Liv & Dom: Ceramacists/ Illustrators
Tell us a bit about yourself….
We‘re 25 year old twin sisters who live and work in Lewes with our cat Persie. We have an eponymous ceramics, illustration, and design brand called ‘Liv & Dom’ that we started when we were studying together at university. The bulk of our practice is making ceramics in our home studio and selling them worldwide through our online shop which we run between the two of us. Everything from design, through to making, photography, packing etc is done solely by us. We usually have a couple of collaborations on the go at any given time, for example at the moment we’re working on limited edition candles for the brand Earl of East and limited edition pregnant versions of our nude incense holders for Dutch lifestyle blogger Nina Pierson’s upcoming MAMEN book launch. We also teach our nude incense holder workshop at least once a month in London with our partners Earl of East.
Image by Lola Scott
What inspires you?
Really so many things! As cliché as is it, nature is a big inspiration, in particular the South Downs where we’re really lucky to now live and work. Not just the beautiful scenery, flora, and fauna but having a peaceful pace of life has given us the headspace to get some great new ideas this year. The Bloomsbury set and their artistic and lifestyle values is really inspiring, being down the road from Charleston house really amplifies that. We have a Duncan Grant painting, and have dabbled in painting furniture and lamps in the same way they did. In terms of artists that inspire us, Henry Laurens and Matisse are go to guys. We like to look outside of our discipline a lot to artists working now in textiles, jewellery design and fashion for inspiration as well. Instagram is of course an absolute treasure trove for this, and we see it as part of our job to keep up to date with what everyone is up to in these complementary areas to keep informed and on trend!
Image by Lola Scott
What makes you happy?
The simple things really. We spent 4 years after university struggling a lot financially, running ‘Liv & Dom’ from Dom’s childhood bedroom, so just having a home for us to live and work in makes us happy every day! Seeing our friends and family happy, and being able to spend quality time with them. Surrounding ourselves with beauty in all aspects of our lives. This can definitely be seen as materialistic or indulgent, but we feel it can really add to anyone’s overall happiness if done in a considered way. Oh, and our cat also brings us joy every day!
Who is your style icon and why?
We don’t really have a style icon, or icons in general as a rule! A lot of modern style icons and fashion bloggers have access to an endless supply of clothes, including a lot of fast fashion, which is hard to be truly inspired by. So the key thing we really focus on with our clothes is where they come from and this something we definitely took from our mum, so let’s say our mum is our style icon. She has always looked for quality garments, and vintage and charity shop bargain finds, now we also source most of what we wear and what is in our home this way. We were definitely not the richest growing up but this didn’t get in the way of how our mum put her outfits together with good quality clothes and made her home beautiful! This and a few well made, well designed pieces from independent brands and the odd seasonal staple on sale from the high-street rounds out our (shared) wardrobe.
Image by Lola Scott
What are you reading and listening to at the moment?
At the moment Dom is reading Howards End by E. M. Forster. We both have a taste for period novels of the romantic persuasion… I’ve been reading the Communist manifesto. I found it in a charity shop recently and was drawn to it. My boyfriend coincidentally bought a copy around the same time and we’ve been reading it together before bed. Things have got extremely political everywhere you look, so it feels quite appropriate!
We’re so busy with making stock for Christmas that free time has been hard to come by, so we’ve been terrible at getting new music at the moment other than using discover weekly on spotify once every couple of weeks and getting the odd new song here and there. We work with singles not albums (like a lot of our generation), a few tracks we’ve been listening to a lot recently are: My riverboat by Nicolas Krgovich, Coloured Emotions by Night Moves, and Love You This Summer by Big Black Delta.
Image by Lola Scott
What do you like about SIDELINE?
We really love the colour stories that are unique to each collection, they’re carefully considered and really beautiful. Also the practicality of all the clothes, including the dresses, is fantastic. Great quality fabrics, with features like pockets in skirts and reversible jackets. They are made to be worn in real life by real women, not just in a photoshoot. We own a jacket that we bought from a sample sale and we love it!
Image by Lola Scott
Liv and Dom wear a selection of our AW19 collection available online here.
Image by Lola Scott