Ceramic artist and designer Lesley Anton gets her inspiration from many sources; the natural world, architecture, the human form, and machinery. Her lighting designs are a surprising and intriguing addition to any interior.

Anton’s bold, sculptural forms and lovely textural surfaces make a strong statement, yet they do not overpower. She tempers their exaggerated scale and silhouettes with quiet color palettes, in hues stolen from nature: snow, sky, mud, sand, algae. The high-fired clay finishes are made idiosyncratic with eucalyptus pods, lotus root slices, and other organic elements impressed into the clay that, she explains, “mess up” and sensualize what might otherwise be another hard-edged modern object.

Anton’s design approach might be termed “organic modern,” reaching back to the 1950’s, with a nod as well to Japanese minimalism. Her aesthetic plays on the serendipitous character of the high firing process where the beauty of the finished product is its intentional imperfection.