For Sophie Fletcher when growing up the spring and summer months meant travelling between England and her mother’s native Poland. Designed as an opportunity to see family, these trips were also a chance for Sophie to indulge in an early preoccupation with teacups and saucers, notably via her aunt’s unique collection of assorted styles, arranged to this day in a much admired kitchen cabinet. Additionally, on her mother’s request, there would be a visit to a favourite store selling Bolesławiec pottery; blue and white wares specific to, and at the time only available in, Poland. “It was this tiny little shop hidden away behind a butcher's, on the outskirts of the capital,” shares Sophie. “There'd be piles of plates, and each one you picked up had a new pattern. I just found that so exciting.”
Though she wouldn’t recognise it then, both these things firmly imprinted on Sophie, who has since established a creative practice of her own, making ceramics under the moniker Zosia Ceramics, shaped in the first instance by a desire to own a handmade set. “I wanted to make it myself, and that just never happened,” she reflects, “but it was one of the reasons I started pottery. I always had this attraction to objects that were clearly handmade, probably from growing up around people who always made things by hand as a reaction to having to deal with challenges.” Zosia Ceramics’ trajectory is anchored in a not dissimilar sentiment she acknowledges: after her mother passed away in 2022, grief became a kind of catalyst for her intentions with the clay.
When we speak, over Zoom in mid-June, Sophie’s just painted the floor of her studio in preparation for the TOAST shoot taking place the following day. “It's a glorified shed, but it's a decent size, enough for a small kiln, a wheel and a table,” she offers of the space, situated in her garden just outside Cambridge. Having studied creative writing at university, she originally anticipated a music career, but severe imposter syndrome obstructed her plans and she leaned into other work. Her introduction to pottery, as a physical practice to engage with first hand, began informally she recalls, following “one very casual class in the village I was living in at the time. I instantly understood the obsession.”
Despite much experimentation with shape, form and design, working on a homemade kick wheel acquired from another ceramicist, it took a while for Sophie to begin producing pieces that aligned with her own aesthetic preferences, she says. “After my mum passed, part of dealing with the grief was I just threw myself into doing pottery, and I had this kind of click moment. The blue flowers were the beginning of ‘oh, this just flows out of me’. They were influenced by doodles my mum would do in birthday cards and stuff like that,” she explains. The abstract flowers, as well as a series of brown criss-cross designs, have become her staples and feature in a new collection of bowls and mugs she’s made in collaboration with TOAST. “The flowers are a special, sentimental thing for me, and I've not made bowls before, so that was interesting. The mugs too, are a particular shape, not something I usually make.”
While both her parents worked in the sciences, Sophie describes her mum as a patron of the arts, always rooting for those who pursued creative professions. “Her parents were actors and a lot of family friends were painters on the Polish side, so she grew up in that creative world,” she observes. “She was an animal biologist, but then for Polish Easter there's this tradition [pisanki], where you take hard boiled eggs and paint a pattern on the outside. My mum would do these really intricate paintings – she never thought she was good, but they were really, really impressive.”
After our call wraps, Sophie sends me some photographs of her mum’s eggs, each adorned with wonderful rainbow coloured floral arrangements in familiar criss-cross vases of blue and orange. “During the pandemic,” she continues, “she gave me a card which had loads of pots drawn on the front, then inside was a TOAST voucher. It's bizarre that in that card, she distilled the two things that have now come together, and the fact that she's behind a lot of the inspiration for me now making pots, it’s a weird coincidence. An absolute sign.”
Sophie wears the TOAST Stripe Donegal V Neck Tank and Relaxed Wide Leg Denim Trousers.
Words by Zoe Whitfield.
Photography by Marco Kesseler.
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