JONO SMART & EMILY STEPHEN

Not just dab hands at moulding clay, Scotland's coolest potters have shaped a pretty idyllic life for themselves

- Natasha Radmehr

THIS LIFE

In 2014, as the embers of the festive period cooled and the promise of a new year gathered on the horizon, an architect in Glasgow and a potter from Devon began writing to one another on Guardian Soulmates. They chatted non-stop for 48 hours and got on so well that the potter, Jono, jumped on a flight to Glasgow to spend the first few days of 2015 with his new favourite person, Emily. You know when Harry tells Sally that once you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible? It was kind of like that. Except this pair were far too cool to have said anything of the sort.

They did discuss their individual aspirations for the future, though, as they strolled through Kelvingrove Park. Their hopes were uncannily aligned. “We chatted about what our perfect place to live would look like. For both of us it was a horseshoe-shaped white steading where we’d live and work on a few crafts,” says Emily, sitting at the kitchen table of the whitewashed farmhouse she and Jono moved to in 2020. “When we came up to view this place for the first time,” continues Jono, “we were like, ‘Hang on, is this the place we talked about?’”