From Cloth To Clay

One of the UK’s leading pottery designers talks to Sarah Ford about life at the cutting edge of fashion.

- Sarah Ford

AS ONE half of trailblazing designer duo Foale & Tuffin, Sally Dennis dressed the likes of Twiggy, Jane Asher and Julie Christie in the 1960s.

Their fun clothes struck a chord with busy young women keen to throw off the 1950s look worn by their mothers. And the wives and girlfriends of pop stars bought the clothes sold in their Carnaby Street store.

Sally made the move to Somerset in the 1970s and later swapped a career in textiles for the world of ceramics when she and her husband, Richard Dennis, rescued the ailing Moorcroft Pottery.

They launched Dennis Chinaworks in 1993 and the studios are based in the converted stables of their Victorian gothic rectory in the South Somerset village of Shepton Beauchamp.

On my visit we sit and chat at a work table - their magnificent pots lining the walls – and Sally takes me back to her youth. She tells me her father had been a very keen artist and was determined that, unlike him, his daughter would get to art school.

Sally Tuffin and Marion Foale met at Walthamstow School of Art before studying fashion at the Royal College of Art and then deciding to work together.

“The plan was that you left college and went to work for a big company and Marion and I thought, well actually, they’re not doing anything we like so we’ll give it a try ourselves,” Sally recalls.

Their style was different, comfortable to wear and in tune with the 1960s youth scene. In the beginning they did all the work on sewing machines that they had been given for their 21st birthdays.

“We lived in Nottinghill Gate (it wasn’t smart then) and would go to a retail shop to buy the fabric, but when things developed later we realised you could buy wholesale,” Sally laughs.