Stephen Gillies and Kate Jones make contemporary glass in their studio in Rosedale Abbey, where they are inspired by the elemental beauty of their rural surroundings – the North York Moors.

I have been working with Kate and Stephen for more than a decade. Their first site was hard-coded with a Paypal shopping basket, but it soon became clear that they needed something more up to date. As world class artists (they have pieces in prestigious public collections, including the V&A), they needed a better platform to display their portfolio, exhibition and public collections listings, publications, journal posts, as well as sell pieces online. Most importantly, they needed to be able to update all of this content themselves. They needed a better web presence and a new brand identity.

London design agency, StudioSmall, created their new identity and print materials in 2014, and also their web designs. I was happy that Kate and Stephen still wanted me to do all the web development. I built the site in WordPress, using Woocommerce to power the online shop. This was in fact my first custom theme.

In 2020 it was Gillies Jones’s 25th anniversary so we decided to revamp the site. They wanted to sell seasonal limited editions which meant some major reworking of the shop, so we decided to give the whole site an overhaul in the process. I created new designs, loosely based on the original designs by Studio Small, and the site was completely rebuilt, using new technologies available to WordPress which made the site more efficient.

I feel honoured to still be working with Gillies Jones after all this time, helping them adapt their digital presence to their evolving business and art practice.