Swimmer on Brighton Beach 2

Lotta Cole-Hatvany 

Swedish ceramic artist, interior designer and product designer / maker. Has lived and worked in London, in the Bay Area of San Francisco, and in Brighton since 2022.

Her ‘Brighton People’ collection of ceramic figurines, combine two of Lotta’s favourite things in life; people watching and sculpting clay. “There is such an amazing array of different people in Brighton, and I wanted to capture the essence of this colourful crowd in individual and expressive figurines”. They are all sculpted out of stoneware, bisque fired, the fine details are then applied with underglaze, a clear glaze is added on top and in some cases a coloured glaze is brushed on part of the figurines before firing in the kiln again. Their shapes are inspired by traditional Swedish decorative handicrafts from Dalarna, the region in Sweden where Lotta’s family originates.

Graduated with first class honours in 2004 in BA Interior Design, from LCC at University of the Arts London. Lotta then worked for award winning architects Jestico + Whiles where she was lead interior designer on many high-end commercial projects internationally and at home, until 2011. Her final project with J + W was lead designer for the Playboy Club in Mayfair, London. Lotta then set up her own interiors practice where she completed several residential projects in west London, at the same time as running her homewares business, making handmade wooden homeware products, sold in the Design Museum Shop, Heals and many London boutiques. The various types of wood were sourced from her family’s forest in Sweden. After moving to California in 2017 Lotta made sculpting ceramics her focus and has continued this love of sculpting in her art studio in the North Laines of Brighton.

Width 120 cm  Height 200 cm