Emily Maude
Brighton-based illustrator and designer Emily Maude creates works on the glass as well as on paper, featuring Staffordshire dogs and lustreware jugs set against chinoiserie wallpaper. When on furlough last year, she shifted her focus to nearby Charleston, the East Sussex farmhouse that was once home to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Moved by its financial plight during the lockdown, she organized an auction of work by fellow artists, which raised £55,000. ‘I’ve loved Charleston since I was a child. There’s something wonderful about that idea that every surface is a canvas. Good design can be applied to everything and should be affordable to anyone—that’s my ethos.’
Following the success of the Charleston auction, her work has blossomed, thanks, in part, to the power of Instagram.
Mrs. Maude brings a fresh perspective to the historic technique of reverse glass painting and imbues her paper works with a feeling of cabinets of curiosity or flea-market finds. Her pieces feature brightly colored birds sitting in branches, lustreware jugs bursting with flowers, Staffordshire dogs with imploring eyes staring up from patterned tablecloths.
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