Three Layer Cake

mud australia:  A Success Story

I fell crazy in love with a fish platter by mud australia, seen on the pages of Vogue Entertaining + Travel magazine, and went on a crusade to find it when I was in Australia.  I didn’t find it, but bought a cheese platter instead.  Not buying more than one piece of mud australia tableware is one of the dumbest decisions I’ve ever made, and one that still torments me periodically.  Given the beauty of the hand-made piece, I never could have imagined that Melbourne-native Shelley Simpson, mud australia’s founder, has no ceramics training.  Instead, her background is in performing arts.  The pieces of her collection match up with her smooth and thoughtful reflections of how she began her career. 

Shelley came to ceramics via a roommate who had a pottery wheel.  Left to explore with the wheel one day, she discovered that she could in fact center clay over the wheel, a process Shelley likens to centering herself.  “When you’re comfortable with yourself, you’re centered.  It was all a very natural thing to me, but my roommate, who had had lots of ceramics courses and training wasn’t too thrilled to see that in one afternoon and with no input I was able to make shapes that could stay upright.” 

At Christmas and for special occasions she gave the pieces she made as gifts to family and friends.  Her friends encouraged her to take her work further.  “I was at a point where I had to take important life decisions.  I was 30 and had reached a ceiling in my career managing a restaurant.  The wake up call was when I went for a job and didn’t get it because I was overqualified.  I decided then that I had to do something for myself, make a business of my own,” Shelley explained. 

Taking advantage of an Australian government program which assisted start-up entrepreneurs with business courses and seed money, Shelley researched the market.  She went store to store to see what stores wanted in terms of ceramics, and came up with a product that filled a niche that was missing.  From the beginning, Shelley knew that she wanted to be commercially successful, not just personally satisfied.  She felt that the pieces she designed not only had to be beautiful, but they had to be functional.  Her standard continues to be that if she can’t use it in her house or doesn’t want it in her house, it won’t be produced.  “In school, they don’t teach you to market yourself, to create a niche.  You’ve really got to be courageous to put yourself out there,” she said.
 

In 1994, Shelley launched mud australia.  She produced her tableware pieces in earthenware.  The first years were tough, but she managed with a lot of support from her partner.  She also forged good relationships with stylists.  Their input helped her to develop her products.  “Donna Hay and I were starting out almost at the same time.  My shop was around the corner from the Marie Claire offices where she was working then.  She would come up at lunch time and say she needed something in a certain blue, and I would work to give her that.” Shelley explains.  Staying open and hearing input from her clients continues to be an influential factor in the development of her range for both shape and color.

Once the earthenware range was complete and took off with restaurants, she moved from earthenware to porcelain to minimize imperfections and improve cost effectiveness.  “I loved working with porcelain, it felt all so natural to me.  I was scared to lose color, but that challenge made me try harder.  I love putting my lab coat on and experimenting with pigments,” she says enthusiastically.  Today, the mud australia range is produced in fourteen colors, the newest of which are plum, true red, sand, and orange. (above:  table setting)

In order to sell her product, Shelley has at times literally taken her product from store to store.  This type of persistence got her into the U.S. market, her largest market.  It is also what has helped her grow mud’s production to ten people, including herself, and two in administration. 

Today mud is available in U.S., Australia, UK, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Japan, Sweden, and South Africa.

Your design philosophy.
It’s got to be functional and beautiful.  The most important thing to me is that it works in my environment.  If it doesn’t work in my environment and it’s not something I think I need, it doesn’t make sense for it to be part of the range, although some of the pieces don’t fit in my apartment!  They’re a bit big but they do make sense. 

The most difficult obstacle you’ve had to overcome in your professional career/business.  What obstacle do you still encounter?
It would have to be learning finance— learning how to deal with money, banks and the business side of it all.  I don’t think that anybody can be good at everything and if you want to have something that can support you that is artistic you need to be realistic about the financial aspect and how to balance your books.  The artistic and designing side comes naturally to many people but to make a business that runs and pays the bills and does what it needs to do and stays around year after year is not easy. 

