A discussion with decorative artist Tess Newall about the challenges and joys in the shift from creator or maker to business founder. 

Welcome to Up With The Lark And, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs hosted by me Calandre Orton. 
Today, someone we feel we know and a concept we think that we fully grasp. I wonder if perhaps we need to look afresh at both. 

Tess Newall is a decorative artist famed for her murals adorning the most extra ordinary spaces and places. Her work finds life on surfaces in castles and townhouses, hotels and orangeries across the globe. She has worked with a extra ordinary lsit of interior designers and brands and enterprises. It seems the set designer in her continues to shine through. And if that was not enough, she has a wallpaper, fabric and furnishings to her name as well. Vision, grit and charm appear as the cornerstones. Each important and admirable; potent when combined. 

We feel we know her. We have enjoyed seeing her beautiful, whimsical, Brambly Hedge, modern day Charleston work of art of a home. We marvel at her delightful trio of children bedecked in nighties and wellies. We admire, in awe, the commitment and hard work Tess clearly puts in. But there is always so much more to a creative enterprise than meets the eye. I suspect Tess of being an iceberg and I look forward to exploring the depths today. 

And what will we be ruminating on? The ‘build the airoplane as you fly the airoplane’ life that is that of the maker or artist turned entrepreneur. So many talented makers and artists across fabric, paint, wood, metal, mosaic, ceramics then find themselves running businesses. 

And with it, an arduous and rewarding adventure with its own specific set of challenges. Firstly, do you know that you suit the life of a maker or artist? When can you tell that there is enough demand to start a business? What is the key to building a successful brand alongside that business? How can you set the culture as you build a team? And, most importantly, how do you protect, nurture and evolve as your creative self?

So welcome to Up With The Lark And Tess Newall. I wonder if we might find ourselves eyeing up which surface in our home requires a mural and reassured by Tess’ honesty and insights. 

Tess Newall 

We are, it seems, fixated on the new, newness, what's new. A discussion with Rob Abrahms, co-founder of Coat Paints, on the pressure of newness. 

Welcome to Up With The Lark And, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs hosted by me Calandre Orton. 

We are, it seems, fixated with the new, newness, what’s new. Trends flurry by in weeks, the what’s new button on websites is pressed with an unquenchable thirst and we are all always asking, what’s next? I recently read The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric. In it he discusses the marshmallow brain and the acorn brain. Short term satisfaction versus long term thinking. A good challenge for us all to consider how to explore both, blend, mix, combine and when to enjoy the marshmallow or when to invest in the acorn. 

To explore this conundrum is Rob Abrahms co-founder of Coat Paints. I am sure that you are familiar with their open, straightforward, practical and cheering approach to paint and colour. Everyone is welcome. Every style is welcome. Every architectural era is welcome. Every story is welcome. It seems a great business from which to consider this. Every paint company must need to explore new colours, new finishes, fashions and trends espeically as paint so easily tranforms spaces and places and colour changes how we live and feel in our environment. 

So why is newness so powerful? When does the endless colour list go too far? How can we listen to customers and feedback effectively? When do we need to slow down? What impact does BCorp status have? And how can we all re-evaluate ’newness’ and its value in our own enterprises?

Coat Paints

Exploring what it means to be the CEO with Claire German, CEO of Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour. What does it mean? How does it work well? How do you know that you are ready to hire a CEO?

Welcome to Up With The Lark And, a podcast for creative entpreneurs hosted by me Calandre Orton. Up With The Lark is all about the intersection of creativity and commerce, making and profit, designing and selling. It is a space filled with potential and ideas and contradicitions and challenges. 

Today’s guest personifies this particular adventure. Claire German is the CEO of Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour. This is a place deeply significant in the world of interior design - it is a space for display, for conversation, for gathering, for selling and for community. 

Claire has been in this role since 2010 and has captained the ship to new shores - Focus, London Design Week and the WOW!house exhibition to name a few. At the recent press launch of the WOW!house 2026, I asked guests what their experience and perception of Claire was. The answer was clear - this is a lady who has big ideas and then makes them happen with great communication, energy and warmth. Easy to have great ideas but it’s powerful to make them happen. And so, it is clear that we all have a lot to learn from Claire.

Today we are going to explore a specific theme - that of the role of CEO. Whether you are at your kitchen table alone, managing a small team of freelancers or leading a hierarchy of employees, the skills of a CEO are pertinent. We will consider Claire’s journey to the role, what her job actually entails, the specific experience of leading a creative business, enacting her vision, leading a team and what the future holds. 

Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour
WOW!house

There is an inbuilt dissatisfaction that drives most entrepreneurs. But does this inhibit a critical element of celebration and reflection? We ask Tabi Jackson Gee founder of Them Outdoors how she feels one year after launch. 

Welcome to Up With The Lark And, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs hosted by me, Calandre Orton. 

Entrepreneurs are driven. They want to do better, push things on, develop, learn, explore the next material or the next nation, they want to know their audience better and offer them more. But does this inhibit a critical element of celebration and reflection? Does the drive it takes to run a business reduce fulfilment or satisfaction of the experience, the process, the adventure? Life’s moments of celebration are far more closely observed. The wedding industry and children’s birthday parties show us this in bright technicolour. But what about in business. How can we celebrate? How can we review, critique, evolve but also pat ourselves on the back along the way? The first year, the first hire, the first VAT return, the first big turnover number, the first time you are able to pay yourself properly. 

Tabi Jackson Gee is a gardening polymath. She is a garden designer, writer and now founder of Them Outdoors, An online gallery of garden furniture, bringing together a carefully selected group of creatives working in an exciting variety of crafts and materials. And it is Them Outdoors that we will explore today. Recently celebrating its first birthday, it struck me as a wonderful opportunity to consider that balance of critique and celebration, striving and satisfaction. We will hear about the idea, getting it to launch, the blend of different disciplines and what the second year might hold. 

Them Outdoors 
Craft Week at The Garden Museum

Patrick Williams, alongside his wife Neri, founded the interior design practice Berdoulat. In this conversation we explore his first book: The House Rules. It is part memoir, part point of view, part a plea for the house to rule. It is something to treasure as an object and as a window into Patrick’s mind. In this episode, we are fortunate enough to be sitting right at the heart of Patrick and Neri’s home in Bath where their shop and workspace are also to be found. 

I think that it is a safe assumption that anyone who makes, creates, designs is a keen observer. They are porous to the world around them. They notice. They absorb. A gift and a ritual all entwined. It is our good luck in this episode to closely observe one such observer. And whilst I am sure that Patrick observes cutlery and spectacles, cloud formations and apples, it is the observation of buildings that pre-occupies him. The work of Berdoulat is about homes, houses, spaces and places and some really rather wonderful furniture too. They excavate stories, eschew excess and breathe life into buildings. Quietly and with thoughtful intention. 

In this conversation, we will explore where the idea to write the book came from, the highs and lows of the writing process, the impact of the building within which it was created, the selection of imagery, the design of the book and why there just had to be 'another spoonful'. 

I am very grateful indeed to have worked with Holly Fisher on this exploration of sonic identity. She is the most excellent producer indeed. 

Berdoulat
The House Rules

A conversation with Sarah Peake, founder of interior design practice Studio Peake. Sarah's creative confidence and courage, independence of thought, work ethic and grit mean that she is admired far and wide by clients and the interior design industry alike. 

Welcome to the Up With The Lark 'Breakfast With' series. It is an opportunity to start your day alongside creatives I admire and consider to be ‘up with the lark’ sharing their thought for the day. We explore ideas about important teachers, places that inspire, the role of luck, originality and business lessons learnt over the perfect breakfast.

Sarah's references, inspirations and outlook are engaging, original and energetic. It is a wonderful insight into a designer and design studio. Every conversation I have had with Sarah entices action. This one certainly does. 

Studio Peake: www.studiopeake.com 

A conversation with Imogen Royall, co-founder of Nothern Pasta Co. A case study in doing simple things well and with determination and joy. 

Welcome to Up With The Lark And, a podcast and substack for creative entrepreneurs hosted by me, Calandre Orton. I am a business advisor in the arts and creative industries and have always worked at the intersection of the creative and the commercial.

For me, being “Up With The Lark” is all about starting a new day well. My approach to creative entrepreneurship is to embrace new ideas, new beginnings, new growth, new plans and new perspectives. And so as an early riser and lover of breakfast, I offer this series entitled ‘Breakfast With’. It an opportunity to start your day alongside creatives I admire and consider to be ‘up with the lark’ sharing their thought for the day. We will explore ideas about important teachers, places that inspire, the role of luck, originality and business lessons learnt over the perfect breakfast.

Today, we are joined by Imogen Royal co-founder of Northern Pasta Co. Their story acts as a case study for many of my favourite themes. The first is that it is a tale of doing simple things well, really really well. Secondly, it’s about seeing and understanding a gap in the market and dancing your way into it. And finally, joyfully, packaging. Oh how I love excellent packaging. Imogen has wonderful wisdom to share. I do hope that you enjoy it.

