Jo Downs has always taken her inspiration from the shoreline. Now the tide has brought her a beautiful new idea.
Words by Mercedes Smith
You might say that artist Jo Downs began her career in Cornwall as a beachcomber, as an avid collector of all things inspiring and beautiful along the coastline. She takes the things that catch her eye – ripples on the sand, deep blue tidal pools, spectacular sunsets – and spins them into an endless series of beautiful fused-glass works.
Each season Jo releases a new collection and this summer she brings us something with a little extra feel-good in it: her very first works in recycled glass. It was whilst walking along the sand near her Tintagel home last autumn that Jo found inspiration for the collection. “I spend a lot of my downtime on the beach” says Jo, “for relaxation and for inspiration. Every day is different on the coast – the sky might be blue or grey, the sea might be still or stormy, and the sand beneath my feet will change shape from hour to hour. I might sit and watch the starfish in the rockpools, or browse for seashells, but that day it was sea glass that caught my attention.
“Finding sea glass is a funny thing. It’s delightful – all those pretty, unexpected colours and shapes, but it’s also sad, because you know that glass shouldn’t be in the sea and it shouldn’t be on the beach. Lots of artists here make beautiful recycled jewellery out of sea glass and they are helping to clean up the coast as they do it. That eco-friendly aspect is part of the pleasure in buying those things and it suddenly occurred to me that we could use all our damaged or excess glass directly, without reprocessing it – use all the brightly coloured broken chips and shards just as they are, to make something beautiful that is ethical too.”
Titled Artisan Beachcomber, Jo’s new collection launched this summer. It has a distinctly different feel to her other collections, being made of thousands of discarded glass pieces in as many colours, with a dense and beautiful surface that makes real beauty out of recycled glass. “Everyone is trying hard these days to move towards a more sustainable way of working,” says Jo, “and we are no different. It’s difficult in business, there are so many challenges, but step by step we have to achieve it. These new designs go a small way towards that. Just as importantly, buying works from the Artisan Beachcomber collection will allow people to express their own sustainable values, and hopefully reassure people that we have those responsibilities in mind as well.”
Jo Downs Handmade Glass has so far invested in plastic-free branded packaging, and they recycle all of their used packaging, including that returned by customers. They pack their delivery boxes with shredded paper, are reducing and recycling waste materials, have installed electric vehicle charging points at the Launceston workshop and are looking into ways to remove plastic entirely from their six glass galleries. Jo’s galleries remain, as always, a mainstay of Cornwall’s best-loved coastal towns and have become part of the identity of places such as St Ives and Padstow, Tintagel and Fowey.
“I think visitors appreciate that each Jo Downs gallery has a distinct personality, design wise,” says Jo. “I sometimes meet people in our Padstow Gallery who say to me ‘Oh! We bought something in your St Ives gallery yesterday!’, and then they will buy something else that is distinctly ‘Padstow’. I love hearing that. I want people to know that my designs celebrate each special and unique Cornish place, and that those places inspire the work.”
Jo’s Launceston gallery is different though. Its focus is on larger scale interior pieces and commissions. “This is where we design and make the work,” says Jo, “so it makes sense to welcome visitors here if they are thinking about a really special piece for their home, or if they want to discuss the possibility of a private commission.” Jo makes a limited number of private commissions each year, creating work for homes and corporate clients here in the UK and as far away as New Zealand. Her latest international commission has just been flown out to Canada and installed by the Jo Downs team in a private house on Vancouver Island. “It’s exciting to make work for spectacular settings in far off places,” says Jo, “and it’s great to be given the opportunity to link Cornwall to international places through my work. I like to think of those far away works as ambassadors for Cornish design, because we have as much natural inspiration and creative talent here in this county as anywhere in the world.”
When she is not handcrafting interior pieces and private commissions with her skilled team, much of Jo’s time is spent in her private studio space, drawing, painting and test firing potential new gallery collections. “Being any sort of designer is a life of endless development,” says Jo, “and honestly that’s what’s wonderful about it. It’s so important to keep pushing forward with ideas, to keep experimenting and creating new things to inspire people. Lots of visitors come back to Cornwall year on year – they are devoted to the place – and there is so much to enjoy here, so many different landscapes and locations. I can’t ever imagine running out of inspiration in Cornwall. I can’t go anywhere here, for work or pleasure, without picking up a million artistic inspirations.”
This year, The Roseland is the place that has inspired Jo’s work, an area famous for its rolling natural landscape and lush plant life. “It has been a revelation spending time on The Roseland peninsula,” says Jo. “Throughout my career I’ve done a lot of work in response to the Atlantic north coast, which is pretty exposed and rocky, and can be very dramatic. The Roseland, though, is different – it’s so sheltered and so much softer, and has all these glorious floral colours in the spring and summer. It has the same white sand and blue water as the north coast, but the cliffs are just dazzling with all those beautiful Sea Pinks and swathes of purple Rock Sea Spurrey, and the violet-blue of Spring Squill. It’s glorious there! I am so inspired by it, so those are the colours I’ve poured into my new Roseland Collection, colours which reflect all that botanical beauty by the sea.” The collection includes bowls, mirrors and Jo’s distinctive fold-form vases, as well as hangings and wall-mounted work, and is available at all Jo’s galleries this summer. “I really love it and I hope that our visitors will love it and the Artisan Beachcomber collection too.”