An obstacle that I still encounter that’s tough for me is that I am not professionally trained in ceramics and for this, I am not really accepted in the crafts community in Sydney.  I think it’s strange that I’m not accepted really in New South Wales, yet other communities around Australia embrace what we do.  In a lot of respects I am taken more seriously outside of my environment than in my home.  I just got back from ICFF and we were well received there.  I can honestly say that while it’s tough for me, it’s not something I think about often.  What we do at mud australia works.  And I have my life outside of work.  Between the two, I don’t really have time to focus on it, except when the question is posed to me, like now!

To choose colors, I listen to the market.  I love going to trade shows and talking to people, listening to their input.  I’ve learned that I have to bring in a soft lavender next because I’ve been asked and told so much, and I agree that the color would fit in well.  Also, a color that’s hard to produce is always a welcome challenge.  Between the two new colors we’ve brought in, sand, a soft brown, and plum, a sort of bloody purple, the plum was actually easy and the brown was hard, and I thought it would be the opposite.  Working on that was great.
 

Have you noticed any global trends in ceramics?
I used to look at fashion magazines, but I’ve stopped doing that.  I’m not that interested anymore in forecasting.  Of course it’s hard to get away from those forecasters who work for clients who tell me what they’re looking for, but I prefer to go by a street mentality of keeping my eyes open and deciding what’s next.
 

How sensitive is mud australia’s collection to trends, both colors and shapes?
How much are we affected?  A client came in the other day and said she needed these three new colors—and I thought to myself “they’re not new!  I’ve had them in my collection for years!”  We’re dealing with boutique stores.  They choose their colors.  They evolve them the way they will most likely sell.  We don’t tell them what to take.  We allow them to put their personality into the merchandising.  It doesn’t matter if I like it or not.  So maybe what you see that’s put together by the stores may reflect trends. 

As for shapes, I’m struggling at the moment because I’m being asked to put a handle on a cup and I’ve always resisted because I continue to believe that it will spoil the form.  At the moment it’s affecting an area of our sales with tableware.  People like to buy sets in America, they want complete table settings and won’t buy sets with a piece missing.  Listening to what my clients are saying, people would embrace the product better with a handle.  But I think it’s superfluous!  If the content is too hot to drink, you shouldn’t be picking it up.  I can definitely say that the pitchers will remain without handles, but I guess I have to try putting one on a cup!  There’s also been a greater request for cake stands from the United States. 

 

Which markets have been the hardest to penetrate?  Why do you think?
They’re all different.  To get into the U.S. market, our biggest market right nowI literally stumbled around with a suitcase.  In Europe they don’t want to do it that way.  In Japan there are so many layers of formality, you can’t just go door-to-door.  I think Europe will be the hardest.  We’re not well represented there.  Scandinavian countries are looking at what we’re doing with great interest, but the more traditional markets are just tough because they are traditional and we’re not.  I remember when I moved from earthenware to porcelain, I thought it would be neat to take limoges and sell it back to ‘limoges’, the French.  So I did all my research, stayed up all hours making calls and wound up talking to Collette.  When I made my pitch, they responded “Why would we need you?  We have Tsé-Tsé!”  I guess the thing that’s quite lovely about the French market is that they look after their own.  I know I could go set up at Maison-Objet, but I don’t know how easy it would be to get into the market.  (above:  plates; below:  mud colour palette)

 
What are your best selling pieces?
It sells pretty much equally across the board. Dinner plates and salt dishes sell the most but the business generates more money from the fish platter, the large pebble bowl, and the medium nest bowl.  Serving ware is our strength.  In the beginning, I used to get really frustrated when I went to people’s places and they worked hard to make a gorgeous meal and they would come to the table with these huge platters designed for European castles that wouldn’t fit on the table and people couldn’t relax because they had to balance their plates on their laps.  I wanted to create pieces that sat on the table but didn’t take up the whole table.  And those are the pieces that sell best because I’m most passionate about them.  I’m able to explain them best and get people passionate about them.  It’s really viral the way mud works.  We don’t buy magazine ads, we don’t advertise that way.  It’s all word of mouth.
 

Do you follow the work of other ceramicists?  If so, whose work do you particularly admire?
I kind of don’t but only because I don’t have time.  It’s interesting too because I don’t want to look at what other people are doing, but I love going into the Met or the MOMA (Josiah Wedgewood’s black teapot) to look at the past.  When I do look at design I see so much homage (hmmmm) going on all over the place that I’d really rather not know.  There are very few original ideas left, and I think it’s hard to distinguish something you come up with from something you saw around.  It’s easy to blur lines.  I prefer to keep what I’m doing between me and the stores I create for and let them communicate their end users’ tastes.
 

