside it and it’s such an inspiring space to work. You’ve got a gorgeous window facing down to your lake area and the fields, and the light is fantastic. You’re very much surrounded by nature.
Rebecca: Totally, I mean, enveloped in it really, I’m sort of living and breathing it. Sometimes just occasionally I forget to look up when I get really engrossed in my work, and just raising my head and looking at it – as you say, this huge glass window into nature – and it’s just “take a deep breath” time. It’s pretty special.
Jess: What influence would you say that nature has had on your work?
Rebecca: I’m 100% influenced by it, and what’s so lovely has been working with you and moving a little bit from my very floral-based work to more slightly more, oh, skyscape, I call it. Galactic contemporary style, but it’s all based around nature, everything I do. Up until now, it’s been inspired by my surroundings.
Jess: Fantastic. Let’s talk about your creative process. Would you say that you work very differently with your own work to how you’ve worked with me? What’s the difference between your main line collection and how you might work on on commissions with people?
Rebecca: That’s quite interesting. Yes, it is different. Probably because when I’m working on my own work, really from when I have a lump of clay in my hands, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I just let it flow. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t and you have to be quite ruthless and I now really know what I feel works. If it doesn’t, I’ll scramble it up and start again, as hard as that might be. With working with you or on collaborations or commissions – particularly with you because we’ve developed so much along the way and evolved – we know what we’re trying to get. So, with your vessels. The first process is very straightforward, I’m making the vessel. It’s actually quite relieving sometimes! And then the glazing process is where my creativity really comes in, to reach your desires. And every piece is still going to be a little bit different.
Jess: Which is the most fantastic thing about them, that handmade unique quality! Tell me a little bit about how you actually got into ceramics in the beginning.
Rebecca: The truth of the matter is I was bought up fairly feral in Gloucestershire, very close to where I am now, and I used to go off into the woods every day, and literally pick mud, grab it, bring it home, and dry it out enough to make pots. That really genuinely is where it started. We had an old farmhouse as well and I used to fire it in the oven, literally in the Aga. It didn’t last very long, but it was enough and it went from there! I taught ceramics as well, and I went back to university myself about 15 years ago. So, shall we say a slightly more mature student… and studied ceramics with a lot of youngsters. It was really fun actually, inspiring, and I came out of university with my degree then went on to teaching and then realised that wasn’t the idea. The idea was to create. But I carried on teaching for many years and I loved it alongside my career – but it’s taken off to the extent I can’t really do both any more.
Jess: What would you say to people who may have a calling to do something different, and to allow their creativity to flow and feel a bit more creatively fulfilled? We are all such creative beings and yet it comes to some of us much more easily than others.
Rebecca: It does, and obviously I’d say go for it. I mean, it’s totally changed my life. I had a really supportive partner and he never really questioned it. I just told him what I was doing. Be bold about your decision and just get on and do it, if you possibly can. Where there’s a will, there can be a way. I started my career, whatever you want to call it, my creative path, by having to teach as well.So you can find a way and it’s wonderful what it opens up. It was a perfect stage in my life for it to happen, as well as being a woman with my children leaving home and perimenopausal and all these things. It couldn’t have come at a better time.
Jess: So you were stepping into that Wise Woman phase of your life and really channelling your power and your creativity into art.
Rebecca: I’m eternally grateful [for it]. I think I would be even more mad than I already am!
Jess: One of the things I want to do at Sacred Space is to build a collaborative community where women can share knowledge and tips and wisdom with each other. I think that we’re truly each other’s guides in life, and it’s very powerful to share things that have helped us along the way and to support and promote other women who are doing inspiring things, especially around living more consciously and more in harmony with nature and tapping into that creative flow.
I wanted to touch on some of your other inspiration, perhaps two or three women who’ve inspired you in your life? That might be personal teachers or mentors or women who are more widely known in the public eye.
