Elliott’s
Exploring the cross-section of food and creativity through the lens of Scotland, Jess Dennison and Philippa Henley explore the authenticity, imperfection, cross-disciplinary thinking and debate at play as two sectors collide
words – jess elliott dennison, phillippa henley, rachel arthur
location – edinburgh, scotland
A neighbourhood space centred around the concept of bringing people together, Elliott’s elevates the cosy local eatery to new heights with a deep understanding of place, produce and – above all – experience. Founded by Jess Elliott Dennison, the two neighbouring spaces which combine to create the overall concept are at once wholesomely welcoming and imbibed with layers of meaning. The kitchen, at number 27, thrives on a weekly changing menu of seasonal dishes whilst the shop, at number 21, champions homeware, go-to ingredients and quirks to add a flash of character to any home. Never unnecessarily fussy, everything at Elliott’s is considered and authentic; the stories behind selected jars of pickles, natural wines or Carambars shared with a customer base which stretches from school children to grandparents. Across the following pages, we share the dialogue between Jess and Phillippa Henley, the sculptor charged with the tall order of partnering in the creation and conceptualisation of Elliott’s shop at number 21. The interview is extracted from an hour long discussion touching upon the creative mind; the convergence of food and design; and the potential of Scotland.
Rachel
Front and centre of your latest venture is the convergence of food and art. How does this crossover work and how has it developed?
Jess
All of our favourite hospitality places are led by artists who have fallen into it, not hospitality people. River Café was built for architects, Rochelle Canteen was built for the local creatives; all the places that I’m drawn to, when you dig into who’s behind them, are led by someone with an arts or a design background.
Philippa
90% of my friends who are artists work in hospitality. I’ve worked in hospitality and retail since I was 13; the two things have always sat next to each other for me and it’s the same for other people I know. It’s a natural fit, it’s a creative field that you can actually work and earn in. There are so many incredible artists who work in food and drink. More and more, they’re combining their businesses in a positive way, which is pretty cool.
Jess
I have a rare trait which is that I know I’m not the best chef or the most creative food person, but I just get shit done. If I want to write a cookbook, I’ll make it happen. There are millions of other people who are more creative, inventing recipes that are 100 times better than mine – but they won’t ever have cookbooks. If I think I want to release cookbooks, my tenacity and resolve drive me to do so. That’s what happened with Elliott’s: I opened with a clear vision of what it was, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I opened the doors and thought, sod it, we’ll figure it out – which is exactly how I feel about here.
Philippa
That’s really interesting – you say that as someone with a logical, business brain whereas my gut reaction is that it’s not that easy, as a creative person, because you’re often not trained to think commercially. You’re trained to explore ideas until they feel right – and that’s not necessarily good business.
Rachel
This rigidity around obsessively categorising skillsets seems to be rife; how important are collaborations such as yours to begin to blur the lines and break down the barriers between different ways of thinking?
Philippa
Hugely important. I know I’m creative but every day I question whether I can do the commercial parts of jobs as I’ve been told I’m creative my whole life. I’m not demeaning it, I’m delighted I’ve been told that – it’s who I am. But due to that, my confidence in pushing forward out of my little creative world is lacking.
Jess
There’s a low barrier to entry within hospitality – if you want to set up a fashion business, on the other hand, you need huge investment. I think a lot is to do with that, and the ease with which you can get an izettle, start your banding, cook something and sell it.
Philippa
Whereas I’m treating it like a sculpture project. It’s an artwork to me, my brain thinks that way. It holds everything that way. I’m striving for it to be perfect or, if I’m not, I’m striving for it to feel right. I think completely differently. I focus on the detail, and Jess’s tenacity makes sure it’s a vision realised.
Jess
And somewhere in the middle we’ll create something thats valuable.
Rachel
In thinking of this as a sculpture project, I wonder if you see an end point?
Philippa
No. Sculptors’ and painters’ biggest problem is when to step away from a piece. I think that’s why the feeling is so important: people always call me a perfectionist, and I have perfectionist tendencies, but that comes from detail orientation in art, it comes from seeing other detail that people with a different way of thinking perhaps don’t see. One of our biggest conversations revolves around imperfection and things being worn or loved or charming in some way. Whether it’s an object or ceramics or textiles or a piece of artwork or a building, being imperfect is usually what draws me in the most and what feels most right. And so, no, I don’t see an end point but I know there will be a point where I know this is good, and it feels really good. It’s the vibe.
