At the Edge of the Land

Notes from Sennen Cove, where we photographed our Autumn Collection.

For a few days earlier this year, we packed up our new autumn collection and headed west, to a house just outside Sennen Cove on Cornwall’s Atlantic edge.

When we began thinking about how we wanted to photograph it, we kept coming back to the idea of place, and to the way the right surroundings can quietly change how things feel.

We wanted somewhere with warmth and texture. Somewhere characterful, but not overly polished. A place where things had been weathered, used and, somehow, made better for it.

Sennen gave us plenty to work with.

There is the granite, of course, and the weathered stone. Whitewashed cottages and painted boats. Coils of rope, faded signs and colours softened by salt and sun. Then there is the light, shifting constantly across the bay, bright one moment and altogether moodier the next.

But what stayed with us most was the sense that Sennen is still very much a place being lived in.

At one end of the beach, the harbour is a working one. Boats sit beside the slipway amongst ropes, pots and buoys. Surfers cross paths with fishermen. Wetsuits dry outside. Dogs wander past. People come and go.

Nothing feels particularly arranged.

There is life and usefulness alongside the beauty, which somehow makes the beauty better.

The places we tend to remember are rarely the most immaculate ones. They are the places with a little patina to them, where time has softened the edges and things feel as though they belong.

Sennen has that quality in abundance.

Stone worn smooth by weather. Timber bleached by the sea air. Paint fading gently rather than being hurriedly replaced. Buildings and objects that seem entirely comfortable with the marks left on them by everyday life.

And beyond the harbour, everything opens out. The wide curve of Whitesands Bay, the cliffs and the Atlantic horizon. The light changes quickly here, and the whole place seems to shift with it.

For us, that was what made Sennen feel right.

It shared so many of the qualities we are continually drawn to: warmth, usefulness, texture, character and a certain ease with imperfection.

A place that feels all the richer for having been lived in.