Brilliant Botanicals is inspired by our passion for bamboo, our research that brings the connection to our local story of the pottery industry through their caneware and surface pattern designs from the late 1700’s onwards.
For our first phase of this strand of our work, that has taken place in Stoke town between October 2024 and May 2025, as we were awarded funding to develop two projects as part of the Stoke High Street Accelerator Greenspace Project through Stoke-on-Trent City Council and funds from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
We have worked with Rob Fenton, as lead artist and Reiko Kaneko, both with distinctive visual styles and approaches. For more about Rob and Reiko read our ‘introducing Rob & Reiko’ post below.
With Rob, Brilliant Bamboo has also explored paint and materials we use for creating murals. We chose to work with Keim’s mineral paints, to make the artworks the kindest to the environment as possible.
Our first phase was supported by: Canal & River Trust, Keim UK, Mode Architects, PH Productions, Spode Museum, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, and Tigerbite.
Additional local suppliers and artists include: Alastair Barnett, Atlas Scaffolding, Hannah Hiles, Kirsty Smith, QPS Print, and Screentec Print Essentials.
We also created a special edition screenprint designed by Rob and printed by people from the area at events. We used AIR-INK ink’s which take carbon from the atmosphere and pollution to make the ink.
We are proud our first phase, and are looking for partners, opportunities and locations for more, if you’re interested we’d love to hear from you.
