After 23 years in New York City, Madcap Cottage founders Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke decamped to High Point, North Carolina, layering their new home with patterns and prints. With a knack for bringing exterior elements indoors, the duo has now brought the garden to the tabletop with a new collection of high-fired earthenware for Certified International. Ranging from a pineapple cookie jar and floral dinner plates to cabbage-leaf serving platters and pink-plaid ice cream bowls, the spirited pieces are meant to be mixed, matched and used every day. “There is nothing fussy, formal or delicate here,” Nixon tells Luxe. “So break out the fried chicken and tacos.”
What inspired the motifs for your first collection, English Garden? The pieces are based on original sketches that John painted with his watercolors kit at our Madcap Cottage headquarters in Thomasville and capture a passion for history, gardens, travel and gracious living.
Were you channeling any specific English gardens? John and I are huge Anglophiles and travel to England at least eight times per year. We adore the buzz of London but we also love to explore the English countryside. Several homes designed by Thomas Chippendale, Nancy Lancaster’s home and gardens at Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, the William Kent- designed Rousham in Oxfordshire and the incredible Indian-inspired Sezincote, with its onion domes and John Fowler-designed interiors in the bucolic Cotswolds, all inspired the sketches for this collection.
What else is coming up for Certified International? Look for two new Madcap Cottage collections, Spice Route and Weekend in New England, later this year.