Rebecca: I thought about this and the three women that really do come to mind are my mum and my two daughters. They really have been my biggest teachers. My mum basically because she just allowed me to be the woman I was and she allowed me to grow, she was the most unrestrictive, if that’s the correct terminology, person I think I’ve ever known. She really was extraordinary and took me to healers from the moment I was out of nappies and allowed my personal and spiritual growth, but never bombarded me, it was just there, it was just presen. She was a very creative woman as well. And my daughters, well, as you know, I mean having children… Obviously my son is a delight too but we’re talking about women, and just watching them turn into these incredible humans and their journey. Actually it’s so important to listen and hear and see others around you, and I am all for the sisterhood. It’s taught me a great deal and has really got me through life without even realising it, you know. I’ve just had a weekend of witchy women. I mean, God, what would we do without each other, really!
Jess: Absolutely, I think you’re really lucky actually because you’re within this community already where you’ve got a lot of incredible female friends who are aligned in their values, and you’re able to have the free-flowing conversations. There are a lot of women out there who don’t have that. And they don’t even know that they need it. Hence the big increase in women’s circles now, and people having a space to come together and share in a completely safe space with other women, where they can let out whatever needs to come out. That’s what I want do in the future, to run regular online events, and live events around solstices and equinoxes, with an element of ceremony and then a big celebration. Just for women and perhaps children too.
Is there a piece of wisdom that your mother passed down to you that you always remember? And what are the biggest lessons that motherhood has taught you?
Rebecca: It’s a little snippet that she used to say to me if I was ever challenged in life by friendships and relationships, which is a huge [part] of life isn’t it? She used to say if anybody ever sends you a poisonous arrow, you just need to catch it and cover it and smother it in your love and send it back. It’s been the best life lesson. Sometimes it’s not always easy, but she’s so right. It just diffuses everything, and I wish we could do that a little bit more in life, to be honest – send it all back with love! And motherhood, well, I mean it’s just taught me how to shut up and listen really, and also stop taking everything so seriously!
Jess: I totally agree. Children are our mirrors in so many ways, just learning so much about ourselves through that journey. Are there any books that have particularly inspired you, that you’re always recommending to people?
Rebecca: So many books, I’m a big reader, and again it’s my mother’s influence. I don’t know if you’ve read it but she gave me Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which is a classic, when I was probably in my early teens. I think that Jonathan was probably early teens as well, and he was trying to fly the nest but he was a nonconformist. And it was really allowing this to happen, and unravel in your life. Actually I’m not sure I’ve given that to my children, so you’ve reminded me they need to read it too!
Jess: Oh fantastic, yes pass it on!
I wanted to talk about some of the rituals that you might have integrated into your life. First, talking about unique family traditions around birthdays, the seasons or key festivities around rites of passage. Is there anything that’s unique to your family?
Rebecca: We are a huge family and with my father also starting again – both my parents are sadly dead now – but we’ve sort of carried on their legacy and my dad had another family so I’ve got a little brother and sister, who are the same age as my daughters and all my nieces and nephews. So it’s one great big family and because of where I live, we all congregate here. We congregate at any given moment so it will be birthdays Christmasses, Easter, World Cups, whatever it might be.I’s just a great big party really. Dancing is our ritual. We dance to the light of the moon, and quite a lot of naked dancing has been known in the house and out of the house! I’ve been doing a lot of kitchen dancing!
Jess: Yes I’ve I’ve definitely got into that recently, with my daughter as well who loves it!
Are there any personal daily and weekly rituals that are important to your self-care in terms of carving out that sacred space to help you feel more connected to yourself and to nature?
Rebecca: Yes! Walking is a massive one for me. I’m quite into fitness, and I have a daughter who’s a fitness trainer and holistic, all sorts of everything on top, but I do need to remember I need to calm that sometimes. So walking is a really good way and just trying to be at one. Lots of breathing. I’m doing a lot of reading on breathing at the moment and how healing it actually is. I do a bit of cold watering. I go and wash myself in a lake in our fields, even if it’s just my face and my head in the mornings. It’s not so cold any more so you don’t get that kind of electricity running through you, but it’s still wonderful.
