Interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator Francesca Anfossi doesn’t have a traditional studio, instead, she has Camden community landmark, Rochester Square. In 2016, along with her partner Eric Wragge, Francesca began restoring the former nursery, installing a ceramic studio, garden and kitchen built on the creative cycle: from the earth (clay) to plants (garden) to plates (food). As well as being her own personal workshop, over the last seven years Rochester Square has become a bedrock for Camden locals and London-wide ceramic artists.

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After training in fine-art, Francesca’s attention turned to the social aspect of craft, with clay emerging as her primary medium. She says: “I am inspired by its very nature – a versatile, inclusive and non-hierarchical material.” These principles have become the life-force of her art practice and work at Rochester Square, where she invites school children to participate in ceramics workshops and learn in the studio’s garden; established artists such as Jonathan Baldock, Caroline Achaintre and Anne Ryan to prepare new bodies of work for upcoming exhibitions; and a rolling roster of Studio Members to produce their work, host workshops and collaborate on projects, which includes Rochester’s own sculpture garden.

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It is difficult to know exactly where Francesca’s work at Rochester Square ends and her personal practice begins. “They are inextricably connected” she says, “with the majority of my projects conceived in direct collaboration with communities and evolving according to their needs.” After winning Whitegold Projects International Ceramics Prize 2021, Francesca worked with Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change to present A Cornish Banquet: a community feast using plates and picnic blankets made from collages depicting the participants favourite foods; and most recently she produced and contributed to A tavola con Rochester Square, an exhibition of ceramic furniture and objects by the artists at Rochester Square at Museo della Ceramica in Savona, Italy, which runs until 26 February 2024.

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Playing in the space between domesticity and non-functional sculpture, Francesca’s works span multiple categories: from furniture and lighting to objects and installation. She says: “I create ceramics, but I am interested in how the interaction of art making shifts pieces naturally into functional objects.” Many of Francesca’s most prevalent pieces, such as her egg cups and baskets, have emerged out of the practical necessities of daily life at Rochester Square. “We have seven hens” she says, “and every time I went to collect their eggs, I didn’t know where to place them without them rolling around or looking like a pile.”

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It is this perpetual conversation between community and making that so defines Francesca’s work and has enabled Rochester Square to become an engine for social life. Alongside hosting workshops, gardening clubs and studio spaces, Monday’s are dedicated to communal lunches for Studio Members (who also garden together), and between 2017 and 2019 bi-monthly dinners would be held for friends and neighbours to celebrate the studio’s activities. Here, meals would be cooked by volunteers and eaten from handmade bowls by Rochester’s artists. “Much of what we do is about giving the participants involved opportunities to learn new skills and form new social bonds” says Francesca. “Rochester Square allows me that direct engagement, and as a result the barriers between art and craft, professional and amateur, work and leisure are removed.”

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