Northern Pasta Co: www.northernpasta.co.uk

In this special episode we are joined by British painter Emily Ponsonby to explore the importance, the relevance, the power of place - here you work, where you exhibit, where you travel, where your work finds home.

Before we go any further, if you aren’t familiar with her work I really would encourage you to take a moment to look her up here so that you can have her work in your mind’s eye. 

The work of Emily Ponsonby is an invitation. It is an invitation to remain still. It is something revealed and something hidden. It is onion layers making your eyes sting, leaving the board littered with skins both crisp and yielding. Once seen, these captures of togetherness remain. I want to pod peas and hear the conversation. I want to be in the picture not stood in front of it, an outsider to its beeswax scrapings. 'Place' sings from the canvas and from Emily’s story.
 
It would be easy to focus on the life of an artist as one about looking and telling stories and truths and one of canvas and paint and technique. We could happily, and fruitfully, spend our time wondering how Emily elicits life from the page but, for me, the commercial side creeps in. Working with galleries, applying for residencies, pricing your work. It all has a part to play. I have known Emily for some time and have watched her navigate both the work itself and the commercial side of things with energy and honesty, with courage and with trepidation. We all have a great deal to learn from her.
 
And so, let’s explore the settings within her work, her studio space, her travel and explorations, where her work ends up and the importance of her latest exhibition, A Warm Life Through Butter at Gillian Jason Gallery. 


Emily Ponsonby
Gillian Jason Gallery 
Up With The Lark 

A conversation about leaderhsip with Sandrine Zhang Ferron, founder of Vinterior. 

In this episode, a topic that creeps in to most of the work that I do with founders. It is leadership. Are you a leader? What ‘qualifies’ you to be one? What arena, idea, business or group of people are you leading? What is your leadership style? Is it working? And why does it matter? In the social media age, spend a great deal of time discussing ‘following’ and ‘followers’. But I wonder if we spend enough time considering ‘leading’ and ‘leaders’.

It brings me real joy to say that in this episode, we are going to adventure through this very concept with someone more than qualified to do so. Sandrine Zhang Ferron is the founder of Vinterior. This vintage furniture site is an excellent ‘what if we could…’ put into practice and I can’t imagine you haven’t browed its pages at some point. It is sustainability as a doing word, a verb rather than a concept or aspiration or guilty niggle. It has purpose and style woven in and Sandrine has big ambitions for its future. We are going to consider what Sandrine learnt from her years working in finance, how she got the idea off the ground, what it means to be a leader in your industry, a leader as a founder and a leader of a team. 

Vinterior: www.vinterior.co
Up With The Lark: www.upwiththelark.com 

A conversation with Beggars Run, purveyors of suits and interesting ideas, about their story and their move over to New York. What can we learn from the American Dream?

Welcome to Up With The Lark And, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs hosted by me, Calandre Orton. I am a business consultant working in the creative industries and my career has always existed at the intersection of the creative and the commercial. This podcast captures conversations built on curiosity, optimism and the nitty gritty detail of what it actually takes as a creator and entrepreneur. 

A few years ago I had a conversation with Taymoor Atigetchi, founder of Papier, about the impact of his Iranian roots on the way that he does business. The thought stayed with me and stayed with me to the point of preoccupation. And so now here is the fourth in the series of interviews with entrepreneurs working in and influenced by a variety of countries and cultures. 

In this episode, the United States of America. The UK and the US share a long and complex relationship filled with significant trade, cultural exchange and "Love Actually" style cliches. What can we all learn from the promised American Dream?

I am delighted to say that we are joined by Cian McAuliffe, co-founder of Beggars Run. Raised in the Irish wild west (his words, not mine), clothes were the source of self expression and adventure and he was propelled around the world before landing in the Big Smoke. He observed that it was not possible to buy a well made suit in an interesting fabric that did not cost the earth. So he decided to make some and did so above an East End boozer. The suits cut a fine figure and so did their growing client base. A creative, non-conformist, confident crowd gathered. And that crowd wore suits of the highest order. They hot footed over to the US and Beggars Run opened in New York in 2023. 

We find out about the cloth, the craft, the cut and the life of a tailor. We hear about Shoreditch in London and Nolita in New York. We compare and contrast the style, the customer and the ways of doing business. 

So welcome to Up With The Lark And Beggars Run. 

Beggars Run: www.beggarsrun.com/uk
Up With The Lark: www.upwiththelark.com