Jess
Next door, when the sun is shining and the light sits there and the music’s right and you’ve got the right people working and the right customers – its the best feeling ever. It’s all worth it. When you hit the vibe. And nothing beats it, all of it is worth it.
Philippa
It is. As the boxes get unpacked and things get tidied, there will be this point when a bunch of flowers gets laid down and that’ll be it, it’ll be really good. And it doesn’t mean that I’m finished, if anything my brain will just never stop going. The next day I’ll probably come in and move it. But that’s where the enjoyment is, it keeps breathing. Even as I’ve been filling the shelves ready for opening, I work here and there – dotting back and forth with that artistic brain that leaps from thought to thought. And it will come together in synergy in the end, and that’s that feeling thing again. It’s all about making things into an environment; that’s what I think I’m looking for rather than kitsch details.
Rachel
This sense of environment comes across strongly throughout Elliott’s, with a true authenticity tied to the team behind the concept. Yet authenticity has become an arguably overused buzzword in today’s world; can we discuss this? Are we at risk of losing authentic in our overly homogenised world?
Jess
I think we are at risk, yes. We both feel passionately about this. I spend a lot of time in East London and Sydney and Melbourne – this homogenised hipster cookie cutter branding, I’m so bored of it. It’s all such a cliché, and the overuse of it creates a parody of ourselves and our generation. Elliott’s gets put into that category a lot: the ‘hipster joint.’ Actually a lot of our customers are little old ladies, school kids – it’s such a mixed bag, albeit very white and middle class. It used to really bother me being put in that box.
Philippa
Not to give Instagram too much more air time but we’ve made a conscious decision not to consistently document the process of what we’ve been doing here. Not because we don’t think people will be interested or because there’s nothing interesting to see, but because we didn’t want to give everything away in a postage stamp sized image on an app. Everything that we’re passionate about is tactile and has a story and passion and meaning; there’s research behind it and we want people to experience it.
Jess
I hate it, but if we put something on Instagram then it will sell. I can’t ignore that. I ham it up and we instantly see effect; I mention my favourite wine and we immediately sell out. But it’s just so fake and horrid. The things I get excited about are people coming and experiencing the space.
Philippa
With my sculpture focussed fine art brain, I struggle with that so much. I strive to find unique things – whether thats combinations of things and the stories they have together, or one off items. And what I really struggle with is everybody just copying each other all the time. I think a lot of that is to do with the internet and social media. Also I think people aren’t confident to make bolder decisions and do braver things. It’s interesting for me, having worked in the Borders for such a long time and not having lived in the city for a while, to then come back and see the industry which Jess’s business has been put into, whether she wanted that or not, and see all these incredibly talented people working together. There’s a lot of repetition going on and I can’t tell whether that’s an artistic movement where they’re all influencing each other and that’s really great, or whether actually some of them are a bit frightened to step out of the box and follow their own interests and they’re just doing what everyone’s doing. I think the majority of that is led by social media, and we we just don’t want to be a part of that. We’ll always strive for authenticity and individual meaning.
Jess
Every single thing here has individual meaning. There’s a reason why that cabinet is laid out to represent holidays in France as a kid. The pickles, the cherry tomato ones with the little frilly lids, the Carambars I’d insist on spending 10 francs on… they each take you back to a particular place and a particular memory. That’s what’s so special about this shop.
Philippa
I know that when Jess and I look at this, we’re both imagining the exact same things. The same kitchen with a cute little old nonna in it and a curtain and some old slip-on slippers that have fallen to bits… we don’t even need to communicate it. We listen, we both know the story and that comes from a lifetime of being visual people, and memory.
Jess
It’ll be interesting to see how customers pick up on this; who gets the French holidays, the things that are so shit they’re good? I can’t wait to see how people read it.
Philippa
The art of them not finding it too confusing or not understanding the value in things is in the vibe, the environment and the feeling. If everything works together so the overall feeling is right then even those people who don’t have the same kind of mindset as us will be enchanted by it.
Rachel
Is this enchantment furthered by the crossover of artistic disciplines so evident in Elliott’s philosophy?
