Roelofs & Rubens story
Meet the founders
Roelofs & Rubens first saw light in 2006, out of love of and inspired by traditional blue and white Delft style pottery.
Along with our studio dog Maggie, we run our ceramics business from our cottage home in Berkshire. Over the years, our collection of decorations has grown and includes the popular ranges of animals and flowers and a lot more. The most popular by far is our Christmas range. We also have a large collection of Cathedrals, Abbeys, Museums, Teapots etc. in our bespoke hanging decoration range.
Recently we have re-intoduced our tiles and are steadily expanding the range.
And very recently we have added our bespoke gifts to “the fold”. We take on commissions where we create unique designs and source the the bisque from one of our suppliers and hand paint to our customers’ specifications.
Delft blue... with a twist
What started as a sidebusiness designing and making tableware with a funky vibe evolved into a decorative ceramics cottage industry and the ‘Delft Blue’ approach expanding into blue/white and multi-colour, still with a funky vibe.
We love all our decorations and don’t have the heart to retire a product. That’s why our Christmas range is so huge!!
Made by our own hands
Piet has trained and worked as a graphic designer and Monty as a manager in a manufacturing company so this ceramics business was a new and exciting experiment with kiln explosions, cracks and warps and the never ending battle against pinholes.
“Vallen en opstaan” as they call it in Dutch; fall down and get up, (trial and error kind of thing) but we did learn and have a very big box of “seconds” to prove it.
Together with a small team
Together with a dedicated team of fantastic helpers, we (Piet and Monty) work from our cottage-studio.
Tasks range from very traditional, like rolling the clay with the rolling pin, cutting shapes with cutters and sponging bisque edges to high-tech CAD drawings and 3D printing.
Everything takes place in our home; clay rolling in the kitchen, painting and assembly in the front room, our living room is an office, our bedroom doubles as a photo studio and packaging room, and the garage is where we keep the kiln for firing. There’s a comfy sofa and a telly somewhere in the house…..
Did somebody say...Bespoke?
And then somebody asked: “Can you make me a cathedral hanging thingy?” and that was the start of something big!
That first customer ordered a ‘whopping’ 40 decorations and then ordered another 40 and then another. These were big numbers for us at that time but now we’ve created over 60 different designs and might be only ‘mildly shocked’ at orders over 1000 pieces.
Where to find us
We are based in Berkshire. Our nearest major town is Newbury a few miles off the M4/A34 junction 13.
If you would like to visit please call Monty on 01488 668154 to arrange an appointment.
