The New Zealand-born paint maker tells Busola Evans how her career was fuelled by her passion for vintage textiles and her unusual sources of inspiration, from Lord Snowdon to soil management.
‘Quiet’ is a word often used to describe the colours from Atelier Ellis, the makers of the much sought-after handmade paints, cleverly complex in pigment but soothing in existence. But steer the brand’s founder, New Zealand-born Cassandra Ellis, onto her passion subject and she is anything but. While in person she may look as understated as one of her offerings, she is refreshingly vocal about the intense fervour she holds for her work. ‘I have always been obsessed with beauty and making it at the highest level that you possibly can,’ she explains. ‘I have never been interested in the ‘just ok’ level of doing things. I read a lot, think a lot and look a lot and I hope that is the difference between what I do and what other people do. I actually really care about it.’
Atelier Ellis was launched in 2018 and its pared-back aesthetic quickly established itself as the choice for the more contemplative and discreet. Undoubtedly one reason behind its success is the paints have a sense of the familiar and a feeling of comfort while their muted, muddied appearance infuses modernity while hinting at the past. Her whites, for instance, make a softer backdrop than the versions from many of her contemporaries, like the warm and welcoming Milk which echoes the neutral often favoured by the Victorians. And deeper colours tease out varying tones in different light, such as the Totara, a forest green named after the legendary New Zealand tree with its rich hints of black.
Cassandra’s influences for her paint colours stretch far and wide. ‘I read newspapers and political magazines and look at things that have nothing to do with interiors at all,’ she explains. ‘I get influences from everywhere – food, fashion, politics, soil management, gardening, poetry…this is how I form my opinions. I never look at other paint companies.’
Totara, a forest green, is named after the legendary New Zealand tree. Photograph: Kalina Krawczyk
Interestingly Cassandra does not conceive a colour by referencing a hue but is more focused on the feelings she inhabits or is trying to evoke. ‘My husband always says I have synthesia when it comes to colour.’ she says of her sensitivity. True to form, her Winifred Green was sparked from an exhibition of the works of the artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson.
‘She was just so joyous and generous with her colours, Cassandra recalls. ‘I didn’t make Winifred Green from any of her colours or paintings. I just thought she felt to me to be a soft green.’ Such is the strength of Cassandra’s intuition that when the painter’s granddaughter ordered a sample, she burst into tears of emotion on seeing it.
And a recent addition to her paints is Waving and Smiling, a delicate pink inspired by a photograph taken by Lord Snowdon of celebrated potter Lucie Rie’s hands covered in clay. ‘I just thought how wonderful it was and what a human, lovely pink,’ she says. ‘I don’t scan the colour but I do it by researching, thinking and feeling.
‘It’s the feelings and thoughts we get when we look at beautiful clothes and interiors which really lifts us up. Take a Robert Kime interior, it’s not just thrown together, it was very clear that he thought carefully about it and you can tell when you look at people who try to emulate his work that it’s not the same thing.’
Cassandra has always had an eye for colour and design. ‘My mother was a seamstress so I have always done that. I can whip you up a pattern, sew something. I love it. I call it material intelligence – I like the mind and the hand making something beautiful.’Her dream was to work in couture – she had an obsession with couturists from the 1920s and 1930s with a particular fondness for Vionette – but that seemed an impossibility for a teenager growing up in Auckland. Instead she moved into television set and event design and then found a contented home in the world of textiles where she regularly hand dyed materials and wrote four successful books.
‘Even when I was working in set design and TV, people asked how I got certain colours to work together,’ says Cassandra. ‘I’ve always been very colour-led and have found it easy to put colours together.’ The transition to developing her own paints, shaped by the palette of the vintage textiles she loved working with, was almost inevitable. ‘I had been thinking about it for a while,’ she says. ‘I had always mixed my own paint colours anyway because they were never quite faded or dirty enough. They were always a bit sharp or hard, it was always a bit off in my eye. I quickly realised I loved it more than everything else.’Her launch effort had 18 colours, today there are 90. In spite of the brand’s success, it remains a tight-knitted team of six. ‘One of the benefits of being small is that I choose the quantity of pigments and that makes a better colour, while other companies are on a very strict budget or formula,’ she says.
She studied economics back in New Zealand which may explain the mathematical approach she has to producing her paints – mixing different pigments, a tweak there, a fiddle there. Up to 20 versions of a colour is created, brushed out and painstakingly examined under different lights before a final formula is agreed upon. Her home, a 2000sq apartment set in a former school in south London, is as tranquil as one would expect and a showcase for her paints. ‘I have Khadi, Cass, Piha and Aged Black, that’s probably my favourite – it’s like scorched wood. Cotta is another one of my favourites that is in the bathroom. I live quite neutrally because I see a lot of colour all day every day.’
The neutral Cass is one chosen by Cassandra as a restful backdrop in her home. Photograph: Kalina Krawczyk
Future plans involve the company working on more social enterprise projects which will include assisting disadvantaged people and supporting fledgling creatives. ‘Success will be when I am 80 and I’m working through a square and there’s a food truck, paid for by us, feeding people delicious food,’ says Cassandra. ‘That is success to me, not having five houses.’
But what will remain constant is the celebration of individuality, not trends or seasons. ‘Paint is for everyone. I really like the idea that everyone is welcome. It’s a really nice way to get people to express themselves. Whether it is 1ltr or 500, it gives the opportunity to tell a story and encourages other people to do the same.
‘The joy of life is the freedom and opportunity to be exactly what you want to be – and that’s what I am mostly interested in.’