Philippa
Yes; in fact I wish there was more of that. There have been a few people along the way, during this journey, who haven’t got our thoughts. It’s all been a bit over their heads; they’re just not used to thinking in our way, or even close to our way. Not that we want everyone to think exactly like us, but even to consider something in a different way, away from the standard parameters – and that’s why cross discipline thinking is so interesting. I did that in my own practice anyway, before and after I was studying – and that brings us back to the different mindsets of artists and designers. It’s a crime that the two things aren’t always talking to each other. I don’t get it; why don’t they talk to each other? One of the first conversations that Jess and I had was about Scotland, the Scottish economy and how Scotland’s heritage in design and art and lifestyle, more than anything, was lost. And we talked a lot about the food and drink industry and the art and design industry not really talking to each other, and how we both felt quite passionately that those two things should talk more. Having worked in food and drink and having studied art my whole life, the two things together make sense to me. We eat plants, and plants are also used for dying. Those two things are the same, and going back, those two things worked alongside each other and we’ve forgotten that so much. The dyes are just one example but I think that’s also true of the way we live, our lifestyles, how we dress, how we build our homes… there’s so many interesting thoughts around how art and design and food and drink have always started together yet have moved apart. There should be more crossover.
Jess
Scotland needs to rebrand itself. It’s either twee Scottish, exported to the States and China – which I can’t knock from a commercial viewpoint. Keep flogging that tartan if it’s going to prop up the economy! But there’s also the more domestic view of Scotland, alongside how we’re viewed in Europe. Look on the internet and you’ll find a magically Scandinavian version of Scotland. There may be similarities but can we not create our own thing? We have all these creative minds and there’s so much talent here, and heritage – is that really all we can do? Come on, guys. We can do this.
Philippa
I think a lot of this has to be to do with where money has been sunk in the economy. Who and how much? Who had the money? How much was put into where? The whisky trade and the textiles trade should be working together. They’re both incredibly successful on their own but why are they not working together? The same for sustainability for the environment. It’s to do with money, but also scale. I’m from the north east, a working class place built on industrial revolution – all of that has left the north east now. Sunderland was known for ship building, which it had such an identity for, and it doesn’t have that now. It doesn’t exist anymore. And so there’s this gap between skills and inherited skill and apprenticeships and learning from your parents and grandparents. And seeing the value in skill, whether it’s creative, food, whatever. There was real value and then this big gap. And suddenly we’re this booming economy again, but the skills were all lost in the middle and that just breaks my heart. That’s why the two things struggle to reconnect now, because they didn’t continuously grow. There was this dropout in the middle. I went to design school in Scotland and didn’t learn about the history of Scottish textiles – instead, we learnt about production chains in China for Louis Vuitton. Why was that? It’s really odd. The genuine authenticity hasn’t grown with the economy; had those textile practices continued to evolve in Scotland, we’d have a much more sustainable Scottish textiles economy now but there’s this gap in the middle where chemicals and synthetics took over and we moved away from harnessing Scotland and its nature to importing and exporting. The people now who are creatively trying to bring back ‘Made in Britain’ are struggling; it’s hard. Just look at the word ‘craft,’ the bad reputation it had for such a long time. I’m so grateful it’s becoming accepted again, but the fact that it’s only just OK and we’re still wading in a lot of not great ‘craft’ is testament to the fact that skills have been lost.
Jess
Surely recent events will be the massive wake up call – they cover everything. People having to cook at home, making a loaf of bred for the first time, goods being out of stock because they can’t be imported, people waking up to the potential of shopping locally… it’s just so obvious.
Philippa
There’s the gap again. As we approach mass unemployment and we’ve lost all the people with fine or heritage skills – to bring them back and retrain would cost money we don’t have.
Jess
But they’ve got money, they can find money – for things they think work. But if you’re in power and you’re making money from importing tat and selling it for a higher price with a huge margin, it’s not in your interest to change the system. This government have no interest in changing that. It’s so short sighted.
Philippa
We need to be brave enough to have our own ideas, and make them the economy. It’s all about being braver.
Jess
It’s about having vision, and the will at the top.
Philippa
More people need to talk. Within the food industry, within the art industry. Maybe higher up people need to listen more. Communication is the main thing. All of the conversations we have are about telling stories. Jess, you have so many interests, but you always say you just want to cook for people. You just want people to enjoy food and talk about food and share food. Food is always the thing that drives you forward because it’s about shared experience.
Jess
Actually that’s what Elliott’s is all about. It all comes from time spent in Bangkok, where food is absolutely life. Everything in here, I’m excited about. I’m excited about those glasses because I know how durable they are; I know if you put them on your table and open a bottle of wine they’ll look cool. Every single product is about stopping and appreciating the person who’s designed it or made it – whether that’s by going next door and getting a bowl of pasta, which so much love has gone in to, or picking up a Carambar on your way home. Theres a reason behind everything. I want people to remember the experience, not just the food or the products. I want them to wonder.
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