Jess: Yes I know so many people who’ve got into cold water and wild swimming over the last couple of years. I think it’s one of those things that you have to build up slowly. It’s definitely quite alarming the first few times but your body gets used to it very quickly.
Rebecca: It does and I would like to do a lot more of it, but we’ll just go for the face and the head for the moment. I’m sure it’s doing something. It feels magical and I absolutely instantly feel better when I’ve done it.
Jess: Do you have a spiritual practice?
Rebecca: Yes, it’s meditation and breathing, which is what I’ve discovered. It’s a life journey, isn’t it? I’m quite impatient as well to reach that place but I’ve realised that doesn’t happen overnight.
Jess: Definitely not, no, and these kind of tools are ones that can only strengthen over our lives as we come back to them again and again and, of course it’s it’s going to take a long time to become masters.
Who are your go-to people in the wellness space or who do you find inspiring that you look to for tips and advice?
Rebecca: That’s interesting. I don’t know that I would call on any one person. I don’t know about you but because of the type of person I am, I dip in and out of different things in my life that served me at the time. As a teenager, I don’t know if you remember Louise L Hay. She wrote called You Can Heal Your Life. It’s a bit pre your time but that was the beginning of my journey, and from then on there’s been such a such an accumulation of people that I dare not point at one.
Jess: I think we are getting inspiration from everywhere in our lives, people that we may follow on Instagram every day…
Rebecca: Yes, like Matt Haig and Rupi Kaur and just little phrases that you can hold with you all day. The joys of the internet is remarkable, I mean it can be shocking as well…
Jess: Yes you’ve got to be careful not to go down a rabbit hole with it, and to still connect with the real natural world around you. But fantastic for inspiration and for connecting – for connecting us. I wouldn’t know about you, probably, or I may have done when I moved down to Somerset. In the wellbeing space as well it’s becoming such an important tool for people to connect and to learn.
Are there any mantras that you live by, anything that can sum up your approach to life?
Rebecca: Gosh, you’re throwing them out! I just think, keep it light.
Jess: Don’t sweat the small stuff is something that I like to say, which is sort of along those lines, because one can get a bit caught up sometimes, in the small details.
Rebecca: Really caught up, and you know, this too shall pass. Because it always does, and it will evolve into something else. So let it happen. And if you can live with it and ride the wave then you generally come out on top.
Jess: Very good advice. I definitely subscribe to that too.
OK, just one last question before we close. I really I cannot wait now for people to be able to buy these candles. It seems like we’ve been working on them for a long time. I can’t wait for people to have them in their homes as things of beauty, because they are so stunning. But how does it feel when you’ve crafted something with skill and such love and then it goes out into the world?
Rebecca: Well, you have to be careful with the old ego, don’t you?! But it does feel remarkable! It’s extraordinary. When I get messages of love and thanks and gratitude and photographs sent to me from complete strangers, from all over the world. And people just simply appreciating what you do is extraordinary. I’m so blessed and lucky. I cannot wait to see the feedback with your candles because it’s a total collaboration and the work that you’ve put into it, the thought and the harmony, I just can’t wait!
Jess: It’s really exciting. It has been a real labour of love from both of us, but certainly for me over the last year trying to get all the elements in place.
Rebecca: I can’t believe it, it’s certainly made me decide never to do it!
Jess: Going down the certified organic route as well, it – just as it should do, of course – it adds that extra layer of complexity. But once the wicks are in place, which is the final piece now, we’ll be good to go!
I’ll be announcing on Instagram and in my email newsletter when the candles are available to preorder, and anyone who wants to sign up can go to www.thisissacredspace.com/subscribe
Thank you very much Rebecca for being here today, and I will no doubt speak to you very soon.
Rebecca: Thank you, Jess, take care.