What’s it like being a producer in Australia?  Do you feel isolated?  Does it mean that your target (style and marketing) is the Australian consumer, or…?
I don’t feel isolated at all being in Australia, however, I feel like we have a lot to prove because we’re a long way away but this is also liberating as we don’t have the weight or expectation of tradition and numbers to bring us down.  Also, I think our palette of colours reflects the unique ultra clear light we get over here. 

Australian design doesn’t have the support or tradition of an established design industry and manufacturing sector or the population base of other countries so if you want to make a living from your design here then you have to be either ultra mainstream and commercial or find your niche, then learn how to manufacture and market and sell to that niche. All of this makes it easier to go overseas because you already have the skills but it was and is interesting to see the reactions of various markets. I’m really thrilled that people in Japan and Scandinavia appreciate what we do enough to buy it … 

I think our range is pretty global in that there is a shape for just about any market as long as they can recognize the value in hand made porcelain.  (below: glazing of pebble bowls and salt dishes)

 

Time Capsule:  Which three of your designs (in which colors) would you include that say the most about you and the times we live in today?

--A red fish platter!  Just the fact that we can saturate porcelain with that much pigment that it will hold a color like that is quite fantastic.  (below:  fish platter in white oval)

--The salt dish in ocean, our tiniest piece, they’re so sweet and serene! 

--The medium nest bowl maybe because it’s such a fabulous Asian shape.  I don’t know whether people think of Australia as being in the middle of Asia., but it is so very close and multicultural.  The neighbourhood where I have the factory for example, it’s filled with great Greek delis and Vietnamese butchers and pho shops.  I have three adopted sisters who are Thai.  Asia is such an important part of Australia, even though a lot of our population is Anglo Saxon, I think that the shapes are Asian inspired and images that feel comfortable to me.  I don’t’ know what colour in the nest.

What motivates you?
My two children Spen and Violette and my taskmaster partner, James. 

 

 What food or dessert best describes your design style  What was it ten years ago?  What would you like it to be in the future?
Now: Bombe Alaska. Then: Golden syrup dumplings. Future:  Prawn cocktail (all organic and sustainably farmed and slow food of course.)

The first thing you notice in a restaurant?
Probably lighting and colour.  And I like a banquette.  I like sitting in a booth with a padded seat.  I love diner seats. 

Eating what food brings back the best memories?
Depends where I am.  I don’t know.  That’s really hard.  From Australia you travel a lot, and many of my food memories are place specific.  So for example I like going to Indonesia and having food from there. 

The last piece of art you fell in love with?
A raffle ticket from my children’s school won me a beautiful and monumental water colour study of the ocean cliffs across the road from our house in Bondi, Sydney. The artist is John Beard –and the “real” work just won a major Australian landscape art prize. 

Your favorite flea market find or best deal on an interior purchase?  Where is it today?
The John Beard water colour!  It was like a $2 raffle ticket. At the moment it’s on the wall in our loungeroom. And loving my new Vitsoe shelves.

No home is complete without…
A comfortable couch.  When we rent a holiday house, I have to see the couch before we commit.  I have to see what it looks like because I can’t relax without a comfortable couch.  (Editor’s note:  As Shelley speaks, James the Taskmaster dozes on their comfortable couch.) 

I’ll always pick up the magazine if _________________ is on the cover.
(laugh) Probably something really dumb like Brad and Angelina.  I have a terrible fear of flying, so I pick up trashy stuff to completely take my mind off of flying.  I’m not really impressed by, nor do I care at all, whether Jen will really have a baby…  I’m not into fashion.  I don’t have enough of what’s in them. 

Celebrity you’re intrigued by.
No celebrities but Miuccia Prada and those fabulous Italians (Missoni family, etc …) who have the creativity and access to manufacturing and marketing and markets I find fascinating. 

Whenever you travel, you always bring ____________________ with you.
Fizzy vitamins and echinacea tablets and Xanax because I’m an extremely nervous flyer with a hypochondriac’s belief in the restorative powers of powders and I’m generally working so I have to hit the ground running and it’s a 23hr flight from Sydney to anywhere… 

You can never have too many…
Pieces of mud…no?