The pleasure of making something exist that didn’t exist before

There is something profoundly human in the pleasure of making something exist that didn’t exist before.

A tangible pleasure in using one’s own agency, hands, feelings and judgement to meld, shape, touch, handle and craft something real and physical. What it is to take something unformed and turn it into something beautiful. Milk becomes cheese, fabric becomes clothing and paint on walls becomes a home.

Making – making anything is part of the mundane everydayness of our lives. We make dinner, mend clothes, grow flowers  and arrange vignettes of our possessions. Everyday doing what should actually be recognised as magical. To make well and to make things beautiful  is to elevate and enrich how and what we live with. I think that the richest source of human happiness is the ability to make and provide for ourselves. We are as in control of how and what we live with as we can be – if we have the luck of choice.

At Atelier Ellis, at its simplest, when we mix a tin of paint we follow a process: we print your order and select the right colour, size and type of paint base. We then wrap and label that tin, add pigments into it, shake it, check it, seal it and package it into a box with invoices and other helpful printed material.

But this isn’t really what we do. Every part of this process has been thought about through the filter of “is it beautiful”. Not just visually – although that is super important, but also our materiality, systems and efficiency so that what you receive also feels ‘beautiful’.

Creating a colour starts with research and thinking. Whether this is a completely new colour or an addition to a family of current colours, I take time to think about why we should add it. Then I make it. It may take three attempts, or it may take twenty. We check that the right percentage of pigments is used, check the colour in different lights and next to our existing colour family. Tiny nuances are adjusted – a whiff of violet over black oxide here, or green oxide over yellow ochre there. Tiny, exceptionally important details that are considered before we finalise the colour. We then test it, formulate it and programme it into our software. Finally, the name for the colour. Well, that is a whole other beautiful process…

Then the dance of storytelling and photography begins. A new map of colour is created and hundreds of samples are hand painted. So what is ostensibly a simple combination of ingredients and pigments, instead becomes a memory in your home – of kitchen cupboards or a room for a new baby or beloved parent. We hopefully pass the beauty of making onto you.

I believe we all need to make. We may be bodies moving, but we are also life-forces. Whether paint, pickles or pottery, we need to use our hands and we need to make it beautiful.

For Chapter 2, we exult in the mythic and the mundane – why making something ordinary into something extraordinary is one of the most honest paths to human happiness.

Our new visual story of colour celebrates Sadhika, choices and the joy of creating.

Cassandra x