Walking into Hope Bailey's’s Lookout Mountain home is like being in a different city or perhaps a design magazine. She and her husband Blythe took their 1930’s summer cottage back to the studs and reimagined it. The house is light, bright, airy and magical, much like her pottery. It makes you want to come inside, take off your shoes and stay awhile.
Hope is the hands and brains behind hope + mary, a line of porcelain tableware and lighting decorated with her own drawings of patterns, skulls and woodland creatures. She draws inspiration from running the wooded trails on the mountain and her childhood building forts and campfires in the woods.
"Any animal I encounter is always an awe inspiring gift," she says, "and it brings me great joy to draw them and then see other people's joy in their representation on my pieces." saya Hope.
Her studio is in the basement of her home, situated on a huge piece of sandstone. You can feel the cool mountain air that enticed the home’s original owners to the mountain. Hope's two dogs come out to greet you when you arrive. Dottie Dottie Brown Brown is a Labradoodle/Goldendoodle mix and Kitty, a sweet mix who looks like a wolf/husky.
Hope's home is the accumulation of her life. There are beautiful old prints her parents purchased from a print shop in Philly when she was growing up, her own paintings of old ladies, and of course her own pottery, from colorful vessels to porcelain lamps with handmade papier mache shades.
Her own children’s art mingles with art by friends and family photos. Everything tells a story. The Chinese lanterns she collected from Scotts Antiques while waiting on her daughter from China. The old ornate frame they found in the house while under construction, repurposed as a mirror in the master bathroom.
Hope started hope + mary in the fall of 2015 and hit the ground running at the Renegade Craft Fair in December 2015. She has a beautiful website where you can purchase her designs, but you might just want to poke your head in her studio to feel the cool mountain air and meet the wonderful creatures who adorn her pottery.
