I have always loved making things.

After attending school in Norway and Kent and then living in Switzerland, I attended Lucy Clayton’s secretarial and finishing school.  I couldn’t have been worse suited and left to work in the theatre, be an antique (some called it junk, now it would be vintage) dealer and run an ornate frame buying and selling business with a dodgy boyfriend. Then I decided I was going to be either a journalist, artist or actress.  I chose actress. Which in retrospect may have been a mistake.

After graduating from drama school, I toured and performed, ‘rested’, did a billion other jobs, but always found time to create, mostly hand-made gifts for people I loved. Eventually I started getting asked to make them on behalf of other people and so, almost by accident, I found myself here.

Initially, I made ‘worlds’ in bell jars and vintage boxes using pages from old books of poetry, papers and ephemera I found in antique markets.  Mostly they were commissions for wedding presents or gifts for loved ones. I even made a bell jar that travelled as part of the dressing room set for a famous hip hop artist whilst he was touring, and numerous ‘wrap presents’ for actors finishing movies, as well as going on to make pictures to decorate rooms in hotels and restaurants.  It was and is exciting to make one off creations, but as they could take weeks, or even months, I started to make word pictures too.

I live and work in Primrose Hill, where I have been for over twenty years. It’s where I decided I was going to live over thirty years ago while I was a drama student. So at least one thing went to plan.

Sophia Langmead.

Photo © Sophia Langmead.